Good and evil we know in the field of this World grow up together almost
inseparable; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with
the knowledge of evil and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be
discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed on Psyche as an
incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder were not more intermixed
. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good
and evil as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And
perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil
, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man
now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbeare
, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice
with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish
, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian
. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed
, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but sinks out of the race
, where that immotal garland is tobe run for not without dust and heat
. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much
rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary
. For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous
not only to vital but to rational faculties and those in the acutest and
the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight
and constitution the body is, so when the cheerfulness of the people is
so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own
freedom and safety but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest
points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated
, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting of fthe old and wrinkled skin
of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the
glorious ways of Truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great
and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble
and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and
shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an Eagle mewing her
mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam
, purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of
heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds
, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what
she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects
and schisms.