vitious

Yet somtimes Nations will decline so low From vertue, which is reason, that no wrong, But Justice, and some fatal curse annext Deprives them of thir outward libertie, Thir inward lost: Witness th' irreverent Son Of him who built the Ark, who for the shame Don to his Father, heard this heavie curse, SERVANT OF SERVANTS, on his vitious Race.

The intent and the Act must both concur to constitute the crime." (45) William Blackstone's eighteenth century Commentaries on the Laws of England observed that "as a vitious will without a vitious act is no civil crime, so on the other hand, an unwarrantable act without a vitious will is no crime at all." (46)

Authorities in Massachusetts Bay Colony were somewhat constrained by the 1641 Body of Liberties, which stated "For bodilie punishments we allow amongst us none that are inhumane, Barbarous or cruell." (32) By law, commoners could not be beaten "above 40 stripes" and a true gentleman not at all "unless his crime be very shamefull, and his course of life vitious and profligate." (33) A man could not be "forced by Torture to confesse any Crime against himself" and when tortured to identify other conspirators, "he may be tortured, yet not with such Tortures as be Barbarous and inhumane." (34) Despite such guarantees, the laws were still intimidating.

person, more then the restraint of ten vitious." (31) For Milton,

thrive"--summons a similar linguistic moment: this kind of usage fell out of fashion in the eighteenth century about as quickly as it had arisen in the sixteenth, considered by Samuel Johnson "a vitious mode of speech." (41) The clue to the purpose of all this archaism lies in the pronouns.

free will," (26) and that "an unwarrantable act without a vitious will is no crime at all." (27) This view of the criminal law was universally held for more than five hundred years, dating back at least as far as medieval jurist Henry de Bracton.

G., for one, decides that "many vitious Persons when they know not how any longer to be idle, for variety of Idlenesse goe to see Plaies" (8) As he traces the roots of English drama, Glynne Wickham finds that in early modern England the professional player was regarded by many "as living by means of fraudulent pretense instead of by honest toil," and as such, found himself the target of "sporadic outbursts of hostility grounded in envy for a way of life that seemed to offer ...

(61.) "Therefore when our olde men praise the Courtes of times past because there were not in them so vitious men, as some that are in oures, they doe not knowe that there were not also in them so vertuous men, as some that are in oures ...

Both Noah and Deucalion are celebrated for their Justice and Religion: Noah was commanded to build an Arke by God; & Deucalion advised thereunto by Prometheus, which is, the divine Providence: both saved for their vertue, the one on mount Ararat, and the other on Parnassus, while the vitious are swallowed by their owne impieties.

Saying "Now for the Men" (who are "As vile, as vain, as vitious in their kind"), Gould lays into what is clearly meant to be a picture of Thomas Betterton, though no name is given.

Too many modern couples were willing "to gratify their vitious Part in the formality of a legal Appointment," he wrote, without "one Ounce of Affection, not a Grain of original, chast, and rivetted Love, the Glory of a Christian Matrimony, and the essential Happiness of Life..." (105-06).