408 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



tions, they may afterward be regularly wove together. For 

 allowing it might perhaps be more commodious, and, with 

 regard to the true reason of the thing, better, to do it by a 

 new text than by such kind of patchwork, yet in the law, 

 style and description are not so much to be regarded as 

 authority, and its patron antiquity; otherwise this might 

 rather seem a work of mere scholarship and method than a 

 corps of majestic laws. 



LXIII. Twere advisable, in making this new digest, not 

 utterly to abolish the ancient volumes, and give them up to 

 oblivion, but suffer them at least to remain in some library, 

 though with a prohibition of their common use ; because in 

 weighty cases it might be proper to consult and inspect the 

 revolutions and series of ancient laws. Tis also a solemn 

 thing to intermix antiquity with things present. And such 

 a new body of laws ought to receive the sanction of all those 

 who have any legislative power in the state, lest under a 

 pretence of digesting the old laws new ones should be 

 secretly obtruded. 



LXIY. Twere to be wished that such a recompilement 

 of the laws might be undertaken in such times as excel the 

 ancient (whose acts and works they model anew) in point of 

 learning and universal knowledge; the contrary whereof 

 happened in the work of Justinian. For tis an unfortu 

 nate thing to have the works of the ancients mangled, and 

 set together again at the discretion and choice of a less pru 

 dent and less learned age. But it often happens that what 

 is necessary is not best. 



Obscure and involved exposition of laws 



LXY. Lavs are obscurely described either 1, through 

 their loquacity and superfluity of words; 2, through over- 

 conciseness; or, 3, through their preambles contradicting 

 the body of the law. 



LXVI. We at present treat of the obscurity which arises 

 from their ill description, and approve not the loquacity 

 and prolixity now used in drawing up the laws, which in 

 no degree obtains what is intended by it, but rather the con- 



