To all this, which hath been pressed before, I have answered before; but that he says I say, “having commanded one thing openly, he plots another thing secretly,” it is not mine, but one of his own ugly phrases. And the force it hath, proceeded out of an apprehension he hath, that affliction is not God’s correction, but his revenge upon the creatures of his own making; and from a reasoning he useth, “because it is not just in a man to kill one man for the amendment of another, therefore neither is it so in God;” not remembering that God hath, or shall have killed all the men in the world, both nocent and innocent. My assertion, he saith, “is a dream, and the sum of it this; that where there is no law, there no killing or anything else can be unjust; that before the constitution of commonwealths, every man had power to kill another,” &c., and adds, that “this may well be called stringing of paradoxes.” To these my words he replies: (_h_) “There was never any time when mankind was without governors, laws, and societies.” It is very likely to be true, that since the creation there never was a time in which mankind was totally without society. If a part of it were without laws and governors, some other parts might be commonwealths. He saw there was paternal government in Adam; which he might do easily, as being no deep consideration. But in those places where there is a civil war at any time, at the same time there is neither laws, nor commonwealth, nor society, but only a temporal league, which every discontented soldier may depart from when he pleases, as being entered into by each man for his private interest, without any obligation of conscience: there are therefore almost at all times multitudes of lawless men. But this was a little too remote from his understanding to perceive. Again, he denies, that ever there was a time when one private man might lawfully kill another for his own preservation; and has forgotten that these words of his (No. II.), “this is the belief of all mankind, which we have not learned from our tutors, but is imprinted in our hearts by nature; we need not turn over any obscure books to find out this truth,” &c.; which are the words of Cicero in the defence of Milo, and translated by the Bishop to the defence of free-will, were used by Cicero to prove this very thing, that it is and hath been always lawful for one private man to kill another for his own preservation. But where he saith it is not lawful _ordinarily_, he should have shown some particular case wherein it is unlawful. For seeing it is a “belief imprinted in our hearts,” not only I, but many more are apt to think it is the law of nature, and consequently universal and eternal. And where he saith, this right of defence where it is, “is not a remainder of some greater power which they have resigned, but a privilege which God hath given them in case of extreme danger and invincible necessity,” &c.; I