[49] Now, other legislators are divided into those who set out by ordering what should or should not be done, and laying down penalties for disobedience, and those who, thinking themselves superior, did not begin with this, but first founded and established their state as they conceived it, and then, by framing laws, attached to it the constitution which they thought most agreeable and suitable to the form in which they had founded it.
[50] But Moses, thinking that the former course, namely issuing orders without words of exhortation, as though to slaves instead of free men, savoured of tyranny and despotism, as indeed it did, and that the second, though aptly conceived, was evidently not entirely satisfactory in the judgement of all, took a different line in both departments.
[51] In his commands and prohibitions he suggests and admonishes rather than commands, and the very numerous and necessary instructions which he essays to give are accompanied by forewords and after-words, in order to exhort rather than to enforce. Again, he considered that to begin his writings with the foundation of a man-made city was below the dignity of the laws, and, surveying the greatness and beauty of the whole code with the accurate discernment of his mind’s eye, and thinking it too good and godlike to be confined within any earthly walls, he inserted the story of the genesis of the “Great City,” holding that the laws were the most faithful picture of the world-polity.