Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?

The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is our own. The wisdom of God created understanding, fit and proportionable to truth, the object and end of it, as the eye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glitterings, what is that to truth?

What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support, That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. 1 Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.