the Sanhedrim had not always that right, which from the time of
Esdras is more frequently exercised, of proposing to the people, but
that they forebore it in regard of the fulness and infallibility of the
law already made, whereby it was needless. Wherefore the function
of this Council, which is very rare in a senate, was executive, and
consisted in the administration of the law made; and whereas the Council
itself is often understood in Scripture by the priest and the Levite,
there is no more in that save only that the priests and the Levites,
who otherwise had no power at all, being in the younger years of this
commonwealth, those that were best studied in the laws were the most
frequently elected into the Sanhedrim. For the courts, consisting of
three-and-twenty elders sitting in the gates of every city, and the
triumvirates of judges constituted almost in every village, which were
parts of the executive magistracy subordinate to the Sanhedrim, I shall
take them at better leisure, and in the larger discourse; but these
being that part of this commonwealth which was instituted by Moses upon
the advice of Jethro the priest of Midian (as I conceive a heathen), are
to me a sufficient warrant even from God himself, who confirmed them,
to make further use of human prudence, wherever I find it bearing a
testimony to itself, whether in heathen commonwealths or others; and the
rather, because so it is, that we who have the holy Scriptures, and in
them the original of a commonwealth, made by the same hand that made
the world, are either altogether blind or negligent of it; while the
heathens have all written theirs, as if they had had no other copy; as,
to be more brief in the present account of that which you shall have
more at large hereafter:

Athens consisted of the Senate of the Bean proposing, of the Church or
Assembly of the people resolving, and too often debating, which was the
ruin of it; as also of the Senate of the Areopagus, the nine archons,
with divers other magistrates, executing.

Lacedaemon consisted of the Senate proposing, of the Church or
congregation of the people resolving only, and never debating, which was
the long life of it; and of the two kings, the court of the ephors, with
divers other magistrates, executing.

Carthage consisted of the Senate proposing and sometimes resolving too,
of the people resolving and sometimes debating too, for which fault she
was reprehended by Aristotle; and she had he