t deliberation he
was not able to reach unto. That, likewise, which possibly made him to
diffide in his own skill and capacity, notwithstanding his being an expert
and understanding lawyer, for anything that I know to the contrary, was the
knowledge and experience which he had of the antinomies, contrarieties,
antilogies, contradictions, traversings, and thwartings of laws, customs,
edicts, statutes, orders, and ordinances, in which dangerous opposition,
equity and justice being structured and founded on either of the opposite
terms, and a gap being thereby opened for the ushering in of injustice and
iniquity through the various interpretations of self-ended lawyers, being
assuredly persuaded that the infernal calumniator, who frequently
transformeth himself into the likeness of a messenger or angel of light,
maketh use of these cross glosses and expositions in the mouths and pens of
his ministers and servants, the perverse advocates, bribing judges,
law-monging attorneys, prevaricating counsellors, and other such-like
law-wresting members of a court of justice, to turn by those means black to
white, green to grey, and what is straight to a crooked ply. For the more
expedient doing whereof, these diabolical ministers make both the pleading
parties believe that their cause is just and righteous; for it is well
known that there is no cause, how bad soever, which doth not find an
advocate to patrocinate and defend it,--else would there be no process in
the world, no suits at law, nor pleadings at the bar. He did in these
extremities, as I conceive, most humbly recommend the direction of his
judicial proceedings to the upright judge of judges, God Almighty; did
submit himself to the conduct and guideship of the blessed Spirit in the
hazard and perplexity of the definitive sentence, and, by this aleatory
lot, did as it were implore and explore the divine decree of his goodwill
and pleasure, instead of that which we call the final judgment of a court.
To this effect, to the better attaining to his purpose, which was to judge
righteously, he did, in my opinion, throw and turn the dice, to the end
that by the providence aforesaid the best chance might fall to him whose
action was uprightest, and backed with greatest reason. In doing whereof
he did not stray from the sense of Talmudists, who say that there is so
little harm in that manner of searching the truth, that in the anxiety and
perplexedness of human wits God oftentimes