bondage that, unawares to yourselves, you are captivated and
enslaved under.' At this the town of Mansoul began to prick up its
ears. And 'What is it? Pray what is it?' thought they. And he
said, 'I have somewhat to say to you concerning your King,
concerning his law, and also touching yourselves. Touching your
King, I know he is great and potent; but yet all that he hath said
to you is neither true nor yet for your advantage. 1. It is not
true, for that wherewith he hath hitherto awed you, shall not come
to pass, nor be fulfilled, though you do the thing that he hath
forbidden. But if there was danger, what a slavery is it to live
always in fear of the greatest of punishments, for doing so small
and trivial a thing as eating of a little fruit is. 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