Likewise _laws_ and _charters_ are taken promiscuously for the same thing. Yet charters are donations of the sovereign; and not laws, but exemptions from law. The phrase of a law is, _jubeo_, _injungo_, _I command_ and _enjoin_: the phrase of a charter is, _dedi_, _concessi_, _I have given_, _I have granted_: but what is given or granted, to a man, is not forced upon him, by a law. A law may be made to bind all the subjects of a commonwealth: a liberty, or charter is only to one man, or some one part of the people. For to say all the people of a commonwealth, have liberty in any case whatsoever, is to say, that in such case, there hath been no law made; or else having been made, is now abrogated. ------- CHAPTER XXVII. OF CRIMES, EXCUSES, AND EXTENUATIONS. [Sidenote: Sin, what.] A SIN, is not only a transgression of a law, but also any contempt of the legislator. For such contempt, is a breach of all his laws at once. And therefore may consist, not only in the _commission_ of a fact, or in speaking of words by the laws forbidden, or in the _omission_ of what the law commandeth, but also in the _intention_, or purpose to transgress. For the purpose to break the law, is some degree of contempt of him, to whom it belongeth to see it executed. To be delighted in the imagination only, of being possessed of another man’s goods, servants, or wife, without any intention to take them from him by force or fraud, is no breach of the law, that saith, _Thou shalt not covet_: nor is the pleasure a man may have in imagining or dreaming of the death of him, from whose life he expecteth nothing but damage, and displeasure, a sin; but the resolving to put some act in execution, that tendeth thereto. For to be pleased in the fiction of that, which would please a man if it were real, is a passion so adherent to the nature both of man, and every other living creature, as to make it a sin, were to make sin of being a man. The consideration of this, has made me think them too severe, both to themselves, and others, that maintain, that the first motions of the mind, though checked with the fear of God, be sins. But I confess it is safer to err on that hand, than on the other. [Sidenote: A crime, what.]