University of Virginia Library

10.

"Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!"-such precepts were once called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off one's shoes.

But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in the world than such holy precepts?

Is there not even in all life-robbing and slaying? And for such precepts to be called holy, was not truth itself thereby-slain?

-Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and dissuaded from life?-O my brethren, break up, break up for me the old tables!