He then tells them that _no feeling of Humanity_ must be allowed to prevent them from executing any law which the court declares to them, "whether the statute is a harsh one, is not for us to determine."[116] _A cruel law is to be enforced as vigorously as a humane one_; an _unjust law_ as a _just one_; a statute which aims to defeat the purpose of Law itself, just as readily as one which aims to secure the dearest rights of humanity. If the statute is notoriously wicked, as in the case supposed, then the Judge says: "It is to be observed that this statute [the fugitive slave bill] subjects no person to arrest who was not before liable to be seized and carried out of the State;" "Congress has enacted this law. _It is imperative, and it will be enforced._ Let no man mistake the mildness and forbearance with which the criminal code is habitually administered, [as in cases of engaging in the slave-trade] for weakness or timidity. _Resistance [to the fugitive slave bill] must make it sternly inflexible._" "As great efforts have been made to convince the public that the recent law [the fugitive slave bill] cannot be enforced with a good conscience, but may be conscientiously resisted ... I deem it proper to advert, briefly, to _the moral aspects_ of the subject." "The States without the constitution would be to each other foreign nations." "Those, therefore, who have the strongest convictions of the _immorality of the institution of slavery_, are not thereby authorized to conclude that the _provision for delivering up fugitive slaves is morally wrong_, [that is, if it be wrong to hold man in bondage, it is also not wrong,] or that our Fathers ... did not act wisely, justly, and humanely in acceding to the compacts of the Constitution." "Even those who go to the extreme of condemning the Constitution and the laws made under it, as _unjust and immoral_, cannot ... justify resistance. In their view, such laws are inconsistent with the justice and benevolence and against the will of the Supreme Lawgiver, and they emphatically ask, '_Which shall we obey, the law of man, or the Will of God?_' I answer, 'OBEY BOTH!' The _incompatibility_ which the question assumes [between _Right and Wrong, or Good and Evil, or God and the Devil_] _does not exist_! Unjust and oppressive laws _may indeed be passed_ by human governments. But if _Infinite and Inscrutable Wisdom permits political society_, having the power of human legislation, _to establish such laws, may not the same Infinite and Inscrutable Wisdom permit and require an individual_, who has no such power, _to obey them_?" [So "if Infinite and Inscrutable Wisdom permits" a Blacksmith "having the power" to forge steel and temper it, to make daggers, "may not the same Infinite and Inscrutable Wisdom permit and require the individual" carpenter or tailor, who has no such power, to use the dagger for the purpose intended!] "Conscience, indeed, is to be reverenced, and obeyed; but still we must remember