2. That all consultations are vain.
3. That admonitions to men of understanding, are of no more use, than to children, fools, and madmen.
4. That, praise, dispraise, reward and punishment, are in vain.
5, 6. That counsels, acts, arms, books, instruments, study, tutors, medicines, are in vain.
To which arguments his Lordship expecting I should answer, by saying, the ignorance of the event were enough to make us use the means, adds, as it were a reply to my answer foreseen, these words: Alas! how should our not knowing the event be a sufficient motive to make us use the means? Wherein his Lordship says right, but my answer is not that which he expecteth: I answer,
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 none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them. And thus it is plain, that from the necessity of a voluntary action, cannot be inferred the injustice of the law that forbiddeth it, or the magistrate that punisheth it.
Secondly, I deny that it maketh consultations to be in vain; it is the consultation that causeth a man, and necessitateth him to choose to do one thing rather than another: so that unless a man say that that cause is in vain which necessitateth the effect, he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it. But it seemeth his Lordship reasons thus: If I must do this rather than that, I shall do this rather than that, though I consult not at all; which is a false proposition and a false consequence, and no better than this: If I shall live till to-morrow, I shall live till to-morrow, though I run myself through with a sword to-day. If there be a necessity that an action shall be done, or that any effect shall be brought to pass, it does not therefore follow, that there is nothing necessarily requisite as a means to bring it to pass; and therefore when it is determined, that one thing shall be chosen before another, it is determined also for what cause it shall so be chosen, which cause, for the most part, is deliberation or consultation, and therefore consultation is not in vain, and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated, if more and less had any place in necessity.
The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconvenience, namely, that admonitions are in vain; for the admonitions are parts of consultation, the admonitor being a counsellor for the time to him that is admonished.