al and national laws proves,[1] not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opinions—yea, errors—known, read, and collated, are of main service and assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive, therefore, that when God did enlarge the universal diet of man's body, saving ever the rules of temperance. He then, also, as before, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his own leading capacity.
How great a virtue is temperance, how much of moment through the whole life of man! Yet God commits the managing so great a trust, without particular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanor of every grown man. And, therefore, when He Himself tabled the Jews from Heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily portion of manna, is computed to have been more than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thriec as many meals. For those actions which enter into a man, rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not, God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser; there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulsion should grow
- ↑ "De Juri Naturali, etc." John Selden is best remembered now for his "Table Talk," which was published thirty-five years after his death. His other works are twenty-six in number.
88
