Works in Verse and Prose Author:John Milton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Reafon of Church-government urg'd againft Prelaty. In Two Books. THE PREFACE. ) N the publiming of humane lawes, which for the moft part aime n... more »ot beyond the good of civill fociety, to fet them barely forth to the people without reafon or Preface, like a phyficall prefcript, or only with threatnings, as it were a lordly command, in the judgement of Plato was thought to be done neither generoufly nor wifely. His advice was, feeing that perfuafion certainly is a more winning, and more manlike way to keepe men in obedience then feare, that to fuch lawes as were of principall moment, there mould be us'd as an induction, fome well tem- per'd difcourfe, mewing how good, howgainfull,how happy it muft needs be to live according to honefty and juftice, which being utter'd with thofe native colours and graces of fpeech, as true eloquence the daughter of vertue can beft beftow upon her mothers praifes, would fo incite, and in a manner, charme the multitude into the love of that which is really good, as to imbrace it ever after, not of cuftome and awe, which moft men do, but of choice and purpofe,with true and conftant delight. But this practice we may learn, from a better and more ancient authority, then any heathen writer hath to give us, and indeed being a point of fo high wifdome and worth, how could it be but we mould find it in that book within whofe facred context all wifdome is infolded? Mofes therefore the only Lawgiver that we can believe to have beene vifibly taught of God, knowing how vaine it was to write lawes to men whofe hearts were not firft feafon'd with the knowledge of God and of his workes, began from the book of Genefis, as a prologue to his lawes; which Jofephus right well hath noted. That the nation of the Jewes, reading therein the univerfall goodneff...« less