第91章 OF CRIMES,EXCUSES,AND EXTENUATIONS(5)

Those facts which the law expressly condemneth,but the lawmaker by other manifest signs of his will tacitly approveth,are less crimes than the same facts condemned both by the law and lawmaker.For seeing the will of the lawmaker is a law,there appear in this case two contradictory laws;which would totally excuse,if men were bound to take notice of the sovereigns approbation,by other arguments than are expressed by his command.But because there are punishments consequent,not only to the transgression of his law,but also to the observing of it he is in part a cause of the transgression,and therefore cannot reasonably impute the whole crime to the delinquent.For example,the law condemneth duels;the punishment is made capital:on the contrary part,he that refuseth duel is subject to contempt and scorn,without remedy;and sometimes by the sovereign himself thought unworthy to have any charge or preferment in war:if thereupon he accept duel,considering all men lawfully endeavour to obtain the good opinion of them that have the sovereign power,he ought not in reason to be rigorously punished,seeing part of the fault may be discharged on the punisher:which I say,not as wishing liberty of private revenges,or any other kind of disobedience,but a care in governors not to countenance anything obliquely which directly they forbid.The examples of princes,to those that see them,are,and ever have been,more potent to govern their actions than the laws themselves.And though it be our duty to do,not what they do,but what they say;yet will that duty never be performed till it please God to give men an extraordinary and supernatural grace to follow that precept.

Again,if we compare crimes by the mischief of their effects;first,the same fact when it redounds to the damage of many is greater than when it redounds to the hurt of few.And therefore when a fact hurteth,not only in the present,but also by example in the future,it is a greater crime than if it hurt only in the present:for the former is a fertile crime,and multiplies to the hurt of many;the latter is barren.To maintain doctrines contrary to the religion established in the Commonwealth is a greater fault in an authorised preacher than in a private person:so also is it to live profanely,incontinently,or do any irreligious act whatsoever.Likewise in a professor of the law,to maintain any point,or do any act,that tendeth to the weakening of the sovereign power is a greater crime than in another man:also in a man that hath such reputation for wisdom as that his counsels are followed,or his actions imitated by many,his fact against the law is a greater crime than the same fact in another:for such men not only commit crime,but teach it for law to all other men.And generally all crimes are the greater by the scandal they give;that is to say,by becoming stumbling-blocks to the weak,that look not so much upon the way they go in,as upon the light that other men carry before them.