Page:The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Milton (1644).djvu/73

 The political law, since it cannot regulate vice, is to restrain it, by using all means to root it out: but if it suffer the weed to grow up to any pleasurable or contented height upon what pretext soever, it fastens the root, it prunes and dresses vice, as if it were a good plant. Let no man doubt therfore to affirm that it is not so hurtfull or dishonourable to a Common wealth, nor so much to the hardning of hearts, when those worse faults pretended to be fear'd, are committed by who so dares under strict and executed penalty as when those lesse faults tolerated for fear of greater, harden their faces, not their hearts only, under the protection of publick authority. For what lesse indignity were this, then as if Justice her self, the Queen of vertues, descending from her scepter'd royalty, instead of conquering should compound and treat with sin her eternal adversary and rebel, upon ignoble terms. Or as if the judicial Law were like that untrusty steward in the Gospel and instead of calling in the debts of his moral master, should give out subtle and sly acquittances to keep him self from begging. Or let us person him like some wretched itinerary Judge, who to gratifie his delinquents before him, would let them basely break his head, lest they should pull him from the bench, and throw him over the barre. Unlesse we had rather think both moral and judicial full of malice and deadly purpose conspir'd to let the dettor Israelite the seed of Abraham run on upon a banckrout score, flatter'd with insufficient and insnaring discharges, that so he might be halhal'd to a more cruel forfeit for all the indulgent arrears which those judicial acquitments had ingaged him in. No no, this cannot be, that the Law whose integrity and faithfulnesse is next to God, should be either the shamelesse broker of our impurities, or the intended instrument of our destruction. The method of holy correction such as became the Common wealth of Israel, is not to bribe sin with sin, to capitulate and hire out one crime with another: but with more noble and gracefull severity then Popilius the Roman legat us'd with Antiochus, to limit and level out the direct way from vice to vertu, with straitest and exactest lines on either side, not winding, or indenting so much as to the right hand of fair pretences. Violence indeed and insurrection may force the Law to suffer what it cannot mend: but to write a decree in allowance of sin, as soon can the hand of Justice rot off. Let this be ever concluded as a truth that will outlive the faith of those that seek to bear it down.

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