arned writers of the times thought they could not form a
perfect character, even of the blessed virgin, without making her a
civilian and a canonist. Which Albertus Magnus, the renowned dominican
doctor of the thirteenth century, thus proves in his _Summa de
laudibus christiferae virginis (divinum magis quam humanum opus)_
_qu._ 23. Sec. 5. "_Item quod jura civilia, & leges, & decreta scivit in
summo, probatur hoc modo: sapientia advocati manifestatur in tribus;
unum, quod obtineat omnia contra judicem justum & sapientem; secundo,
quod contra adversarium astutum & sagacem; tertio, quod in causa
desperata: sed beatissima virgo, contra judicem sapientissimum,
Dominum; contra adversarium callidissimum, dyabolum; in causa nostra
desperata; sententiam optatam obtinuit._" To which an eminent
franciscan, two centuries afterwards, Bernardinus de Busti (_Mariale_,
_part._ 4. _serm._ 9.) very gravely subjoins this note. "_Nec videtur
incongruum mulieres habere peritiam juris. Legitur enim de uxore
Joannis Andreae glossatoris, quod tantam peritiam in utroque jure
habuit, ut publice in scholis legere ausa sit._"]

AND, since the reformation, many causes have conspired to prevent it's
becoming a part of academical education. As, first, long usage and
established custom; which, as in every thing else, so especially in
the forms of scholastic exercise, have justly great weight and
authority. Secondly, the real intrinsic merit of the civil law,
considered upon the footing of reason and not of obligation, which was
well known to the instructors of our youth; and their total ignorance
of the merit of the common law, though it's equal at least, and
perhaps an improvement on the other. But the principal reason of all,
that has hindered the introduction of this branch of learning, is,
that the study of the common law, being banished from hence in the
times of popery, has fallen into a quite different chanel, and has
hitherto been wholly cultivated in another place. But as this long
usage and established custom, of ignorance in the laws of the land,
begin now to be thought unreasonable; and as by this means the merit
of those laws will probably be more generally known; we may hope that
the method of studying them will soon revert to it's antient course,
and the foundations at least of that science will be laid in the two
universities; without being exclusively confined to the chanel which
it fell into at the times I have been just describing