not cities, market-places and houses, sea and land, and the whole world have been filled with un num bered pollutions and murders? Everyone sees it. For if, when there are laws, and fear, and threaten ing, our evil dispositions are hardly checked; were even this security taken away, what is there to pre vent men's choosing vice ? and what degree of mis chief would not then come revelling upon the whole of human life ?

u The rather, since cruelty lies not only in allow ing the bad to do what they will, but in another thing too quite as much, to overlook, and leave uncared for, him who hath done no wrong, but who is without cause or reason suffering ill. For tell me; were any one to gather together wicked men from all quarters, and arm them with swords, and bid them go about the whole city, and massacre all that came in their way, could there be anything more like a wild beast than he ? And what if some others should bind, and confine with the utmost strictness, those whom that man had armed, and should snatch from those lawless hands them who were on the point of being butchered; could any thing be greater humanity than this ? "

Chiysostom does not say what would be the esti mate of these others in the opinion of the wicked. And what if these others were themselves wicked and cast the innocent into prison? Chrysostorn continues:

" Now then, I bid thee transfer these examples to the Law likewise; for He that commands to pluck