“And though his ground had been true, that all first legislators were elective, which is false; yet his superstructure fails: for it was done in hope and trust that they would make just laws. If magistrates abuse this trust, and deceive the hopes of the people by making tyrannical laws, yet it is without their consent. A precedent trust doth not justify the subsequent errors and abuses of a trustee. He who is duly elected a legislator, may exercise his legislative power unduly. The people’s implicit consent doth not render the tyrannical laws of their legislators to be just. (_d_) “But his chiefest answer is, that ‘an action forbidden, though it proceed from necessary causes, yet if it were done willingly, it may be justly punished;’ which, according to his custom, he proves by an instance. ‘A man necessitated to steal by the strength of temptation, yet if he steal willingly, is justly put to death.’ Here are two things, and both of them untrue. “First, he fails in his assertion. Indeed we suffer justly for those necessities, which we ourselves have contracted by our own fault; but not for extrinsical antecedent necessities, which were imposed upon us without our fault. If that law do not oblige to punishment, which is not intimated, because the subject is invincibly ignorant of it; how much less that law which prescribes absolute impossibilities: unless perhaps invincible necessity be not as strong a plea as invincible ignorance. That which he adds, ‘if it were done willingly,’ though it be of great moment, if it be rightly understood, yet in his sense, that is, if a man’s ‘will be not in his own disposition,’ and ‘if his willing do not come upon him according to his will, nor according to anything else in his power,’ it weighs not half so much as the least feather in all his horse-load. For if that law be unjust and tyrannical which commands a man to do that which is impossible for him to do, then that law is likewise unjust and tyrannical, which commands him to will that which is impossible for him to will.