Sec. 203. May the commands then of a prince be opposed? may
he be resisted as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved,
and but imagine he has not right done him? This will unhinge and
overturn all polities, and, instead of government and order,
leave nothing but anarchy and confusion.
Sec. 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,
Sec. 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.
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