HKB
seem yet somewhat the more--what say I, "somewhat"? I may say a great deal the more--because we took our former liberty for a great deal more than indeed it was.
Let us therefore consider the matter thus: Captivity, bondage, or thraldom, what is it but the violent restraint of a man, being so subdued under the dominion, rule, and power of another that he must do whatever the other please to command him, and may not do at his liberty such things as he please himself? Now, when we shall be carried away by a Turk and be fain to be occupied about such things as he please to set us, we shall lament the loss of our liberty and think we bear a heavy burden of our servile condition. And we shall have, I grant well, many times great occasion to do so. But yet we should, I suppose, set somewhat the less by it, if we would remember well what liberty that was that we lost, and take it for no larger than it was indeed. For we reckon as though we might before do what we would, but in that we deceive ourselves. For what free man is there so free that he can be suffered to do what he please? In many things God hath restrained us by his high commandment--so many, that of those things which we would otherwise do, I daresay it be more than half. Howbeit, because (God forgive us) we forbear so little for all that, but do what we please as though we heard him not, we reckon our liberty never the less. But then is our liberty much restrained by the laws made by man, for the quiet and politic governance of the people. And these too would, I suppose, hinder our liberty but little, were it not for the fear of the penalties that fall thereupon. Look then, whether other men who have authority over us never command us some business which we dare not but do, and therefore often do it full sore against our wills. Some such service is sometimes so painful and so perilous too, that no lord can command his bondsmen worse, and seldom doth command him half so sore. Let every free man who reckoneth his liberty to stand in doing what he please, consider well these points, and I daresay he shall then find his liberty much less than he took it for before.
And yet have I left untouched the bondage that almost every man is in who boasteth himself for free--the bondage, I mean, of sin. And that it be a true bondage, I shall have our Saviour himself to bear me good record. For he saith, "Every man who committeth sin is the thrall, or the bondsman, of sin." And then if this be thus (as it must needs be, since God saith it is so), who is there then who can make so much boast of his liberty that he should take it for so sore a thing and so strange to become through chance of war, bondsman unto a man, since he is already through sin become willingly thrall and bondsman unto the devil?