In the reign of James I, a controversy arose respecting the nature of lots, in which the lawfulness--"_in foro theologorum_"--of deciding matters by lot, and of playing at games of chance, such as cards and dice, was amply discussed. It was maintained by one party, that as lots were of divine ordinance, for the purpose of determining important matters,[157] and of so ascertaining, as it were, the divine will, their employment for the purpose of amusement, was a sinful perversion of their institution, and a disparaging of Divine Providence, which was thus made the arbiter of idle and immoral games.[158] In opposition to this opinion, the learned Thomas Gataker published his treatise, historical and theological, 'Of the Nature and Use of Lots,' in 1619. In this work he treats of casual events in general, and of the different kinds of lots, which he thus classes under three heads: 1, Lots which are commonly employed in serious affairs; 2, Lots which enter into games of chance; 3, Lots extraordinary or divinatory. The first are generally admitted to be innocent; but the third are absolutely condemned by Gataker, except when they are expressly required to be used by a revelation or a divine command.[159] With regard to lots of the second kind, he contends that they are neither prohibited in the Scriptures nor evil of themselves; though, like those of the first, they are liable to great abuse. The abuse he earnestly condemns; but at the same time shows that it is not a necessary consequence of the employment of lots in games of amusement. He also refutes the arguments of James Balmford, who, in a small tract which appears to have been first published about 1593, had maintained that all games of chance were absolutely unlawful. An account of the controversy on this subject, between Gataker on one side, and William Ames and Gisbert Voet on the other, will be found in the preface to the second edition of Barbeyrac's 'Traité du Jeu.'[160] In the reign of James I, and in the early part of that of his successor, ere the discussion of political grievances had produced a decided effect on the public mind, the fashionable vices of excess in apparel, gaming, drinking, and smoking tobacco, were fertile themes of declamation with a certain class of reformers, both lay and clerical. Their denunciations of the vanity and wickedness of wearing fine clothes are merely variations to Stubbes's 'Anatomy of Abuses;' while their fulminations against tobacco are generally pitched in the somewhat loud key of King James's Counterblast. Their common-places against drunkenness and gaming, are, in general, "very common indeed,"--as Sir Francis Burdett said of a certain common lawyer, who, since his elevation to the peerage, has been convicted of a petty larceny on the literary property of Miss Agnes Strickland, and who seems to be an adept at Cribbage, though no card-player.