PREFACE. 139 



good, I have reduced them to a true application, limiting 

 and defining their bounds, that they may not be read upon 

 at large, but restrained to point of difference ; for as, both in 

 the law and other sciences, the handling of questions by 

 common-place, without aim or application, is the weakest ; 

 so yet, nevertheless, many common principles and gene 

 ralities are not to be contemned, if they be well derived and 

 reduced into particulars, and their limits and exclusions 

 duly assigned ; for there be two contrary faults and extre 

 mities in the debating and sifting out of the law, which may 

 be best noted in two several manner of arguments. Some 

 argue upon general grounds, and come not near the point 

 in question: others, without laying any foundation of a 

 ground or difference, do loosely put cases, which, though 

 they go near the point, yet, being put so scattered, prove 

 not, but rather serve to make the law appear more doubtful 

 than to make it more plain. 



Secondly, whereas some of these rules have a concur 

 rence with the civil Roman law, and some others a diversity, 

 and many times an opposition, such grounds which are 

 common to our law and theirs, I have not affected to dis 

 guise into other words than the civilians use, to the end 

 they might seem invented by me, and not borrowed or 

 translated from them : no, but I took hold of it as a matter 

 of great authority and majesty, to see and consider the con 

 cordance between the laws penned, and as it were dictated 

 verbatim, by the same reason. On the other side, the 

 diversities between the civil Roman rules of law and ours, 

 happening either when there is such an indifferency of 

 reason so equally balanced, as the one law embraceth one 

 course, and the other the contrary, and both just, after 

 either is once positive and certain, or where the laws vary 

 in regard of accommodating the law to the different consi 

 derations of estate, I have not omitted to set down. 



Thirdly, whereas I could have digested these rules into 

 a certain method or order, which, I know, would have been 

 more admired, as that which would have made every par- 



