hough this commission have no such exception in it; but they
are the limitations of the law, which if any one transgress, the king's
commission excuses him not: for the king's authority being given him
only by the law, he cannot impower any one to act against the law, or
justify him, by his commission, in so doing; the commission, or command
of any magistrate, where he has no authority, being as void and
insignificant, as that of any private man; the difference between the
one and the other, being that the magistrate has some authority so far,
and to such ends, and the private man has none at all: for it is not the
commission, but the authority, that gives the right of acting; and
against the laws there can be no authority. But, notwithstanding such
resistance, the king's person and authority are still both secured, and
so no danger to governor or government.

Sect. 207. Thirdly, Supposing a government wherein the person of the
chief magistrate is not thus sacred; yet this doctrine of the lawfulness
of resisting all unlawful exercises of his power, will not upon every
slight occasion indanger him, or imbroil the government: for where the
injured party may be relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the
law, there can be no pretence for force, which is only to be used where
a man is intercepted from appealing to the law: for nothing is to be
accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an
appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a
state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in
his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not
twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I
deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to
restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the
possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief
this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than
the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me
any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt
the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using
force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the
law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The
law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable;
which to prevent, the law of nature gav