🚀 go-pugleaf

order of things during so long a
space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation
has been foretold); and extending from the earliest times to the latest,
their history comprehends in its duration all our histories which it
preceded by a long time.

The law by which this people is governed is at once the most ancient law in
the world, the most perfect, and the only one which has been always observed
without a break in a state. This is what Josephus admirably proves, Against
Apion, and also Philo the Jew, in different places, where they point out
that it is so ancient that the very name of law was only known by the oldest
nation more than a thousand years afterwards; so that Homer, who has written
the history of so many states, has never used the term. And it is easy to
judge of its perfection by simply reading it; for we see that it has
provided for all things with so great wisdom, equity, and judgement, that
the most ancient legislators, Greek and Roman, having had some knowledge of
it, have borrowed from it their principal laws; this is evident from what
are called the Twelve Tables, and from the other proofs which Josephus
gives.

But this law is at the same time the severest and strictest of all in
respect to their religious worship, imposing on this people, in order to
keep them to their duty, a thousand peculi