Let all power on earth be limited

Since I have written before about the tendency for government to act as mother, assuming control over every aspect of our life, the words of the American Puritan, John Cotton, resonated with me when I read them today:

Let all the world learn to give mortall men no greater power than they are content they shall use, for use it they will....It is necessary...that all power that is on earth be limited, church-power or other....It is counted a matter of danger to the state to limit prerogatives, but it is a further danger not to have them limited. They will be like a Tempest if they be not limited. A Prince himselfe can not tell where he will confine himself, nor can the people tell....It is therefore fit for every man to be studious of the bounds which the Lord hath set; and for the People, in whom fundamentally all power lyes, to give as much power as God in his word gives to men.