quels touts manners leis sont fondes; et auxy, siv, nous sumus obliges de canustre lour esy de saint eglise," &c. Finch begins the business of falsification by mistranslating and mistating the words of Prisot thus: "to such laws of the church as have warrant in _holy scripture_ our law giveth credence." Citing the above case and the words of Prisot in the margin, Finch's law, B. 1, c. 3, here then we find _ancien scripture_, ancient writing, translated "holy scripture." This, Wingate, in 1658, erects into a maxim of law in the very words of Finch, but citing Prisot and not Finch. And Sheppard, tit. Religion, in 1675 laying it down in the same words of Finch, quotes the Year-Book, Finch and Wingate. Then comes Sir Matthew Hale, in the case of the King _v._ Taylor, 1 Ventr. 293, 3 Keb. 607, and declares that "Christianity is part and parcel of the laws of England." Citing nobody, and resting it, with his judgment against the witches, on his own authority, which indeed was sound and good in all cases into which no superstition or bigotry could enter. Thus strengthened, the court in 1728, in the King _v._ Woolston, would not suffer it to be questioned whether to write against Christianity was punishable at common law, saying it had been so settled by Hale in Taylor's case, 2 Stra. 834. Wood, therefore, 409, without scruple, lays down as a principle, that all blaspheming and profaneness are offences at the common law, and cites Strange. Blackstone, in 1763, repeats, in the words of Sir Matthew Hale, that "Christianity is part of the laws of England," citing Ventris and Strange, _ubi supra_. And Lord Mansfield, in the case of the Chamberlain of London _v._ Evans, in 1767, qualifying somewhat the position, says that "the essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law." Thus we find this string of authorities all hanging by one another on a single hook, a mistranslation by Finch of the words of Prisot, or on nothing. For all quote Prisot, or one another, or nobody. Thus Finch misquotes Prisot; Wingate also, but using Finch's words; Sheppard quotes Prisot, Finch and Wingate; Hale cites nobody; the court in Woolston's case cite Hale; Wood cites Woolston's case; Blackstone that and Hale, and Lord Mansfield volunteers his own _ipse dixit_. And who now can question but that the whole Bible and Testament are a part of the common law? And that Connecticut, in her blue laws, laying it down as a principle that the laws of God should be the laws of their land, except where their own contradicted them, did anything more than express, with a salvo, what the English judges had less cautiously declared without any restriction? And what, I dare say, our cunning Chief Justice would swear to, and find as many sophisms to twist it out of the general terms of our declarations of rights, and even the stricter text of the Virginia "act for the freedom of religion," as he did to twist Burr's neck out of the halter of treason. May we not