Legal Dissertation on the Abstinence of Natural Law from the Fallacious Rules of the Putative Summary Process

§. 16. Regarding the defense, which in the third place is to be considered among the requirements of the Law of Nature, it is commonly thought to be so essential and of the Law of Nature that it must not be denied even to the devil. Whence that solemn process of Belial the demon written against Christ by Ayrer, from which book many learn almost all the subsidies competent in a process for a long-standing trial, wrongly applied to those subjects. Nevertheless, regarding this question, we judge that one must proceed with some distinction: either the defense tends toward the fact and the contrary proof of the imputed matter—and thus we concede that it is undoubtedly of divine and natural law—or it pertains to deducing the law, or the application of the fact already proven, and hence the competent absolution or condemnation, as defense is commonly taken. We deny that this pertains to divine natural law. For whatever is brought into the middle for such a defense pertains either to the fact or to the law. The former is already established from the acts, and the latter pertains to the office of the judge, and thus must be supplied by the force of the office. And even if the judge's office in our processes is mercenary, this still only squares with those things that are to be brought forward regarding the fact, and not even this by the Law of Nature, but through the fallacious rules of the process, because the judge cannot in any way act for the rights of the parties, but not to those things which are of the law, although even in this place the rule fails and is not observed because of the depraved mode of proceeding, as we demonstrated above regarding the claim to be added to the libel. To what end, therefore, is the superfluous defense, through which nothing else is sought than to either help the judge in his office or to prescribe to him? For of the judge...