2. Touching
his laws, this I say further, they are both unreasonable,
intricate, and intolerable. Unreasonable, as was hinted before;
for that the punishment is not proportioned to the offence: there
is great difference and disproportion between the life and an
apple; yet the one must go for the other by the law of your
Shaddai. But it is also intricate, in that he saith, first, you
may eat of all; and yet after forbids the eating of one. And then,
in the last place, it must needs be intolerable, forasmuch as that
fruit which you are forbidden to eat of (if you are forbidden any)
is that, and that alone, which is able, by your eating, to minister
to you a good as yet unknown by you. This is manifest by the very
name of the tree; it is called the "tree of knowledge of good and
evil;" and have you that knowledge as yet? No, no; nor can you
conceive how good, how pleasant, and how much to be desired to make
one wise it is, so long as you stand by your King's commandment.
Why should you be holden in ignorance and blindness? Why should
you not be enlarged in knowledge and understanding? And now, O ye
inhabitants of the famous town of Mansoul, to speak more
particularly to yourselves you are not a free people! You are kept
both in bondage and slavery, and that by a grievous threat; no
reason being annexed but, "So I will have it; so it shall be.
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