way?

But his arguments and definitions are yet more supportable than the
grossness of historical remarks, which are scattered so plentifully in
his book, that it would be tedious to enumerate, or to shew the fraud
and ignorance of them. I beg the reader's leave to take notice of one
here just in my way; and, the rather, because I design for the future to
let hundreds of them pass without further notice. "When," says he, p. x.
"by the abolishing of the Pope's power, things were brought back to
their ancient channel, the parliament's right in making ecclesiastical
laws revived of course." What can possibly be meant by this "ancient
channel?" Why, the channel that things ran in before the Pope had any
power in England: that is to say, before Austin the monk converted
England, before which time, it seems, the parliament had a right to make
ecclesiastical laws. And what parliament could this be? Why, the Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons met at Westminster.

I cannot here forbear reproving the folly and pedantry of some lawyers,
whose opinions this poor creature blindly followeth, and rendereth yet
more absurd by his comments. The knowledge of our constitution can be
only attained by consulting the earliest English histories, of which
those gentlemen seem utterly ignorant, further than a quotation or an
index. They would fain derive our government as now constituted, from
antiquity: And, because they have seen Tacitus quoted for his _majoribus
omnes_; and have read of the Goths' military institution in their
progresses and conquests, they presently dream of a parliament. Had
their reading reached so far, they might have deduced it much more
fairly from Aristotle and Polybius, who both distinctly name the
composition of _rex, seniores, et populus_; and the latter, as I
remember particularly, with the highest approbation. The princes, in the
Saxon Heptarchy, did indeed call their nobles sometimes together upon
weighty affairs, as most other princes of the world have done in all
ages. But they made war and peace, and raised money by their own
authority: They gave or mended laws by their charters, and they raised
armies by their tenures. Besides, some of those kingdoms fell in by
conquests, before England was reduced under one head, and therefore
could pretend no rights, but by the concessions of the conqueror.

Further, which is more material, upon the admission of Christianity,
great quantities of land were acqu