Magistracy, or undertaking the publick offices of state; for by beans was the Magistrate elected in some parts of _Greece_; and, after his daies, we read in _Thucydides_, of the Councel of the bean in _Athens_. [SN: πᾶν δεῖλοι κυαμῶν ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθε.] The same word also in Greek doth signifie a Testicle, and hath been thought by some an injunction only of Continency, as _Aul. Gellius_ hath expounded, and as _Empedocles_ may also be interpreted: that is, _Testiculis miseri dextras subducite_; and might be the original intention of _Pythagoras_; as having a notable hint hereof in Beans, from the natural signature of the venereal organs of both Sexes. Again, his injunction is, not to harbour Swallows in our Houses: Whose advice notwithstanding we do not contemn, who daily admit and cherish them: For herein a caution is only implied, not to entertain ungrateful and thankless persons, which like the Swallow are no way commodious unto us; but having made use of our habitations, and served their own turns, forsake us. So he commands to deface the Print of a Cauldron in the ashes, after it hath boiled. Which strictly to observe were condemnable superstition: But hereby he covertly adviseth us not to persevere in anger; but after our choler hath boiled, to retain no impression thereof. In the like sense are to be received, when he adviseth his Disciples to give the right hand but to few, to put no viands in a Chamber-pot, not to pass over a Balance, not to rake up fire with a Sword, or piss against the Sun. Which ænigmatical deliveries comprehend useful verities, but being mistaken by literal Expositors at the first, they have been mis-understood by most since, and may be occasion of Error to Verbal capacities for ever. This fallacy in the first delusion Satan put upon _Eve_, and his whole tentation might be the same continued; so when he said, _Ye shall not die_, that was, in his equivocation, ye shall not incurr a present death, or a destruction immediately ensuing your transgression. _Your eyes shall be opened_; that is, not to the enlargement of your knowledge, but discovery of your shame and proper confusion; _You shall know good and evil_; that is, you shall have knowledge of good by its privation, but cognisance of evil by sense and visible experience. And the same fallacy or way of deceit, so well succeeding in Paradise, he continued in his Oracles through all the World. Which had not men more warily understood, they might have performed many acts inconsistent with his intention. _Brutus_ might have made haste with _Tarquine_ to have kissed his own Mother. The _Athenians_ might have built them wooden Walls, or doubled the Altar at _Delphos_.