Selected quad for the lemma: act_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
act_n	command_n	command_v	lawful_a	2,968	5	9.4987	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33236	A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to church and state, in Mr. Hobbes's book, entitled Leviathan by Edward Earl of Clarendon.	Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.	1676 (1676)	Wing C4421; ESTC R12286	180,866	332

Principles against Law least he be obliged to stand or fall according to the rectitude or error thereof Tho every Instance he gives of his Soveraigns absolute power makes it the more unreasonable formidable and odious yet he gives all the support to it he can devise And indeed when he hath made his Soveraigns word a full and enacted Law he hath reason to oblige his Subject to do whatsoever he commands be it right or wrong and to provide for his security when he hath don and therefore he declares pag. 157. That whosoever doth any thing that is contrary to a former Law by the command of his Soveraign he is not guilty of any crime and so cannot be punished because when the Soveraign commands any thing to be don against a former Law the command as to that particular Fact is an abrogation of the Law which would introduce a licence to commit Murder or any other crime most odious and against which Laws are chiefly provided But he hath in another place given his Subject leave to refuse the Soveraigns command when he requires him to do an act or office contrary to his honor so that tho he will not suffer the Law to restrain him from doing what the Soveraign unlawfully commands yea his honor of which he shall be Judg himself may make him refuse that command tho lawf●l as if the Soveraign commands him to Prison as no doubt he lawfully may for a crime that deserves death he may in Mr. Hobbes's opinion refuse to obey that command Whereas Government and Justice have not a greater security then that he that executes a verbal command of the King against a known Law shall be punished And the Case which he puts in the following Paragraph that the Kings Will being a Law if he should not obey that there would appear two contradictory Laws which would totally excuse is so contrary to the common Rule of Justice that a man is obliged to believe when the King requires any thing to be don contrary to any Law that he did not know of that Law and so to forbear executing his Command And if this were otherwise Kings of all men would be most miserable and would reverse their most serious Counsels and Deliberations by incogitancy upon the suggestion and importunity of every presumtuous Intruder Kings themselves can never be punished or reprehended publicly that being a reproch not consistent with the reverence due to Majesty for their casual or wilful errors and mistakes let the ill consequence of them be what they will but if they who maliciously lead or advise or obey them in unjust resolutions and commands were to have the same indemnity there must be a dissolution of all Kingdoms and Governments But as Kings must be left to God whose Vice-gerents they are to judg of their breach of Trust so they who offend against the Law must be left to the punishment the Law hath provided for them it being in the Kings power to pardon the execution of the Sentence the Law inflicts except in those cases where the Offence is greater to others then to the King as in the murder of a Husband or a Father the offence is greater to the Wife and to the Son for their relation then to the King for a Subject and therefore upon an Appeal by them the Transgressor may suffer after the King hath pardon'd him It is a great prerogative which Mr. Hobbes doth in this Chapter indulge to his fear his precious bodily fear of corporal hurt that it shall not only extenuate an ill action but totally excuse and annihilate the worst he can commit that if a man by the terror of present death be compelled to do a Fact against the Law he is wholly excused because no Law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation and supposing such a Law were obligatory yet a man would reason pag. 157. If I do it not I die presently if I do it I die afterwards therefore by doing it there is time of life gain'd Nature therefore compels him to the Fact by which a man seems by the Law of Nature to be compell'd even for a short reprieve and to live two or three daies longer to do the most infamous and wicked thing that is imaginable upon which fertile soil he doth hereafter so much enlarge according to his natural method in which he usually plants a stock supposes a principle the malignity whereof is not presently discernable in a precedent Chapter upon which in a subsequent one he grafts new and worse Doctrine which he looks should grow and prosper by such cultivation as he applies to it in Discourse and therefore I shall defer my Considerations to the contrary till I wait upon him in that enlarged disquisition The Survey of Chapter 28. THe eight and twentieth Chapter being a Discourse of Punishments and Rewards it was not possible for him to forget in how weak a condition he had left his Soveraign for want of power to punish since want of power to punish and want of autority to cause his punishment to be inflicted is the same thing especially when the guilty person is not only not oblig'd to submit to the Sentence how just soever but hath a right to resist it and to defend himself by force against the Magistrate and the Law and therefore he thinks it of much importance to enquire by what door the right and autority of punishing in any case came in He is a very ill Architect that in building a House makes not doors to enter into every office of it and it is very strange that he should make his doors large and big enough in his institution to let out all the liberty and propriety of the Subject and the very end of his Institution being to make a Magistrate to compel men to their duty for he confesses they were before obliged by the Law of Nature to perform it one towards another but that there must be a Soveraign Sword to compel men to do that which they ought to do yet that he should forget to leave a door wide enough for this compulsion to enter in at by punishment and bringing the Offender to Justice since the end of making the Soveraign is disappointed and he cannot preserve the peace if guilty persons have a right to preserve themselves from the punishment he inflicts for their guilt It was very improvidently don when he had the draught of the whole Contracts and Covenants that he would not insert one by which every man should transfer from himself the right he had to defend himself against public Justice tho not against private violence And surely reason and Self-preservation that makes a man transfer all his Estate and Interest into the hands of the Soveraign and to be disposed by him that he may be secure against the robbery and rapine of his neighbors companions will as well dispose him to leave his life to his discretion that it may be

scandaliz'd that such monstrous and seditious Discourses have so long escaped a judicial Examination and Punishment must know that Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan was printed and publish'd in the highest time of Cromwell's wicked Usurpation for the vindication and perpetuating whereof it was contriv'd and design'd and when all Legal power was suppress'd and upon his Majesties blessed return that merciful and wholsom Act of Oblivion which pardon'd all Treasons and Murders Sacriledg Robbery Heresies and Blasphemies as well with re●erence to their Writings as their Persons and other Actions did likewise wipe out the memory of the Enormities of Mr. Hobbes and his Leviathan And this hath bin the only reason why the last hath bin no more enquired into then the former it having bin thought best that the impious Doctrines of what kind soever which the license of those times produc'd should rather expire by neglect and the repentance of the Authors then that they should be brought upon the Stage again by a solemn and public condemnation which might kindle some parts of the old Spirit with the vanity of contradiction which would otherwise in a short time be extinguish'd and it is only in Mr. Hobbes his own power to reverse the security that Act hath given him by repeting his former Errors by making what was his Off-spring in Tyrannical Times when there was no King in Israel his more deliberate and legitimate Issue and Productions in a time when a lawful Government flourishes which cannot connive at such bold Transgressors and Transgressions and he will then find that it hath fallen into the hands of a Soveraign that hath consider'd it very well not by allowing the public teaching it but by a declared detestation and final snppression of it and enjoining the Author a public recantation We shall conclude here our disquisition of his Policy and Government of his Commonwealth with the recollecting and stating the excellent Maximes and Principles upon which his Government is founded and supported that when they appear naked and uninvolv'd in his magisterial Discourses men may judg of the liberty and security they should enjoy if Mr. Hobbes Doctrine were inculcated into the minds of men by their Education and the Industry of those Masters under whom they are to be bred as he thinks it necessary it should be which Principles are in these very terms declared by him 1. That the Kings word is sufficient to take any thing from any Subject when there is need and that the King is Iudg of that need pag. 106. cap. 20. part 2. 2. The Liberty of a subject lieth only in those things which in regulating their actions the Soveraign hath pretermitted such as is the liberty to buy and sell and otherwise to contract with one another to chuse their own abode their own diet their own trade of life and institute their children as they themselves think fit and the like pag. 109. cap. 21. par 2. 3. Nothing the Soveraign can do to a subject on what pretence soever can properly be called injustice or injury pag. 109. 4. When a Soveraign Prince putteth to death an innocent subject tho the action be against the Law of Nature as being contrary to Equity yet it is not an injury to the subject but to God pag. 109. 5. No man hath liberty to resist the word of the Soveraign but in case a great many men together have already resisted the Soveraign power unjustly or committed some capital crime for which every one of them expecteth death they have liberty to join together and to assist and defend one another pag. 112. 6. If a Soveraign demand or take any thing by pretence of his power there lieth in that case no action at Law pag. 112. 7. If a subject be taken prisoner in War or his person or his means of life be within the guards of the Enemy and hath his life and corporal liberty given him on condition to be subject to the Victor he hath liberty to accept the condition and having accepted it is the subject of him that took him pag. 114. 8. If the Soveraign banish the subject during the banishment he is no subject pag. 114. 6. The obligation of subjects to the Soveraign is as long and no longer then the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them pag. 124. 10. Whatever Promises or Covenants the Soveraign makes are void pag. 89. 11. He whose private interest is to be judged in an assembly may make as many friends as he can and tho he hires such friends with mony yet it is not injustice pag. 122. cap. 22. part 2. 12. The propriety which a subject hath in his Lands consisteth in a right to exclude all other subjects from the use of them and not to exclude their Soveraign pag. 128. cap. 24. part 2. 13. When the Soveraign commandeth a man to do that which is against Law the doing of it is totally excus'd when the Soveraign commandeth any thing to be don against Law the command as to that particular fact is an abrogation of the Law pag. 157. cap. 27. part 2. 14. Tho the right of a Soveraign Monarch cannot be extinguish'd by the act of another yet the obligation of the members may for he that wants protection may seek it any where and when he hath it is oblig'd without fraudulent pretence of having submitted himself out of fear to protect his Protector as long as he is able pag. 174. cap. 29. part 2. If upon the short reflexions we have made upon these several Doctrines as they lie scattered over his Book and involv'd in other Discourses which with the novelty administers some pleasure to the unwary Reader the contagion thereof be not enough discover'd and the ill consequence and ruine that must attend Kings and Princes who affect such a Government as well as the misery insupportable to Subjects who are compelled to submit to it it may be the view of the naked Propositions by themselves without any other clothing or disguise of words may better serve to make them oqious to King and People and that the first will easily discern to how high a pinnacle of power soever he would carry him he leaves him upon such a Precipice from whence the least blast of Invasion from a Neighbor or from Rebellion by his Subjects may throw him headlong to irrecoverable ruine and the other will as much abhor an Allegiance of that temper that by any misfortune of their Prince they may be absolv'd from and cease to be Subjects when their Soveraign hath most need of their obedience And surely if these Articles of Mr. Hobbes's Creed be the product of right Reason and the effects of Christian Obligations the great Turk may be look'd upon as the best Philosopher and all his Subjects as the best Christians The Third Part. The Survey of Chapters 32 33 34. AS we had no reason to expect a rational discourse of civil Government and Policy when the opinion and