f
self-interest, and causes the waters of life and liberty to run
plentifully in and through the Creation, making the Earth one Store
House, and every man and woman to live in the Law of Righteousness
and Peace, members of one household."

In a subsequent chapter (chap. vi.) he returns to this subject, and
emphasises the differences of the views of the ethical-minded man and
the ordinary conventional materialist, in the following suggestive
passage:

"The man of the flesh judges it a righteous thing that some men who
are cloathed with the objects of the Earth, and so called rich men,
whether it be got by right or wrong, should be Magistrates to rule
over the poor; and that the poor should be servants, nay, rather
slaves, to the rich. But the spiritual man, which is Christ, doth
judge according to the light of equity and reason, that all mankind
ought to have a quiet subsistence and freedom to live upon Earth;
and that there should be no bondman nor beggar in all his holy
mountain."

For, he contends:

"Mankind was made to live in the freedom of the spirit, not under
the bondage of the flesh. For everyone was made to be a Lord over
the creation of the Earth, cattle, fish, fowl, grass, trees, not
anyone to be a bond-slave and a beggar under the Creation of his
own kind. That so everyone, living in freedom and love in the
strength of the Law of Righteousness in him, not under straits of
poverty, nor bondage of tyranny one to another, might all rejoice
together in righteousness, and so glorify their Maker. For surely
this must dishonor the Maker of all men, that some men should be
oppressing tyrants, imprisoning, whipping, hanging their
fellow-creatures, men, for those very things which those very men
themselves are guilty of. Let men's eyes be opened, and it appears
clear enough, that the punishers have and do break the Law of
Equity and Reason more or as much as those who are punished by
them."

But, he adds rejoicingly, just

"As the powers and wisdom of the flesh hath filled the Earth with
injustice, oppression, and complainings, by mowing the Earth into
the hands of a few covetous unrighteous men, who assume a lordship
over others, declaring themselves thereby to be men of the basest
spirits. Even so, when the spreading of wisdom and truth fill the