(_e_) “He pleads moreover, ‘That the law is a cause of justice,’ that ‘it frames the wills of men to justice,’ and ‘that the punishment of one doth conduce to the preservation of many.’ All this is most true of a just law justly executed. But this is no God-a-mercy to T. H.’s opinion of absolute necessity. If all actions and all events be predetermined naturally, necessarily, extrinsically, how should the law frame men morally to good actions? He leaves nothing for the law to do, but either that which is done already, or that which is impossible to be done. If a man be chained to every individual act which he doth, and from every act which he doth not, by indissolvable bonds of inevitable necessity, how should the law either deter him or frame him? If a dog be chained fast to a post, the sight of a rod cannot draw him from it. Make a thousand laws that the fire shall not burn, yet it will burn. And whatsoever men do, according to T. H., they do it as necessarily as the fire burneth. Hang up a thousand thieves, and if a man be determined inevitably to steal, he must steal notwithstanding. (_f_) “He adds, that ‘the sufferings imposed by the law upon delinquents, respect not the evil act passed, but the good to come, and that the putting of a delinquent to death by the magistrate for any crime whatsoever, cannot be justified before God, except there be a real intention to benefit others by his example.’ The truth is, the punishing of delinquents by law, respecteth both the evil act passed and the good to come. The ground of it, is the evil act passed, the scope or end of it, is the good to come. The end without the ground cannot justify the act. A bad intention may make a good action bad; but a good intention cannot make a bad action good. It is not lawful to do evil that good may come of it, nor to punish an innocent person for the admonition of others; that is to fall into a certain crime for fear of an uncertain. Again, though there were no other end of penalties inflicted, neither probatory, nor castigatory, nor exemplary, but only vindicatory, to satisfy the law out of a zeal of justice by giving to every one his own, yet the action is just and warrantable. Killing, as it is considered in itself, without all undue circumstances, was never prohibited to the lawful magistrate, who is the vice-gerent or lieutenant of God, from whom he derives his power of life and death.