_P._ All crimes are indeed sins, but not all sins crimes. A sin may be in the thought or secret purpose of a man, of which neither a judge, nor a witness, nor any man can take notice; but a crime is such a sin as consists in an action against the law, of which action he can be accused, and tried by a judge, and be convinced or cleared by witnesses. Farther; that which is no sin in itself, but indifferent, may be made sin by a positive law: as when the statute was in force that no man should wear silk in his hat, after the statute such wearing of silk was a sin, which was not so before. Nay, sometimes an action that is good in itself, by the statute law may be made a sin; as if a statute should be made to forbid the giving of alms to a strong and sturdy beggar, such alms, after that law, would be a sin, but not before; for then it was charity, the object whereof is not the strength or other quality of the poor man, but his poverty. Again, he that should have said in Queen Mary’s time, that the Pope had no authority in England, should have been burnt at a stake; but for saying the same in the time of Queen Elizabeth, should have been commended. You see by this, that many things are made crimes, and no crime, which are not so in their own nature, but by diversity of law, made upon diversity of opinion or of interest by them which have authority: and yet those things, whether good or evil, will pass so with the vulgar, if they hear them often with odious terms recited, for heinous crimes in themselves, as many of those opinions, which are in themselves pious and lawful, were heretofore, by the Pope’s interest therein, called detestable heresy. Again, some controversies are of things done upon the sea, others of things done upon the land. There need be many courts to the deciding of so many kinds of controversies. What order is there taken for their distribution?