punished for this you lay to my charge, prove it against me.

2. Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him.

3. The king of Spain was outlawed in Westminster Hall, I being of counsel against him. A merchant had recovered costs against him in a suit, which because he could not get, we advised to have him outlawed for not appearing, and so he was. As soon as Gondimer heard that, he presently sent the money, by reason, if his master had been outlawed, he could not have the benefit of the law; which would have been very prejudicial, there being then many suits depending betwixt the king of Spain and our English merchants.

4. Every law is a contract between the king and the people, and therefore to be kept. An hundred men may owe me an hundred pounds, as well as any one man, and shall they not pay me because they are stronger than I? Object. Oh, but they lose all if they keep that law. Answ. Let them look to the making of their bargain. If I sell my lands, and when I have done, one comes and tells me I have nothing else to keep me. I, and m

wife, and children, must starve, if I part with my land. Must I not therefore let them have my land that have bought it and paid for it?

5. The parliament may declare law, as well as any other inferior court may, viz. the King's Bench. In that or this particular case the King's Bench will declare unto you what the law is, but that binds nobody whom the case concerns: so the highest court, the parliament may do; but not declare law, that is, make law that was never heard of before.

LAW OF NATURE.

I CANNOT fancy to myself what the law of nature means, but the law of God. How should I know I ought not to steal, I ought not to commit adultery, unless somebody had told me so? Surely it is because I have been told so. It is not because I think I ought not to do them, nor because you think I ought not; if so, our minds might change. Whence then comes the restraint? From a higher power; nothing else can bind. I cannot bind myself, for I may untie myself again; nor an equal cannot bind me, for we may untie one another. It must be a superior power, even God Almighty. If two of us make a bar

gain, why should either of us stand to it? What need you care what you say, or what need I care what I say? Certainly, because there is something about me that tells me fides est servanda; and if we after alter our minds, and make a new bargain, there is fides servanda there too.

LEARNING.

1. No man is the wiser for his learning: it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon, but wit and wisdom are born with a man.

2. Most men's learning is nothing but history duly taken up. If I quote Thomas Aquinas for some tenet, and believe it, because the schoolmen say so, that is but history. Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.

3. The jesuits and the lawyers of France, and the low countrymen, have engrossed all learning. The rest of the world make nothing but homilies.

4. It is observable, that in Athens, where the arts flourished, they were governed by a democracy. Learning made them think them

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selves as wise as any body, and they would govern as well as others; and they spake as it were by way of contempt, that in the east and in the north they had kings, and why? Because the most part of them followed their business, and if some one man had made himself wiser than the rest, he governed them, and they willingly submitted themselves to him. Aristotle makes the observation. And as in Athens the philosophers made the people knowing, and therefore they thought themselves wise enough to govern; so does preaching with us, and that makes us affect a democracy. For upon these two grounds we all would be governors, either because we think ourselves as wise as the best, or because we think ourselves the elect, and have the spirit, and the rest a company of reprobates that belong to the devil.

LECTURERS.

1. LECTURERS do in a parish church what the friars did heretofore, get away not only the affections, but the bounty, that should be bestowed upon the minister.

2. Lecturers get a great deal of money,

because they preach the people tame, as a man watches a hawk, and then they do what they list with them.

3. The lectures in Blackfriars, performed by officers of the army, tradesmen, and ministers, is as if a great lord should make a feast, and he would have his cook dress one dish, and his coachman another, his porter a third, &c.

LIBELS.

THOUGH Some make slight of libels, yet you may see by them how the wind sits: as take a straw and throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well, as ballads and libels.

LITURGY.

1. THERE is no church without a liturgy, nor indeed can there be conveniently, as there is no school without a grammar. One scholar may be taught otherwise upon the stock of his acumen, but not a whole school. One or two that are piously disposed, may serve them