Proper Rules and Instructions, Without which no Person can be an Exciseman.
Quicunque vult.
Whosoever would be an Exciseman, before all things it is necessary that he learns the Art of Arithmetic.
Which Art, unless he wholly understand, he without doubt can be no Exciseman.
Now the Art of Arithmetic is this, we know how to multiply and how to divide. Desunt pauca.
The 1 is a figure, the 2 a figure, and the 3 a figure.
The 1 is a number, the 2 a number, and the 3 a number; and yet there are Desunt plurima.
For like as we are compelled by the Rules of Arithmetic, to acknowledge every figure by itself to have signification and form:
So we are forbidden, by the rules of right reason, to say, that each of them have three significations or three powers.
The 2 is of the 1’s alone, not abstracted, nor depending, but produced.