If we turn to English writers of the next generation, and above all to those "politic" humanists who were critical of classical republic anism, we find the same terminology used with increasing con- fidence. Raleigh, for example, not only speaks freely of the state in his Maxims, but makes it clear that he thinks of the state as an impersonal form of political authority, defining it as "the frame or set order of a commonwealth" (Raleigh 1661: 2 Bacon (1972 890 writes in the final version of his Essays in a way that often suggests a similar understanding of political authority. He describes rulers as well as their councillors as having a duty to consider "the weal and advancement of the state which they serve.