Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

The Influence of Natural Law tHeorywere the people of God a long time governed before the law was writtenby Moses, who was the first reporter or writer of law in the world . . . .God and nature is one to all and therefore the law of God and nature isone to all . . . . This law of nature which indeed is the eternal law of thecreator, infused into the heart of the creature at the time of his creation,was two thousand years before any laws written and before any judicialor municipal laws were made, kings did decide cases according to naturalequity and were not tied to any rule or formality of law.William Blackstone, the most famous jurist and legal commentatorof his time, restated Coke in language more understandable to his contemporariesin England and the colonies. The following is an excerptfrom an American edition of his work printed in Philadelphia in 1771. Itexpands the idea that the laws of nature are the will of God—that theycame into being at the time of creation and continue to govern the universe.Man can use his reason to discover those laws of nature, and givenfree will by the creator can choose to follow or not follow natural law.When the Supreme Being formed the universe and created matterout of nothing, he impressed certain principles upon that matter fromwhich it can never depart and without which it would cease to be.…This then, is the general significance of law; a rule of action dictated bysome superior being; and in those creatures that have neither the powerto think nor to will, such laws must be invariably obeyed, so long as thecreature itself subsists, for its existence depends on that obedience. Butlaws in their more confined sense and in which it is our present businessto consider them, denote the rules, not of action in general, but ofhuman action or conduct, that is the precepts by which man…endowedwith both reason and free will, is commanded to make use of thosefaculties in the general regulation of his behavior.Man considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws ofhis creator for he is entirely a dependent being . . . . Consequently, sinceman depends absolutely upon his maker for everything, it is necessarythat he should in all points conform to his maker’s will. This will of hismaker is called the law of nature. For as God, when he created matterand endowed it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules forthe perpetual direction of that motion, . . . so, when he created man, andendowed him with free will to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laiddown certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that free will isin some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty81