[118] {250}["If you say that God permitted sin to
manifest
His wisdom,
which shines the more brightly by the disorders which the wickedness of
men produces every day, than it would have done in a state of innocence,
it may be answered that this is to compare the Deity to a father who
should suffer his children to break their legs on purpose to show to all
the city his great art in setting their broken bones; or to a king who
should suffer seditions and factions to increase through all his
kingdom, that he might purchase the glory of quelling them.
Byron
"--Letter to Moore,
September 19, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 368.]
[115] {243}[Compare the "jingle between king and kine," in
_Sardanapalus_, act v. sc. I, lines 483, 484. It is hard to say whether
Byron inserted and then omitted to erase these blemishes from negligence
and indifference, or whether he regarded them as permissible or even
felicitous.]
[116] ["_Let_ He." There is no doubt that Byron wrote, or that he should
have written, "Let Him."]
[ch] {246} _And being of all things the sole thing sure_.--[MS. M.]
[ci] _Which seems like water and which I should deem_.--[MS. M.]
[117] {247}[Lucifer's candour and disinterested advice are "after" and
in the manner of Mephistopheles.
]
[118] {250}["If you say that God permitted sin to
manifest
His wisdom,
which shines the more brightly by the disorders which the wickedness of
men produces every day, than it would have done in a state of innocence,
it may be answered that this is to compare the Deity to a father who
should suffer his children to break their legs on purpose to show to all
the city his great art in setting their broken bones; or to a king who
should suffer seditions and factions to increase through all his
kingdom, that he might purchase the glory of quelling them.
... This is
that doctrine of a Father of the Church who said, 'Felix culpa quae
talem Redemptorem meruit!'"--Bayle's _Dictionary_, 1737, art.
"Paulicians," note B, 25, iv. 515.]
[119] {251}[Lucifer does not infect Cain with his cynical theories as to
the origin and endurance of love. For the antidote, compare Wordsworth's
sonnet "To a Painter" (No. II), written in 1841--
"Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve,
And the old day was welcome as the young,
As welcome, and as beautiful--in sooth
More beautiful, as being a thing more holy," etc.
_Works_, 1889, p. 772.]
[cj] {252} _Which my sire shrinks from--Death_----.--[MS. erased.
