CHAP. III.] ORDERLY DIGESTS RECOMMENDED. 363 



dictates of reason running through the different matters of 

 law, and make, as it were, its ballast. 



LXXXIII. But let not the positions or placets of law be 

 taken for rules, as they usually are, very injudiciously ; lor if 

 this were received, there would be as many rules as there are 

 laws : a law being no other than a commanding rule. But 

 let those be held for rules which cleave to the very iorm of 

 justice ; whence in general the same rules are iound through 

 the civil law of different states, unless they sometimes vary 

 with regard to the form of government. 



LXXXIV. After the rule is laid down in a short and 

 solid expression, let examples and clear decisions oi cases be 

 subjoined by way of explanation ; distinctions and excep 

 tions by Way of limitation ; and things of the same kind by 

 way of amplification to the rule. 



LXXXV. It is justly directed not to take laws from 

 rules, but to make the rules from the laws in being : neither 

 must the proof be derived from the words of the rule, as if 

 that were the text of the law ; for the rule, like the magnetic 

 needle, does not make, but indicate the law. 



LXXXVI. Besides the body of the law, it is proper to 

 take a view of the antiquities of laws, which, though they 

 have lost their authority, still retain their reverence. Those 

 writings upon laws and judgments, whether published or un 

 published, are to be held for antiquities ot law, which pre 

 ceded the body of the laws in point of time ; for these 

 antiquities should not be lost, but the most useful of them 

 being collected, and such as are frivolous and impertinent 

 rejected, they should be brought into one volume without 

 mixing ancient fables, as Treboninaus calls them, with the 

 laws themselves. 



LXXXVII. But for practice, tis highly proper to have 

 the whole law orderly digested under heads and titles, 

 whereto any one may occasionally turn on a sudden, as to a 

 storehouse furnished for present use. These summaries bring 

 into order what lay dispersed, and abridge what was diffusive 

 and prolix in the law. But care must be had lest these 

 abridgments should make men ready for practice, and in 

 dolent in the science itself ; for their office is to serve but as 

 remembrancers, and not as perfect teachers of the law. And 

 they are to be made with great diligence fidelity, and judg- 



