where he endeavours like a casuist to give rules for our conduct in many nice cases, in which it is difficult to determine where|abouts the point of propriety may lie. It appears too, from many passages in the same book, that several other philosophers had at|tempted something of the same kind before him. Neither he nor they, however, ap|pear to have aimed at giving a compleat system of this sort, but only meant to show how situations may occur, in which it is doubtful, whether the highest propriety of conduct consists in observing or in receeding from what, in ordinary cases, are the rules of duty.
Every system of positive law may be regarded as a more or less imperfect attempt towards a system of natural jurisprudence, or towards an enumeration of the particular rules of justice. As the violation of justice is what men will never submit to from one another, the publick magistrate is under a necessity of employing the power of the commonwealth to enforce the practice of this virtue. With|out this precaution, civil society would be|come a scene of bloodshed and disorder, every man revenging himself at his own hand whenever he fancied he was injured.
