An Introduction to the Prose and Poetical Works of John Milton / Comprising All the Autobiographic Passages in His Works, the More Explicit Presentations of His Ideas of True Liberty.

by John Milton

—Tetrachordon.

'In every commonwealth, when it decays, corruption makes two main steps: first, when men cease to do according to the inward and uncompelled actions of virtue, caring only to live by the outward constraint of law, and turn this simplicity of real good into the craft of seeming so by law. To this hypocritical honesty was Rome declined in that age wherein Horace lived, and discovered it to Quinctius':

'Whom do we count a good man, whom but he

Who keeps the laws and statutes of the Senate?

Who judges in great suits and controversies?

Whose witness and opinion wins the cause?

But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood

Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.'

'The next declining is, when law becomes now too strait for the secular manners, and those too loose for the cincture of law. This brings in false and crooked interpretations to eke out law, and invents the subtle encroachments of obscure traditions hard to be disproved.'

—Tetrachordon.