I have also proved Cocking to be both Ancient and Honourable, and to the present Age (if rightly made use of) greatly profitable, and have plainly laid open the Malice and Ignorance of all such as endeavour to villify, and bespatter it, shewing the Weakness of their Arguments, and the true Motives that engage them to speak against Cocking. And though some may think me too Copious in Etimologizing upon the right end, and use of this most Ancient and Honourable Exercise of Cocking, whilst others no less blame me for exposing to Plebeian view, those Misteries in Breeding, and Dieting, which commonly cost young Gamsters so dear, e’er they arrive at the true knowledge of. But to pass by such as these, and give the World to understand that I have no other end in Publishing this ensuing Treatise, but meerly, and purely to promote the Noble and most Heroic Exercise of Cocking: And at the same time to acknowledge my self, most Worthy Sir, your Worship’s most Real, and most faithful Friend, and Fellow Cocker _R. H._ THE PREFACE. _How happy were those Sons of Men, who in times past were reputed Persons indued with that noble Gift_, aut facere scribenda, aut scribere legenda, _that is, either to do such things as deserved to be writ, or to write that which was worth the reading: Now that this ensuing Treatise is worth the reading, and practising too, notwithstanding the little Esteem and Value, that the present Age affords it, I shall endeavour to prove both from the great Antiquity, and Usefulness of this noble Sport of Cocking: A thing esteem’d so Sacred, and held in such high Veneration amongst the Antients, that, as_ Diodorus Siculus _testifies, the Fighting-Cock was reckon’d one of the principal Gods worshiped by the_ Syrians. [Sidenote: Diodor. Sicul. _lib._ 1. 18. R. Da. non diffentit.] [Sidenote: Athenæ. Diosco. _lib._ 4.] _And_ Rabby David, _a learned Hebrew Doctor, interpreting the_ 2 _of_ Kings ch. 17. v. 30, 31. _where_ Nergal _is spoken, of which is (as he says) a Cock of the Field, a Champion Cock, a Cock for War, or a Fighting Cock, and by them there Worshiped as a God in_ Samaria. _Which at once denotes the high Esteem and Value, with the great Antiquity also, of these Warlike Birds. And_ Athenæus _and_ Dioscorides, _both of them acknowledge the Fighting-Cock to be one of the Deities which the antient_ Greeks _did greatly Adore. And that in their time there was an Altar found in a Vault far under Ground, whereon had been engraven’d a Cock, and inscribed thus_ DEO MOUNO. [Sidenote: Macro. _lib._ 1. c. 31.] _Which, as_ Macrobius _also affirms, signifies One, or Only; and this Attribute they gave to the Cock, because he was the greatest, and almost the only Deity they Ador’d, the rest being accounted but his Assistants, and Coadjutors._