nment and order, leave nothing but
anarchy and confusion.

Sect. 204. To this I answer, that force is to be opposed to nothing, but
to unjust and unlawful force; whoever makes any opposition in any other
case, draws on himself a just condemnation both from God and man; and so
no such danger or confusion will follow, as is often suggested: for,

Sect. 205. First, As, in some countries, the person of the prince by the
law is sacred; and so, whatever he commands or does, his person is still
free from all question or violence, not liable to force, or any judicial
censure or condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to the illegal
acts of any inferior officer, or other commissioned by him; unless he
will, by actually putting himself into a state of war with his people,
dissolve the government, and leave them to that defence which belongs to
every one in the state of nature: for of such things who can tell what
the end will be? and a neighbour kingdom has shewed the world an odd
example. In all other cases the sacredness of the person exempts him
from all inconveniencies, whereby he is secure, whilst the government
stands, from all violence and harm whatsoever; than which there cannot
be a wiser constitution: for the harm he can do in his own person not
being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far; nor being able
by his single strength to subvert the laws, nor oppress the body of the
people, should any prince have so much weakness, and ill nature as to be
willing to do it, the inconveniency of some particular mischiefs, that
may happen sometimes, when a heady prince comes to the throne, are well
recompensed by the peace of the public, and security of the government,
in the person of the chief magistrate, thus set out of the reach of
danger: it being safer for the body, that some few private men should be
sometimes in danger to suffer, than that the head of the republic should
be easily, and upon slight occasions, exposed.

Sect. 206. Secondly, But this privilege, belonging only to the king's
person, hinders not, but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted,
who use unjust force, though they pretend a commission from him, which
the law authorizes not; as is plain in the case of him that has the
king's writ to arrest a man, which is a full commission from the king;
and yet he that has it cannot break open a man's house to do it, nor
execute this command of the king upon certain days, nor in certain
places, t