4. Every Law is a Contract between the Law King and the People, and therefore to be kept. A Hundred Men may owe me a Hundred Pounds, as well as any one Man; and shall they not pay me because they are stronger than I? Objection. Oh! but they lose all if they keep that Law. Answer. 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 my 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 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 no body but 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.

I

LXXVIII

Law of Nature

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 some body had told me so? Surely 'tis because I have been told so! 'Tis not because I think

Law of I ought not to do them, nor because you nink Nature 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, even God Almighty. If two of us make a Bargain, 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's Fides servanda there too.

Νο

LXXIX

Learning

O 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 dully taken up. If I quote Thomas Aquinas for some Tenet, and believe it, because the School-Men 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-Country-men, have engrossed all Learning. The rest of the World make nothing but Homilies.

4. 'Tis observable, that in Athens where the Learning Arts flourished, they were governed by a Democracy: Learning made them think themselves 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.

LXXX

Lecturers

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.

F

Lecturers

3. The Lectures in Black-Friars, 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.

THO

LXXXI

Libels

HOUGH 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.

LXXXII

Liturgy

HERE is no Church without a Liturgy, nor

THERE is an 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 themselves their own way, but hardly a whole Nation.

2. To know what was generally believed in all Ages, the way is to consult the Liturgies,

not any private Man's writing. As if you would Liturgy know how the Church of England serves God, go to the Common-Prayer Book, consult not this or that Man. Besides, Liturgies never Compliment, nor use high Expressions. The Fathers oft-times speak Oratoriously.

THE

LXXXIII

Lords in the Parliament

HE Lords giving Protections is a scorn upon them. A Protection means nothing actively, but passively; he that is a Servant to a Parliament Man is thereby protected. What a scorn it is to a person of Honour, to put his Hand to two Lies at once, that such a man is my Servant, and employed by me, when haply he never saw the man in his Life, nor before never heard of him.

To

2. The Lords protesting is Foolish protest is properly to save to a man's self some Right; but to protest, as the Lords protest, when they their selves are involved, 'tis no more than if I should go into Smithfield, and sell my Horse, and take the money, and yet when I have your money, and you my Horse, I should protest this Horse is mine, because I love the Horse, or I do not know why I do protest, because my Opinion is contrary to the rest. Ridiculous! When they say the Bishops did anciently protest, it was only dissenting, and that in the case of the Pope.