_
_pugnantes_ _videntur_ _tentare_ _Deum_, _quia_ _hoc_ _volunt_ _ut_
_Deus_ _ostendat_ _et_ _faciat_ _miraculum_, _ut_ _justam_ _causam_
_habens_ _victor_ _efficiatur_, _quod_ _saepe_ _contra_ _accidit_."
But whosoever it be, this kind of fight taketh its warrant from law.
Nay, the French themselves, whence this folly seemeth chiefly to
have flown, never had it but only in practice and toleration, and
never as authorized by law; and yet now of late they have been fain
to purge their folly with extreme rigor, in so much as many
gentlemen left between death and life in the duels, as I spake
before, were hastened to hanging with their wounds bleeding. For
the State found it had been neglected so long, as nothing could be
thought cruelty which tended to the putting of it down. As for the
second defect, pretended in our law, that it hath provided no remedy
for lies and fillips, it may receive like answer. It would have
been thought a madness amongst the ancient lawgivers to have set a
punishment upon the lie given, which in effect is but a word of
denial, a negative of another's saying. Any lawgiver, if he had
been asked the question, would have made Solon's answer: That he had
not ordained any punishment for it, because he never imagined the
world would have been so fantastical as to take it so highly. The
civilians dispute whether an action of injury lie for it, and rather
resolve the contrary. And Francis I. of France, who first set on
and stamped this disgrace so deep, is taxed by the judgment of all
wise writers for beginning the vanity of it; for it was he, that
when he had himself given the lie and defy to the Emperor, to make
it current in the world, said in a solemn assembly, "that he was no
honest man that would bear the lie," which was the fountain of this
new learning.

As for the words of approach and contumely, whereof the lie was
esteemed none, it is not credible, but that the orations themselves
are extant, what extreme and exquisite reproaches were tossed up and
down in the Senate of Rome and the places of assembly, and the like
in Graecia, and yet no man took himself fouled by them, but took
them but for breath, and the style of an enemy, and either despised
them or returned them, but no blood was spilt about them.

So of every touch or light blow of the person, they are not in
themselves considerable, save that they have got them upon the stamp
of a disgrace, which maketh these light things pass