(_g_) “Thirdly, whereas he saith, that ‘some sudden acts proceeding from violent passions, which surprise a man, are justly punished’; I grant they are so sometimes; but not for his reason, because they have been formerly actually deliberated of; but because they were virtually deliberated of, or because it is our fault that they were not actually deliberated of, whether it was a fault of pure negation, that is, of not doing our duty only, or a fault of bad disposition also, by reason of some vicious habit which we had contracted by our former actions. To do a necessary act is never a fault, nor justly punishable, when the necessity is inevitably imposed upon us by extrinsical causes. As if a child, before he had the use of reason, shall kill a man in his passion; yet because he wanted malice to incite him to it, and reason to restrain him from it, he shall not die for it in the strict rules of particular justice, unless there be some mixture of public justice in the case. (_h_) “But if the necessity be contracted by ourselves, and by our own faults, it is justly punishable. As he who by his wanton thoughts in the day-time doth procure his own nocturnal pollution: a man cannot deliberate in his sleep, yet it is accounted a sinful act, and consequently, a free act, that is, not actually free in itself, but virtually free in its causes; and though it be not expressly willed and chosen, yet it is tacitly and implicitly willed and chosen, when that is willed and chosen from whence it was necessarily produced. By the Levitical law, if a man digged a pit and left it uncovered, so that his neighbour’s ox or his ass did fall into it, he was bound to make reparation; not because he did choose to leave it uncovered on purpose that such a mischance might happen, but because he did freely omit that which he ought to have done, from whence this damage proceeded to his neighbour. Lastly, there is great difference between the first motions, which sometimes are not in our power, and subsequent acts of killing or stealing, or the like, which always are in our power if we have the use of reason, or else it is our own fault that they are not in our power. Yet to such hasty acts done in hot blood the law is not so severe, as to those which are done upon long deliberation and prepensed malice, unless, as I said, there be some mixture of public justice in it. He that steals a horse deliberately, may be more punishable by the law than he that kills the owner by chance-medley: yet the death of the owner was more noxious, (to use his phrase), and more damageable to the family, than the stealth of the horse. So far was T. H. mistaken in that also, that the right to kill men doth proceed merely from their being noxious (No. XIV).” ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP’S ANSWER TO MY OPINION ABOUT LIBERTY AND NECESSITY NO. XXV.