that to be true fortitude which offers not violence to their
laws, but that which resists their lusts. And besides that, he
said it was not a reasonable thing, when they had lived soberly
in the wilderness, to act madly now when they were in prosperity;
and that they ought not to lose, now they have abundance, what
they had gained when they had little: - and so did he endeavor,
by saying this, to correct the young inert, and to bring them to
repentance for what they had done.

11. But Zimri arose up after him, and said, "Yes, indeed, Moses,
thou art at liberty to make use of such laws as thou art so fond
of, and hast, by accustoming thyself to them, made them firm;
otherwise, if things had not been thus, thou hadst often been
punished before now, and hadst known that the Hebrews are not
easily put upon; but thou shalt not have me one of thy followers
in thy tyrannical commands, for thou dost nothing else hitherto,
but, under pretense of laws, and of God, wickedly impose on us
slavery, and gain dominion to thyself, while thou deprivest us of
the sweetness of life, which consists in acting according to our
own wills, and is the right of free-men, and of those that have
no lord over them. Nay, indeed, this man is harder upon the
Hebrews then were the Egyptians themselves, as pretending to
punish, according to his laws, every one's acting what is most
agreeable to himself; but thou thyself better deservest to suffer
punishment, who presumest to abolish what every one acknowledges
to be what is good for him, and aimest to make thy single opinion
to have more force than that of all the rest; and what I now do,
and think to be right, I shall not hereafter deny to be according
to my own sentiments. I have married, as thou sayest rightly, a
strange woman, and thou hearest what I do from myself as from one