ctions and doubts: to the end that I may supply
what was wanting in the promulgated epitome to a more full and
perfect narrative of the whole, I shall rather take the commonwealth
practically; and as it has now given an account of itself in some years'
revolutions (as Dicearchus is said to have done that of Lacedaemon,
first transcribed by his hand some three or four hundred years after
the institution), yet not omitting to add for proof to every order such
debates and speeches of the legislators in their Council, or at least
such parts of them as may best discover the reason of the government;
nor such ways and means as were used in the institution or rise of the
building, not to be so well conceived, without some knowledge given of
the engines wherewithal the mighty weight was moved. But through the
entire omission of the Council of legislators or workmen that squared
every stone to this structure in the quarries of ancient prudence, the
proof of the first part of this discourse will be lame, except I
insert, as well for illustration as to avoid frequent repetition, three
remarkable testimonies in this place.

The first is taken out of the Commonwealth of Israel: "So Moses
hearkened to the voice of Jethro, his father-in-law, and did all that
he had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them
heads over the people;" tribunes, as it is in the vulgar Latin; or
phylarchs, that is, princes of the tribes, sitting upon twelve thrones,
and judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and next to these he chose
rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers
of tens, which were the steps and rise of this commonwealth from its
foundation or root to its proper elevation or accomplishment in the
Sanhedrim, and the congregation, already opened in the preliminaries.

The second is taken out of Lacedaemon, as Lycurgus (for the greater
impression of his institutions upon the minds of his citizens) pretended
to have received the model of that commonwealth from the oracle of
Apollo at Delphos, the words whereof are thus recorded by Plutarch in
the life of that famous legislator: "When thou shalt have divided the
people into tribes (which were six) and oboe (which were five in every
tribe), thou shalt constitute the Senate, consisting, with the two
Kings, of thirty councillors, who, according as occasion requires, shall
cause the congregation to be assembled between the bridge and the river
Gnacion, w