nds, whereas perfect knowledge is required, and not defective.

CHAPTER VII.

Having proved that the Latin Commentary could not have been a capable
servant, I will tell how it could not have been an obedient one. He is
obedient who has the good disposition which is called obedience. True
obedience must have three things, without which it cannot be: it
should be sweet, and not bitter; entirely under control, and not
impulsive; with due measure, and not excessive; which three things it
was impossible for the Latin Commentary to have; and, therefore, it
was impossible for it to be obedient. That to the Latin it would have
been impossible, as is said, is evident by such an argument as this:
each thing which proceeds by an inverse order is laborious, and
consequently is bitter, and not sweet; even as to sleep by day and to
wake by night, and to go backwards and not forwards. For the subject
to command the sovereign, is to proceed in the inverse order; because
the direct order is, for the sovereign to command the subject; and
thus it is bitter, and not sweet; and because to the bitter command it
is impossible to give sweet obedience, it is impossible, when the
subject commands, for the obedience of the sovereign to be sweet.
Hence if the Latin is the sovereign of the Vulgar Tongue, as is shown
above by many reasons, and the Songs, which are in place of
commanders, are in the Vulgar Tongue, it is impossible for the
argument to be sweet. Then is obedience entirely commanded, and in no
way spontaneous, when that which the obedient man does, he would not
have done of his own will, either in whole or in part, without
commandment. And, therefore, if it might be commanded to me to carry
two long robes upon my back, and if without commandment I should carry
one, I say that my obedience is not entirely commanded, but is in part
spontaneous; and such would have been that of the Latin Commentary,
and consequently it would not have been obedience entirely commanded.
What such might have been appears by this, that the Latin, without the
command of this Lord, the Vernacular, would have expounded many parts
of his argument (and it does expound, as he who searches well the
books written in Latin may perceive), which the Vulgar Tongue does
nowhere.

Again, obedience is within bounds, and not excessive, when it goes to
the limit of the command, and no further; as Individual Nature is
obedient to Universal Nature when she makes thirt