one among you[1] we are as so many tomtits before an eagle.
By one word, one stroke of his pen, he can crush us, and he has truly crushed and annihilated us. What millions of men he has oppressed! I said but now, that, thanks to the government, idleness would flourish and increase everywhere: that labor and bread would be scorned and debased. It is done. You see now the truth of my predictions, and the exactness of my words.
XXXIX.
The blood and the tears of men have attested the truth of all the laws, and all the commandments of the Old and the New Testament. But in favor of the primitive commandment, which is the chief of all the others, and of love to our neighbor, no one has shed one tear or one drop of blood: no one has borne witness to its truth. This is why it has been reputed as false; this is the reason that it has been unknown in the universe, and that it has now been angrily rejected. Did Jesus Christ affirm it by his death? No, he said in the Gospel: "Behold the fowls of the air, etc." We see 'Christ did not give precedence to the law of labor, because from his infancy he saw in it little virtue, and considered it to be a great misfortune.
XL.
We see from the preceding articles that Heaven has designed that I should bear witness
- ↑ An evident allusion to the Czar. It is to be noticed that Bondareff often speaks of the Czar without openly naming him.
