Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Explain what Winthrop means by two fold liberty

In his "Little Speech on Liberty" John Winthrop refers to two kinds of liberty. The first is natural liberty. This is the liberty which we possess as creatures on this earth, the liberty with which we are endowed by God. As we've also been given free will, we can choose to use our natural liberty properly or abuse it; we have the liberty to do good or evil. All men are sinful and so inevitably they choose to abuse the liberty with which they've been endowed. In abusing their natural liberty, men start to do as they please, acting no differently from animals. The results are deeply damaging to the stability and godliness of society.
That's why it's important to have civil liberty. This is the man-made liberty that we enjoy as citizens of a particular state. Such liberty, as expressed through laws and institutions of government, are necessary to keep man's innate capacity for evil in check; to curb the potentially damaging consequences of the exercise of his natural liberty. Civil, or federal liberty relates to our status as citizens, members of a specific society. Natural liberty, on the other hand, concerns our status as human animals. To maintain good order in society, we must freely subject ourselves to a godly political authority, one that acts for the common good by preventing us from doing whatever we want.

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