hanged; and he of the Lacedaemonians employed his life, to obtain from
his citizens a faithful promise, that none of his laws should be
violated. The Ephorus who so rudely cut the two strings that Phrynis
had added to music, never stood to examine whether that addition
made better harmony, or that by its means the instrument was more full
and complete; it was enough for him to condemn the invention, that
it was a novelty, and an alteration of the old fashion. Which also
is the meaning of the old rusty sword carried before the magistracy of
Marseilles.

    For my own part, I have a great aversion from novelty, what face
or what pretense soever it may carry along with it, and have reason,
having been an eyewitness of the great evils it has produced. For
those for which for so many years have lain so heavy upon us, it is
not wholly accountable; but one may say, with color enough, that it
has accidentally produced and begotten the mischiefs and ruin that
have since happened, both without and against it; it, principally,
we are to accuse for these disorders.

              "Heu! patior telis vulnera facta meis."

    They who give the first shock to a state, are almost naturally the
first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are
seldom enjoyed by him who was the first motor; he beats and disturbs
the water for another's net. The unity and contexture of this
monarchy, of this grand edifice, having been ripped and torn in her
old age, by this thing called innovation, has since laid open a
rent, and given sufficient admittance to such injuries: the royal
majesty with greater difficulty declines from the summit to the
middle, then it falls and tumbles headlong from the middle to the
bottom. But if the inventors do the greater mischief, the imitators
are more vicious, to follow examples of which they have felt and
punished both the horror and the offense. And if there can be any
degree of honor in ill-doing, these last must yield to the others
the glory of contriving, and the courage of making the sorts of new
disorders easily draw, from this primitive and ever-flowing
fountain, examples and precedents to trouble and discompose our
government; we read in our very laws, made for the remedy of this
first evil, the beginning and pretenses of all sorts of wicked
enterprises; and that befals us, which Thucydides said of the civil
wars of his time, that, in favor of public vices, they gave them new
and more plausible names for their excuse, sweetening and disguising
their true titles; which must be done, forsooth, to reform our
conscience and belief: "honesta oratio est;" but the best pretence for
innovation is of very dangerous consequence: "adeo nihil motum ex
antiquo probabile est." And freely to speak my thoughts, it argues a
strange self-love and great presumption to be so fond of one's own
opinions, that a public peace must be overthrown to establish them,
and to introduce so many inevitable mischiefs, and so dreadful a
corruption of manners, as a civil war and the mutations of state
consequent to it, always bring in their train, and to introduce
them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels of one's own
country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so many certain
and knowing vices against errors that are only contested and
disputable? And are there any worse sorts of vices than those
committed against a man's own conscience, and the natural light of his
own reason? The senate, upon the dispute between it and the people
about the administration of their religion, was bold enough to
return this evasion for current pay: "Ad deos id magis, quam ad se,
pertinere: ipsos visuros, ne sacra sua polluantur;" according to
what the oracle answered to those of Delphos who, fearing to be
invaded by the Persians, in the Median war, inquired of Apollo, how
they should dispose of the holy treasure of his temple; whether they
should hide, or remove it to some other place? He returned them
answer, that they should stir nothing from thence, and only take
care of themselves, for he was sufficient to look to what belonged
to him.

    The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility and
justice: but none more manifest than the severe injunction it lays
indifferently on all to yield absolute obedience to the civil
magistrate, and to maintain and defend the laws. Of which, what a
wonderful example has the divine wisdom left us, that, to establish
the salvation of mankind, and to conduct His glorious victory over
death and sin, would do it after no other way, but at the mercy of our
ordinary forms of justice, subjecting the progress and issue of so
high and so salutiferous an effect, to the blindness and injustice
of our customs and observances; sacrificing the innocent blood of so
many of His elect, and so long a loss of so many years, to the
maturing of this inestimable fruit? There is a vast difference between
the case of one who follows the forms and laws of his country, and
of another who will undertake to regulate and change them; of whom the
first pleads simplicity, obedience, and example for his excuse, who,
whatever he shall do, it cannot be imputed to malice; 'tis at the
worst but misfortune: "Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis
monumentis testata consignataque antiquisas?" besides what Isocrates
says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation than excess: the
other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever shall take
upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging, and
should look well about him, and make it his business to discern
clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he
is about to introduce.

    This so vulgar consideration, is that which settled me in my
station, and kept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth
under the rein, so as not to burden my shoulders with so great a
weight, as to render myself responsible for a science of that
importance, and in this to dare what in my better and more mature
judgment I durst not do in the most easy and indifferent things I
had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity of judging is of no