First, that the _necessity_ of an _action_ doth not make the _laws_, that prohibit it, _unjust_. To let pass, that not the _necessity_, but the _will_ to break the _law_, maketh the action _unjust_, because the _law_ regardeth the _will_, and no other precedent causes of action. And to let pass, that no _law_ can possibly be _unjust_, inasmuch as every man maketh, by his consent, the law he is bound to keep, and which consequently must be just, unless a man can be unjust to himself. I say, what _necessary_ cause soever precede an _action_, yet if the action be _forbidden_, he that doth it _willingly_ may justly be punished. For instance, suppose the law on pain of death prohibit stealing, and that there be a man, who by the strength of temptation is _necessitated_ to steal, and is thereupon put to death, does not this punishment deter others from theft? Is it not a cause that others steal not? Doth it not frame and make their wills to justice? To make the _law_, is therefore to make a _cause_ of _justice_, and to _necessitate_ justice; and consequently, it is no injustice to make such a law. The intention of the _law_ is not to grieve the _delinquent_, for that which is past, and not to be undone; but to make him and others _just_, that else would not be so, and respecteth not the evil act _past_, but the _good to come_; insomuch as without the good intention for the future, no past act of a delinquent could justify his killing in the sight of God. But you will say, how is it just to kill one man to amend another, if what were done were _necessary_? To this I answer, that men are justly killed, not for that their _actions_ are not _necessitated_, but because they are _noxious_, and they are spared and preserved whose actions are not noxious. For where there is no law, there no killing nor anything else can be unjust; and by the right of nature, we destroy, without being unjust, all that is noxious, both beasts and men; and for beasts we kill them justly, when we do it in order to our own preservation, and yet my Lord himself confesseth, that their actions, as being only _spontaneous_, and not _free_, are all _necessitated_ and determined to that one thing they shall do. For men, when we make societies or commonwealths, we lay not down our right to kill, excepting in certain cases, as murder, theft or other offensive action; so that the right, which the _commonwealth_ hath to put a man to death for crimes, is not created by the _law_, but remains from the first right of _nature_, which every man hath to preserve himself; for that the law doth not take the right away in the case of criminals, who were by the law excepted. Men are not therefore put to death, or punished, for that their theft proceedeth from _election_; but because it was _noxious_ and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and