ery place, should be
left untouched by the hands of the soldiers, by reason they had not
received the signal of pillage.

But is there any disease in a government that it is worth while to physic
with such a mortal drug?--[i.e. as civil war.]--No, said Favonius, not
even the tyrannical usurpation of a Commonwealth. Plato, likewise, will
not consent that a man should violate the peace of his country in order
to cure it, and by no means approves of a reformation that disturbs and
hazards all, and that is to be purchased at the price of the citizens'
blood and ruin; determining it to be the duty of a good patriot in such a
case to let it alone, and only to pray to God for his extraordinary
assistance: and he seems to be angry with his great friend Dion, for
having proceeded somewhat after another manner. I was a Platonist in
this point before I knew there had ever been such a man as Plato in the
world. And if this person ought absolutely to be rejected from our
society (he who by the sincerity of his conscience merited from the
divine favour to penetrate so far into the Christian light, through the
universal darkness wherein the world was involved in his time), I do not
think it becomes us to suffer ourselves to be instructed by a heathen,
how great an impiety it is not to expect from God any relief simply his
own and without our co-operation. I often doubt, whether amongst so many
men as meddle in such affairs, there is not to be found some one of so
weak understanding as to have been really persuaded that he went towards
reformation by the worst of deformations; and advanced towards salvation
by the most express causes that we have of most assured damnation; that
by overthrowing government, the magistracy, and the laws, in whose
protection God has placed him, by dismembering his good mother, and
giving her limbs to be mangled by her old enemies, filling fraternal
hearts with parricidal hatreds, calling devils and furies to his aid, he
can assist the most holy sweetness and justice of the divine law.
Ambition, avarice, cruelty, and revenge have not sufficient natural
impetuosity of their own; let us bait them with the glorious titles of
justice and devotion. There cannot a worse state of things be imagined
than where wickedness comes to be legitimate, and assumes, with the
magistrates' permission, the cloak of virtue:

"Nihil in speciem fallacius, quam prava religio,
ubi deorum numen prxtenditur