… herein to our prophets far beneath,

As men divinely taught, and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government,

In their majestic, unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome,

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,

What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;

These only, with our law, best form a king.

John Milton (1608-74), Paradise Regained.