Renouncing A Right What It Is Transferring Right What Obligation Duty Justice Right is layd aside, either by simply Renouncing it; or by Transferring it to another.  By Simply renouncing; when he cares not to whom the benefit thereof redoundeth.  By transferring; when he intendeth the benefit thereof to some certain person, or persons.  And when a man hath in either manner abandoned, or granted away his Right; then is he said to be obliged, or bound, not to hinder those, to whom such Right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it:  and that he Ought, and it his duty, not to make voyd that voluntary act of his own:  and that such hindrance is injustice, and injury, as being Sine Jure; the Right being before renounced, or transferred.  So that Injury, or Injustice, in the controversies of the world, is somewhat like to that, which in the disputations of Scholers is called Absurdity.  For as it is there called an Absurdity, to contradict what one maintained in the Beginning:  so in the world, it is called Injustice, and Injury, voluntarily to undo that, which from the beginning he had voluntarily done.  The way by which a man either simply Renounceth, or Transferreth his Right, is a Declaration, or Signification, by some voluntary and sufficient signe, or signes, that he doth so Renounce, or Transferre; or hath so Renounced, or Transferred the same, to him that accepteth it.  And these Signes are either Words onely, or Actions onely; or (as it happeneth most often) both Words and Actions.  And the same are the bonds, by which men are bound, and obliged:  Bonds, that have their strength, not from their own Nature, (for nothing is more easily broken then a mans word,) but from Feare of some evill consequence upon the rupture.

Not All Rights Are Alienable Whensoever a man Transferreth his Right, or Renounceth it; it is either in consideration of some Right reciprocally transferred to himselfe; or for some other good he hopeth for thereby.  For it is a voluntary act:  and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some Good To Himselfe.  And therefore there be some Rights, which no man can be understood by any words, or other signes, to have abandoned, or transferred.  As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himselfe.  The same may be sayd of Wounds, and Chayns, and Imprisonment; both because there is no benefit consequent to such patience; as there is to the patience of suffering another to be wounded, or imprisoned:  as also because a man cannot tell, when he seeth men proceed against him by violence, whether they intend his death or not.  And lastly the motive, and end for which this renouncing, and transferring or Right is introduced, is nothing else but the security of a mans person, in his life, and in the means of so preserving life, as not to be weary of it.  And therefore if a man by words, or other signes, seem to despoyle himselfe of the End, for which those signes were intended; he is not to be understood as if he meant it, or that it was his will; but that he was ignorant of how such words and actions were to be interpreted.