mmutable law which is perfect and
eternal as God Himself, which proceeds from His nature, and reigns over
heaven and earth and over all the nations.

The great question is to discover, not what governments prescribe, but
what they ought to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the
conscience of mankind. Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian,
neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by
birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth
which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of
God. The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the
voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our
thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we
do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the
heavenly spirit within.

What the teaching of that divine voice is, the philosophers who had
imbibed the sublime ethics of the Porch went on to expound: It is not
enough to act up to the written law, or to give all men their due; we
ought to give them more than their due, to be generous and beneficent,
to devote ourselves for the good of others, seeking our reward in
self-denial and sacrifice, acting from the motive of sympathy and not of
personal advantage. Therefore we must treat others as we wish to be
treated by them, and must persist until death in doing good to our
enemies, regardless of unworthiness and ingratitude. For we must be at
war with evil, but at peace with men, and it is better to suffer than to
commit injustice. True freedom, says the most eloquent of the Stoics,
consists in obeying God. A State governed by such principles as these
would have been free far beyond the measure of Greek or Roman freedom;
for they open a door to religious toleration, and close it against
slavery. Neither conquest nor purchase, said Zeno, can make one man the
property of another.

These doctrines were adopted and applied by the great jurists of the
Empire. The law of nature, they said, is superior to the written law,
and slavery contradicts the law of nature. Men have no right to do what
they please with their own, or to make profit out of another's loss.
Such is the political wisdom of the ancients, touching the foundations
of liberty, as we find it in its highest development, in Cicero, and
Seneca, and Philo, a Jew of Alexandria. Their writings impress upon us
the greatness of the w