Church held an Opinion that the Angels fell in Women Love with Women; an Opinion grounded upon that in Genesis vi., The Sons of God saw the Daughters of Men that they were fair. This Fancy St Paul discreetly catches, and uses it as an Argument to persuade them to modesty.

2. The Grant of a Place is not good by the Canon Law, before a Man be dead: upon this ground, that some Mischief might be plotted against him in present possession, by poisoning or some other way. Upon the same reason a Contract made with a woman, during her Husband's Life, was not valid.

3. Men are not troubled to hear a Man dispraised, because they know, though he be naught, there's worth in others; but Women are mightily troubled to hear any of them spoken against, as if the Sex itself were guilty of some Unworthiness.

4. Women and Princes must both trust some body; and they are Happy or Unhappy according to the desert of those under whose hands they fall. If a Man knows how to manage the Favour of a Lady, her Honour is safe; and so is a Prince's.

CLIV

Year

'TW

WAS the Manner of the Jews (if the Year did not fall out right, but that it was dirty for the People to come up to Jerusalem, at the Passover, or that their Corn was not ripe

Year for their first-Fruits,) to intercalate a Month, and so to have, as it were, two Februaries, thrusting up the Year still higher, March into April's place, April into May's place, &c. Whereupon it is impossible for us to know when our Saviour was born, or when he died.

2. The Year is either the Year of the Moon, or the Year of the Sun; there's not above eleven Days' difference. Our moveable Feasts are according to the Year of the Moon; else they should be fixed.

3. Though they reckon ten Days sooner beyond Sea, yet it does not follow their Spring is sooner than our's: we keep the same time in natural things, and their ten Days sooner, and our ten Days later in those things, mean the self same time; just as twelve Sous in French, are ten Pence in English.

4. The lengthening of Days is not suddenly perceived till they are grown a pretty deal longer; because the Sun, though it be in a Circle, yet it seems for a while to go in a right Line. For take a Segment of a great Circle especially, and you shall doubt whether it be straight or no. But when the Sun is got past that Line, then you presently perceive the Days lengthened. Thus it is in the Winter and Summer Solstice; which is indeed the true Reason of them.

5. The Eclipse of the Sun is, when it is new Moon; the Eclipse of the Moon, when 'tis full. They say Dionysius was converted by the Eclipse that happened at our Saviour's Death, because it was neither of these, and so could not be natural.

ONE would wonder Christ should whip the

Buyers and Sellers out of the Temple,
and noboby offer to resist him, considering what
Opinion they had of him.
But the reason was,

they had a Law, that whosoever did profane
Sanctitatem Dei, aut Templi, the Holiness of
God or the Temple, before ten Persons, 'twas
lawful for any of them to kill him, or to do any
thing this side killing him, as whipping him, or
the like. And hence it was, that when one
struck our Saviour before the Judge, where it
was not lawful to strike (as it is not with us at
this Day), he only replies; If I have spoken
Evil, bear Witness of the Evil; but if Well,
why smitest thou me? He says nothing against
their smiting him, in case he had been guilty of
speaking Evil, that is Blasphemy; and they could
have proved it against him. They that put this
Law into execution were called Zealots; but
afterwards they committed
many Villainies.

FINIS

L

“The Chief of Learned Men reputed in this land.”

MILTON.

"There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer."

COLERIDGE.

"If Learning could have kept a man alive, this our brother had not died."

RICHARD JOHNSON (Master of the Temple).

THE

Bibliographical Note

HE origin of "the Table-Talk" is indicated in the dedicatory letter which bears the signature of Selden's amanuensis, the Reverend Richard Milward, who died in 1680, surviving the great master sixteen years. Milward "faithfully committed to writing some of those excellent things that usually fell from him," and there can be little doubt that he has preserved for us in "the Table-Talk" many of Selden's golden sayings thrown off in casual conversation. Lord Clarendon, Selden's friend, has left it on record (in his Life), that "in his conversation he was the most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and of presenting them to the understanding, of any man that hath been known." Milward's statement that he "had the opportunity to hear his discourse twenty years together," and other internal evidence, enable us to fix 1634-1654 as the period over which these discourses range: the recorder himself is careful to ask the reader "to distinguish times." The collection was probably arranged and put together soon after Selden's death in 1654 (Mr Justice Hale ceased to be "one of the judges of the Common Pleas " in 1658, and he is so described in Milward's letter).

The printing of the book was long delayed: the editio princeps appeared in 1689. Its text, derived from a rather faulty MS., is marred by many errors due to carelessness on the part of the printers and those responsible for its publication. Three MSS. of "the Table-Talk" are to be found in the British Museum:(i) Harleian, 690, dated circa 1670; (ii) Sloane, 2513, somewhat later; (iii) Harleian, 1315, for which the posterior limit of date can be fixed by the following inscription written by Harley :·:—" This book was given in 168[?] by Charles erle of Dorset and Middlesex to a bookseller