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PREFACE. 



ticular rule, through coherence and relation unto other 

 rules, seem more cunning and deep ; yet I have avoided so 

 to do, because this delivering of knowledge in distinct 

 and disjoined aphorisms doth leave the wit of man more 

 free to turn and toss, and to make use of that which is so 

 delivered to more several purposes and applications; for 

 we see that all the ancient wisdom and science was wont 

 to be delivered in that form, as may be seen by the parables 

 of Solomon, and by the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the 

 moral verses of Theognes and Phocylides ; but chiefly the 

 precedent of the civil law, which hath taken the same 

 course with their rules, did confirm me in my opinion. 



Fourthly, whereas I know very well it would have been 

 more plausible and more current, if the rules, with the ex 

 positions of them, had been set down either in Latin or in 

 English ; that the harshness of the language might not 

 have disgraced the matter; and that civilians, statesmen, 

 scholars, and other sensible men might not have been barred 

 from them ; yet I have forsaken that grace and ornament 

 of them, and only taken this course : the rules themselves 

 I have put in Latin, not purified further than the property 

 of the terms of the law would permit ; but Latin, which 

 language I chose, as the briefest to contrive the rules com 

 pendiously, the aptest for memory, and of the greatest 

 authority and majesty to be avouched and alleged in argu 

 ment: and for the expositions and distinctions, I have 

 retained the peculiar language of our law, because it 

 should not be singular among the books of the same science, 

 and because it is most familiar to the students and pro 

 fessors thereof, and because that it is most significant to 

 express conceits of law ; and to conclude, it is a language 

 wherein a man shall not be enticed to hunt after words but 

 matter; and for the excluding of any other than professed 

 lawyers, it was better manners to exclude them by the 

 strangeness of the language, than by the obscurity of the 

 conceit; which is as though it had been written in no 

 private and retired language, yet by those that are not 



