[1391] The deduction and application of the foregoing principles, with the use or abuse of civil and ecclesiastical policy, was intended for the subject of the third book.—Pope.
[1392] "Consent" is now limited to mental consent, and the word is obsolete in the sense of "consent of things."
[1393] From Denham's Cooper's Hill:
Wisely she knew the harmony of things,
As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.—Hurd.
[1394] "Where the small and weak" are "made to serve, not suffer," "the great and mighty to strengthen, not invade."
[1395] This couplet is at variance with ver. 289-294, where a mixed form of government is lauded for its superiority.
[1396] Cowley's verses on the death of Crashaw:
His path, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.
The position is demonstrably absurd in both poets. All conduct originates in principles. Where the principles, therefore, are not strictly pure, and accurately true, the conduct must deviate from the line of perfect rectitude.—Wakefield.
"I prefer a bad action to a bad principle," says Rousseau, somewhere, and Rousseau was right. A bad action may remain isolated; a bad principle is always prolific, because, after all, it is the mind which governs, and man acts according to his thoughts much oftener than he himself imagines.—Guizot.