And if, bringing down our ideas of it from complicated objects to simple
lines and colors, we analyze and regard them carefully, I think we shall
be able to trace them to an under-current of constantly agreeable
feeling, excited by the appearance in material things of a
self-restrained liberty, that is to say, by the image of that acting of
God with regard to all his creation, wherein, though free to operate in
whatever arbitrary, sudden, violent, or inconstant ways he will, he yet,
if we may reverently so speak, restrains in himself this his omnipotent
liberty, and works always in consistent modes, called by us laws. And
this restraint or moderation, according to the words of Hooker, ("that
which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the
form and measure of working, the same we term a law,") is in the Deity
not restraint, such as it is said of creatures, but, as again says
Hooker, "the very being of God is a law to his working," so that every
appearance of painfulness or want of power and freedom in material
things is wrong and ugly; for the right restraint, the image of Divine
operation, is both in them, and in men, a willing and not painful
stopping short of the utmost degree to which their power might reach,
and the appearance of fettering or confinement is the cause of ugliness
in the one, as the slightest painfulness or effort in restraint is a
sign of sin in the other.
Sec. 6. It is the girdle of beauty.
Sec. 7. How found in natural curves and colors.
Sec. 8. How difficult of attainment, yet essential to all good.
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