properly the factors, we are
their discoverers; Another ordained them and made them, the great
Maker, who alone can Will and Do All--God.

There also are operations which our Reason considers and which lie in
the act of the Will, such as to offend and to rejoice; such as to
stand firm in the battle and to fly from it; such as to be chaste and
to be lewd; these are entirely subject to our will, and therefore we
are called from them good and evil, because such acts are entirely our
own; for so far as our will can obtain power, so far do our operations
extend. And since in all these voluntary operations there is some
equity to preserve and some iniquity to shun--which equity may be lost
through two causes, either through not knowing what it is, or through
not wishing to follow it--the written Reason, the Law, was invented,
both to point it out to us and to command its observance. Wherefore
Augustine says: "If men could know this, that is, Equity, and knowing
it would obey it, the written Reason, the Law, would not be needful."
And therefore it is written in the beginning of the old Digests or
Books of the Civil Law: "The written Reason is the Art of Goodness and
of Equity." To write this, to show forth and to enforce this, is the
business of that Official Post of which one speaks, that of the
Emperor, to whom, as has been said, in so far as our own operations
extend, we are subject, and no farther. For this reason in each Art
and in each trade the artificers and the scholars are and ought to be
subject to the chief and to the master of their trades and Art: beyond
their callings the subjection ceases, because the superiority ceases.
So that it is possible to speak of the Emperor in this manner, if we
will represent his office figuratively, and say that he may be the
rider of the Human Will, of which horse how it goes without its rider
through the field is evident enough, and especially in miserable
Italy, left without any means for its right government. And it is to
be considered that in proportion as a thing is more fit for the
Master's art, so much the greater is the subjection; for the cause
being multiplied, so is the effect multiplied. Wherefore it is to be
known that there are things which are such pure or simple Arts that
Nature is their instrument; even as rowing with an oar, where the Art
makes its instrument by impulsion, which is a natural movement; as in
the threshing of the corn, where the Art makes its instru