No man can be judge to his own cause.

Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.

Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.

The law is more easily understood by few than many words. For all words are subject to ambiguity, and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the law is multiplication of ambiguity. Besides, it seems to imply (by too much diligence) that whosoever can evade the words is without the compass of the law.

Where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruin.

A crime arising from a sudden passion is not so great as when the same ariseth from long meditation. For in the former case, there is a place for extenuation, in the common infirmity of human nature, but he that doth it with premeditation, has used circumspection and cast his eye on the law, on the punishment, and on the consequence thereof to human society.

For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.

Potent men digest hardly anything that setteth up a power to bridle their affections, and learned men anything that discovereth their errors and thereby lesseneth their authority. Whereas the common people's minds, unless they be tainted with dependence on the potent, or scribbled over with the opinions of their doctors, are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by public authority shall be imprinted in them.

For where there is no commonwealth, there is ... a perpetual war of every man against his neighbor, and therefore every thing is his that getteth it, and keepeth it by force, which is neither propriety nor community, but uncertainty.

No man's error becomes his own law, nor obliges him to persist in it.

For the passions of men, which asunder are moderate, as the heat of one brand, in assembly are like many brands that enflame one another, (especially when they blow one another with orations) to the setting of the commonwealth on fire, under pretense of counseling it.

Miracles are marvelous works, but that which is marvelous to one, may not be so to another.

It sufficiently appeareth that in a commonwealth, a subject that has no certain and assured revelation particularly to himself concerning the will of God, is to obey for such, the command of the commonwealth: for if men were at liberty to take for God's commandments their own dreams and fancies, or the dreams and fancies of private men, scarce two men would agree upon what is God's commandment, and yet in respect of them, every man would despise the commandments of the commonwealth.

The law is the public conscience.

For he that deserteth the means, deserteth the ends.

Whether men will or not, they must be subject always to the Divine Power. By denying the existence or providence of God, men may shake off their ease, but not their yoke.

The safety of the people requireth further from him or them that have the sovereign power, that justice be equally administered to all degrees of people, that is, that as well the rich and mighty as poor and obscure persons may be righted of the injuries done them, so as the great may have no greater hope of impunity when they do violence, dishonor, or any injury to the meaner sort than when one of these does the like to one of them. For in this consisteth equity, to which, as being a precept of the law of Nature, a sovereign is as much subject as any of the meanest of his people.

When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man by victory or death.

Impunity maketh insolence.

The greatest and most active part of mankind has never hitherto been well contented with the present.

In written laws, men ... make a difference between the letter and the sentence of the law: And when by the letter is meant whatsoever can be gathered from the bare words, 'tis well distinguished. For the significance of almost all words, are either themselves, or in the metaphorical use of them, ambiguous, and may be drawn in argument to make many senses, but there is only one sense of the law.

Prophecy is not an art, nor (when it is taken for prediction) a constant vocation, but an extraordinary and temporary employment from God, most often of good men, but sometimes also of the wicked.

For there is no good inclination that is not of the operation of God.

Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men's sins.

We are not to renounce our senses and experience, nor (that which is the undoubted Word of God) our natural Reason. For they are the talents which he hath put into our hands to negotiate, till the coming again of our blessed savior, and therefore not to be folded up in the napkin of an implicate faith, but employed in the purchase of justice, peace, and true religion. For though there be many things in God's Word above Reason--that is to say, which cannot by natural reason be either demonstrated or confuted--yet there is nothing contrary to it.

Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.

A private man has always the liberty (because thought is free) to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles, according as he shall see what benefits can accrue by men's belief, to those that pretend, or countenance them, and thereby conjecture whether they be miracles or lies.

From what cause the rite of baptism first proceeded is not expressed formally in the scripture, but it may be probably thought to be an imitation of the law of Moses concerning leprosy, wherein the leprous man was commanded to be kept out of the camp of Israel for a certain time, after which time being judged by the priest to be clean, he was admitted into the camp after a solemn washing. And this may therefore be a type of the washing in baptism, wherein such men as are cleansed of the leprosy of Sin by Faith, are received into the church with the solemnity of baptism.

Whosoever persuadeth by reasoning from principles written, maketh him to whom he speaketh judge, both of the meaning of those principles and also of the force of his inferences upon them.

The damage a man does to another, he may make amends for by restitution or recompense, but sin cannot be taken away by recompense, for that were to make the liberty to sin a thing vendible. But sins may be pardoned to the repentent either gratis or upon such penalty as God is pleased to accept.

There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.