iples of society, discountenanced by the Roman laws. For
the edicts of the emperor Constantine, commanding the public to
maintain the children of those who were unable to provide for them, in
order to prevent the murder and exposure of infants, an institution
founded on the same principle as our foundling hospitals, though
comprized in the Theodosian code[y], were rejected in Justinian's
collection.

[Footnote y: _l._ 11. _t._ 27.]

THESE rights, of life and member, can only be determined by the death
of the person; which is either a civil or natural death. The civil
death commences if any man be banished the realm[z] by the process of
the common law, or enters into religion; that is, goes into a
monastery, and becomes there a monk professed: in which cases he is
absolutely dead in law, and his next heir shall have his estate. For,
such banished man is entirely cut off from society; and such a monk,
upon his profession, renounces solemnly all secular concerns: and
besides, as the popish clergy claimed an exemption from the duties of
civil life, and the commands of the temporal magistrate, the genius of
the English law would not suffer those persons to enjoy the benefits
of society, who secluded themselves from it, and refused to submit to
it's regulations[a]. A monk is therefore accounted _civiliter
mortuus_, and when he enters into religion may, like other dying men,
make his testament and executors; or, if he makes none, the ordinary
may grant administration to his next of kin, as if he were actually
dead intestate. And such executors and administrators shall have the
same power, and may bring the same actions for debts due _to_ the
religious, and are liable to the same actions for those due _from_
him, as if he were naturally deceased[b]. Nay, so far has this
principle been carried, that when one was bound in a bond to an abbot
and his successors, and afterwards made his executors and professed
himself a monk of the same abbey, and in process of time was himself
made abbot thereof; here the law gave him, in the capacity of abbot,
an action of debt against his own executors to recover the money
due[c]. In short, a monk or religious is so effectually dead in law,
that a lease made even to a third person, during the life (generally)
of one who afterwards becomes a monk, determines by such his entry
into religion: for which reason leases, and other conveyances, for
life, are usually made to have and to hold for the ter