_P._ Do you think this to be good doctrine? Though it be true, that no man is born with the use of reason, yet all men may grow up to it as well as lawyers; and when they have applied their reason to the laws, (which were laws before they studied them, or else it was not law they studied), may be as fit for and capable of judicature, as Sir Edward Coke himself, who whether he had more or less use of reason, was not thereby a judge, but because the King made him so. And whereas he says, that a man who should have as much reason as is dispersed in so many several heads, could not make such a law as this law of England is; if one should ask him who made the law of England, would he say a succession of English lawyers or judges made it, or rather a succession of kings? And that upon their own reason, either solely, or with the advice of the Lords and Commons in Parliament, without the judges or other professors of the law? You see therefore that the King’s reason, be it more or less, is that _anima legis_, that _summa lex_, whereof Sir Edward Coke speaketh, and not the reason, learning, or wisdom of the judges. But you may see, that quite through his _Institutes of Law_, he often takes occasion to magnify the learning of the lawyers, whom he perpetually termeth the sages of the Parliament, or of the King’s council. Therefore unless you say otherwise, I say, that the King’s reason, when it is publicly upon advice and deliberation declared, is that _anima legis_; and that _summa ratio_ and that equity, which all agree to be the law of reason, is all that is or ever was law in England, since it became Christian, besides the Bible. _L._ Are not the Canons of the Church part of the law of England, as also the imperial law used in the Admiralty, and the customs of particular places, and the by-laws of corporations and courts of judicature? _P._ Why not? For they were all constituted by the Kings of England; and though the civil law used in the Admiralty were at first the statutes of the Roman empire, yet because they are in force by no other authority than that of the King, they are now the King’s laws, and the King’s statutes. The same we may say of the Canons; such of them as we have retained, made by the Church of Rome, have been no law, nor of any force in England, since the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but by virtue of the great seal of England. _L._ In the said statutes that restrain the levying of money without consent of Parliament, is there any thing you can take exceptions to?