§. 136. Secondly, the legislative or supreme authority cannot assume to itself
a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense
justice and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing
laws,[3] and known authorised judges. For
the law of Nature being unwritten, and so nowhere to be found but in the minds
of men, they who, through passion or interest, shall miscite or misapply it,
cannot so easily be convinced of their mistake where there is no established
judge; and so it serves not as it aught, to determine the rights and fence the
properties of those that live under it, especially where every one is judge,
interpreter, and executioner of it too, and that in his own case; and he that
has right on his side, having ordinarily but his own single strength, hath not
force enough to defend himself from injuries or punish delinquents. To avoid
these inconveniencies which disorder men's properties in the state of Nature,
men unite into societies that they may have the united strength of the whole
society to secure and defend their properties, and may have standing rules to
bound it by which every one may know what is his. To this end it is that men
give up all their natural power to the society they enter into, and the
community put the legislative power into such hands as they think fit, with
this trust, that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace,
quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty as it was in the
state of Nature.
