For those ages had their laws; they had diversity of government; they had kingly rule; nobility; policy in war; navigation, and all, or the most of needful trades.

To speak therefore of these (seeing in a general history we should have left a great deal of nakedness, by their omission) it cannot properly be called a digression.

True it is, that I have made also many others: which if they shall be laid to my charge, I must cast the fault into the great heap of human error.

For seeing we digress in all the ways of our lives: yea, seeing the life of man is nothing else but digression; I may the better be excused, in writing their lives and actions.

I am not altogether ignorant in the laws of history and of the kinds.
The same hath been taught by many, but no man better, and with greater brevity, than by that excellent learned gentleman, Sir Francis Bacon.
Christian laws are also taught us by the prophets and apostles; and every day preached unto us.