derived the authority of all other special and subordinate branches of law, such as the canon law, law merchant, law maritime, law of Gavelkind, Borough English, corporation laws, local customs and usages, to all of which the common law requires its judges to permit authority in the special or local cases belonging to them.  The evidence of these laws is preserved in their ancient treatises, books, and writings, in like manner as our own common law itself is known, the text-of its original enactments having been long lost, and its substance only preserved in ancient and traditionary writings.  And if it appears, from their ancient books, writings, and records, that the bishop, in this case, according to the rules prescribed by these authorities, has done what an ordinary would have done, in such case, then we should adjudge it good, otherwise not.’  To decide this question, they would have to turn to the ancient writings and records of the canon law, in which they would find evidence of the laws of advowsons, quare impedit, the duties of bishops and ordinaries, for which terms Prisot could never have meant to refer them to the Old or New Testament, les saincts scriptures, where surely they would not be found.  A license which should permit ‘ancien scripture’ to be translated ’holy scripture,’ annihilates at once all the evidence of language.  With such a license, we might reverse the sixth commandment into ’Thou shalt not omit murder.’  It would be the more extraordinary in this case, where the mistranslation was to effect the adoption of the whole code of the Jewish and Christian laws into the text of our statutes, to convert religious offences into temporal crimes, to make the breach of every religious precept a subject of indictment, submit the question of idolatry, for example, to the trial of a jury, and to a court, its punishment, to the third and fourth generation of the offender.  Do we allow to our judges this lumping legislation?

The term ‘common law,’ although it has more than one meaning, is perfectly definite, secundum subjectam materiem.  Its most probable origin was on the conquest of the Heptarchy by Alfred, and the amalgamation of their several codes of law into one, which became common to them all.  The authentic text of these enactments has not been preserved; but their substance has been committed to many ancient books and writings, so faithfully as to have been deemed genuine from generation to generation, and obeyed as such by all.  We have some fragments of them collected by Lambard, Wilkins, and others, but abounding with proofs of their spurious authenticity.  Magna Charta is the earliest statute, the text of which has come down to us in an authentic form, and thence downward we have them entire.  We do not know exactly when the common law and statute law, the lex scripta et non scripta, began to be contra-distinguished, so as to give a second acceptation to the former term; whether before or after Prisot’s day, at which