NOTE B11BB. 



this noble court ; as they equalled many of their own profession in the know 

 ledge of the laws, so did they excel the most of all other professions in learning, 

 wisdom, gravity, and mature experience. In such a case, it were but poor phi 

 losophy to restrain those effects to the former, which were produced and brought 

 forth by those latter endowments. Examine them all, and you shall find them 

 in their several ages to have the commendation of the completest men, but not 

 of the deepest lawyers. I except only that mirror of our age and glory of his 

 profession, my reverenced master, who was as eminent in the universal, as any 

 other one of them all in his choicest particular. Sparguntur in omnes, uno hoc 

 mista fluunt, et qua; diversa beatos efficiunt, conjuncta tenet. Again, it may 

 be, the continual practice of the strict law, without a special mixture of other 

 knowledge, makes a man unapt and undisposed for a court of equity. Juris 

 consultus ipse per se nihil nisi lugubrius quidam cantus et acutus, as M. Crassus 

 was wont to define him. They are (and that cannot be otherwise) of the same 

 profession with the rhetorics at Rome, as much used to defend the wrong, as to 

 protect and maintain the most upright cause. And if any of them should prove 

 corrupt, he carries about him, armatam uequitiam, that skill and cunning to 

 palliate the same, that that mis-sentence, which pronounced by a plain and 

 understanding man would appear most gross and palpable, by their colours, 

 quotations, and wrenches of the law, would be made to pass for current and 

 specious. Some will add hereunto the boldness and confidence, which their 

 former clients will take upon them, when, as St. Austin speaks in another case, 

 they find the man to be their judge, who was the other day their hired advocate. 

 Marie that, depraedandi memoria, as St. Jerom calls it, that proneness to take 

 money, as accustomed to fees, is but a base and scandalous aspersion, and as 

 incident to the divine, if he want the fear of God, as to the common lawyer, or 

 most sordid artizan. But that that former breeding and education in the strict 

 ness of law might (without good care and integrity) somewhat indispose a 

 practiser thereof for the rule and government of a court of equity, I learned long 

 ago from Plinius Secundus, a most excellent lawyer in his time, and a man of 

 singular rank in the Roman estate ; for in his second, third, and sixth epistles, 

 making comparison between the scholastic!, as he calls them, which were 

 gentlemen of the better sort, bred up privately in feigned pleadings and schools 

 of eloquence, for the qualifying of themselves for civil employments, and another 

 sort of gentlemen, termed forenses, who v/ere pleaders at the bar, and trained 

 up in real causes : he makes the former more innocent and harmless a great 

 deal than the latter, and yields hereof the principal reason, Nos enim, qui in 

 foro verisque litibus terimur, multum matitiae, quamvis nolimus, addiscimus. 

 For we, sailh he, that are bred in real quirks and personal contentions, cannot 

 but reserve some fang thereof, whether we will or no. These reasons, though 

 they please some men, yet, God be praised, if we do but right to this noble pro 

 fession, there are in our commonwealth no way concluding or demonstrative ; 

 for I make no question, but there are many scores which profess our laws, who, 

 beside their skill and practice in this kind, are so richly enabled in all moral 

 and intellectual endowments, Ut omnia tanquam singula preficiant, that there is 

 no court of equity in the world but might be most safely committed unto them. 

 I leave, therefore, the reason of this alteration as a reason of state not to be 

 fathomed by any reason of mine, and will say no more of my calling in the 

 general. 



&quot; Now when I reflect upon myself in particular, Quis sum ego? aut quis 

 filius Ishai 1 What am I, or what can there be in me in regard of knowledge, 

 gravity, or experience, that should afford me the least qualification in the world 

 for so weighty a place 1 Surely, if a sincere, upright, and well meaning heart 

 doth not cover thousands of other imperfections, I am the unfittest man in the 

 kingdom to supply the place. And therefore must say of my creation, as the 

 poet said of the creation of the world, Materiam noti quaerere, nulla fuit. 

 Trouble not your heads to find out the cause, I confess there was none at all. 

 It was, (without the least inclination or thought of mine own) the immediate 

 work of God and my king. And their actions are no ordinary effects, but ex- 

 tiaordinary miracles, \\hat then! should 1 beyond the limits and duty of 



