9. Now because it comes from the civil laws, both that every man have _his proper right_ and distinguished from _another’s_, and also that he is forbidden to invade another’s rights; it follows that these precepts: _Thou shalt not refuse to give the honour defined by the laws, unto thy parents_: _Thou shalt not kill the man, whom the laws forbid thee to kill_: _Thou shalt avoid all copulation forbidden by the laws_: _Thou shalt not take away another’s goods, against the lords will_: _Thou shalt not frustrate the laws and judgments by false testimony_: are civil laws. The natural laws command the same things, but implicitly. For the law of nature (as hath been said in chap. III. art. 2) commands us to _keep contracts_; and therefore also to perform obedience, when we have covenanted obedience, and to abstain from another’s goods, when it is determined by the civil law what belongs to another. But all subjects (by chap. VI. art. 13) do _covenant_ to obey his commands who hath the supreme power, that is to say, the civil laws, in the very constitution of government, even before it is possible to break them. For the law of nature did oblige in the state of nature; where first, because nature hath given all things to all men, nothing did properly belong to another, and therefore it was not possible to invade another’s right; next, where all things were common, and therefore all carnal copulations lawful; thirdly, where was the state of war, and therefore lawful to kill; fourthly, where all things were determined by every man’s own judgment, and therefore paternal respects also; lastly, where there were no public judgments, and therefore no use of bearing witness, either true or false. [Sidenote: It is not possible to command aught by the civil law, contrary to the laws of nature.] 10. Seeing therefore our obligation to observe those laws is more ancient than the promulgation of the laws themselves, as being contained in the very constitution of the city; by the virtue of the natural law which forbids breach of covenant, the law of nature commands us to keep all the civil laws. For where we are tied to obedience before we know what will be commanded us, there we are universally tied to obey in all things. Whence it follows, that no civil law whatsoever, which tends not to a reproach of the Deity, (in respect of whom cities themselves have no right of their own, and cannot be said to make laws), can possibly be against the law of nature. For though the law of nature forbid theft, adultery, &c; yet if the civil law command us to invade anything, that invasion is not theft, adultery, &c. For when the Lacedæmonians of old permitted their youths, by a certain law, to take away other men’s goods, they commanded that these goods should not be accounted other men’s, but their own who took them; and therefore such surreptions were no thefts. In like manner, copulations of heathen sexes, according to their laws, were lawful marriages.