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XXVIII.

CONTRACTS.

I. IF our fathers have lost their liberty, why may not we labour to regain it?

Answer. We must look to the contract; if that be rightly made, we must stand to it. If we once grant we may recede from contracts, upon any inconveniency may afterwards happen, we shall have no bargain kept. If I sell you a horse, and afterwards do not like my bargain, I will have my horse again.

2. Keep your contracts. So far a divine goes, but how to make our contracts is left to ourselves; and as we agree about the conveying of this house, or that land, so it must be. If you offer me a hundred pounds for my glove, I tell you what my glove is, a plain glove, pretend no virtue in it, the glove is my own, I profess not to sell gloves, and we agree for an hundred pounds; I do not know why I may not with a safe conscience take it. The want of that common obvious distinction of jus præceptivum, and jus permissivum, does much trouble men.

3. Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Herbert, that he should come to her when she sent for him, and stay with her as long as she would have him; to which he set his hand: then he articled with her, that he should go away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased; to which she set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world, betwixt man and man, betwixt prince and subject; they keep them as long as they like them, and no longer.

1. 20. Lady Kent articled &c.] This probably means that Lady Kent retained, or sought to retain, Sir Edward Herbert, an eminent lawyer of the time, at a yearly salary, to do her legal work. Such arrangements were not uncommon. See Aikin, Life of Selden, P. 154, note.

XXIX.

CONVOCATION.

1. WHEN the king sends his writ for a parliament, he sends for two knights for a shire, and two burgesses for a corporation but when he sends for two archbishops for a convocation, he commands them to assemble the whole clergy; but they, out of custom amongst themselves, send to the bishops of their provinces, to will them to bring two clerks for a diocese, the dean, one for the chapter, and the archdeacons; but to the king every clergyman is there present.

2. We have nothing so nearly expresses the power of the convocation, in respect of the parliament, as a courtleet, where they have a power to make bye-laws, as they call them; as that a man shall put so many cows or sheep in the common; but they can make nothing that is contrary to the laws of the kingdom.

XXX.
COUNCIL.

THEY talk (but blasphemously enough) that the Holy Ghost is president of their General Councils; when the truth is, the odd man is still the Holy Ghost.

XXXI.
CREED.

ATHANASIUS's creed is the shortest, take away the preface, and the force, and the conclusion, which are not part of the

1. 6. they, out of custom amongst themselves, &c.] See note on 'Bishops in Parliament,' sec. 7.

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creed. In the Nicene creed it is els èkkλnoíav, I believe in the church; but now our Common-prayer has it, I believe one catholic and apostolic church. They like not creeds, because they would have no forms of faith, as they have none of prayer, though there be more reason for the one than for the other.

XXXII.

DAMNATION.

I. IF the physician sees you eat any thing that is not good for your body, to keep you from it, he cries 'tis IO poison. If the divine sees you do any thing that is hurtful for your soul, to keep you from it, he cries you are damned.

2. To preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us. If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to an honest judicious surgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and anoint with such an oil (an oil well known), that would do the cure, haply he would not much regard him, because he knew the medicine before20 hand an ordinary medicine. But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, your leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off, and you will die, unless

1. 1. In the Nicene creed it is &c.] In the original Nicene creed the words do not occur. They were introduced in 381 at the Council of Constantinople-πιστεύομεν..... εἰς μίαν ἁγίαν καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν.

On the distinction, to which Selden refers, between 'I believe in' and 'I believe,' Bishop Pearson shows that 'Credo sanctam Ecclesiam, I believe there is an holy church; or Credo in sanctam Ecclesiam is the same; nor does the particle in added or subtracted make any difference.' See Pearson on the Creed, vol. i. pp. 28, 504, and vol. ii. p. 421.

you do something that I could tell you; what listening there would be to this man! Oh, for the lord's sake, tell me what this is, I will give you any content for your pains.

XXXIII.
SELF-DENIAL.

'Tis much the doctrine of the times, that men should not please themselves, but deny themselves every thing they take delight in ; not look upon beauty, wear no good clothes, eat no good meat, &c. which seems the greatest accusation that can be upon the Maker of all good things. If they be not to be used, why did God make them? The 10 truth is, they that preach against them, cannot make use of them themselves, and then again, they get esteem by seeming to contemn them. But yet, mark it while you live, if they do not please themselves as much as they can ; and we live more by example than precept.

XXXIV.

DEVILS.

1. WHY have we none possessed with devils in England? The old answer is, the protestants the devil has already, and the papists are so holy, he dares not meddle with them. Why then, beyond seas, where a nun is possessed, when 20

1. 20. Why then, beyond seas, &c.] The argument seems to be that the alleged holiness of the papists is no sufficient safe-guard to prevent the devil from daring to meddle with them, and that the hunting of huguenots out of church is a proof of enmity between the devil and his alleged friends or allies.

In the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, there were several outbursts of demoniacal possession. In 1609 the Basque

a huguenot comes into the church, does the devil hunt him out? The priest1 teaches him; you never saw the devil throw up a nun's coats; mark that; the priest will not suffer it, for then the people will spit at him.

2. Casting out devils is mere juggling. They never cast out any but what they first cast in. They do it where, for reverence, no man shall dare to examine it. They do it in a corner, in a mortice-hole, not in the market-place. They do nothing but what may be done by art. They make the 10 devil fly out at a window in the likeness of a bat, or a rat. Why do they not hold him? Why, in the likeness of a bat, or a rat, or some creature that is? Why not in some shape we paint him in, with claws and horns? By this trick they gain much, gain upon men's fancies, and so are

1 The priest, H. 2] the devil, H.

country was the scene, and it was shifted, in the same year, to the Ursuline convent at Aix. In 1613 the nuns of St. Brigitte, at Lille, were tormented a second time by demons. They had suffered in the same way about half a century before. But the most notorious of all these attacks was the possession of the mother superior and some of the nuns at the Ursuline convent at Loudun in 1632-4. The history of this remarkable affair is given at length by Figuier. It appears to have been the combined result of wild nymphomania and conscious fraud on the part of the possessed nuns, probably aided by some suggestive trickery on the part of other persons. It had, as it was intended it should have, a tragical ending for the curé of Loudun, Urbain Grandier, who was burnt alive in 1634, on a maliciously contrived charge that he had introduced the devils into the bodies of the nuns. For the full details of this awful story, see Figuier, Histoire dụ Merveilleux, vol. i. pp. 81-257, and Bayle, Dictionnaire, under the heading 'Grandier.'

I find no mention anywhere of the possessed nuns hunting a huguenot out of the church. The nearest approach to it is in the account of the possession in 1552 of the nuns of the convent of Kintorp near Strasbourg, in the course of which—'Elles ne gouvernaient plus leur volonté. Une fureur irrésistible les portait à se mordre, à frapper et à mordre leurs compagnes, à se précipiter sur les étrangers pour leur faire du mal.' Introduction to the Histoire du Merveilleux, p. 47.