people, viva voce,
sometimes by the lot only, and at others by the ballot, or by a mixture
of the lot with the suffrage, as in the case of Eldad and Medad, which I
shall open with the Senate.

The Senate of Israel, called in the old Testament the Seventy Elders,
and in the New the Sanhedrim (which word is usually translated "the
Council"), was appointed by God, and consisted of seventy elders besides
Moses, which were at first elected by the people, but in what manner is
rather intimated than shown. Nevertheless, because I cannot otherwise
understand the passage concerning Eldad and Medad, of whom it is said
"that they were of them that were written, but went not up to the
tabernacle," then with the Talmudists I conceive that Eldad and Medad
had the suffrage of the tribes, and so were written as competitors for
magistracy; but coming afterward to the lot, failed of it, and therefore
went not up to the tabernacle, or place of confirmation by God, or to
the session-house of the Senate, with the Seventy upon whom the lot fell
to be senators; for the session-house of the Sanhedrim was first in the
court of the tabernacle, and afterward in that of the Temple, where it
came to be called the stone chamber or pavement. If this were the ballot
of Israel, that of Venice is the same transposed; for in Venice the
competitor is chosen as it were by the lot, in regard that the electors
are so made, and the magistrate is chosen by the "suffrage of the great
Council or assembly of the people." But the Sanhedrim of Israel being
thus constituted, Moses, for his time, and after him his successor sat
in the midst of it as prince or archon, and at his left hand the orator
or father of the Senate; the rest, or the bench, coming round with
either horn like a crescent, had a scribe attending upon the tip of it.

This Senate, in regard the legislator of Israel was infallible, and the
laws given by God such as were not fit to be altered by men, is much
different in the exercise of their power from all other senates, except
that of the Areopagus in Athens, which also was little more than a
supreme judicatory, for it will hardly, as I conceive, be found that
the Sanhedrim proposed to the people till the return of the children of
Israel out of captivity under Esdras, at which time there was a new law
made--namely, for a kind of excommunication, or rather banishment, which
had never been before in Israel. Nevertheless it is not to be thought
that