in Law, is a title acquired by use and time, and allowed by law; as when a man claims anything, because he, his ancestors, or they whose estate he hath, have had or used it all the time whereof no memory is to the contrary: or it is where for continuance of time, ultra memoriam hominis, a particular person hath a particular right against another.

There is a difference between prescription, custom, and usage. Prescription hath respect to a certain person, who by intendment may have continuance for ever; as for instance, he and all they whose estate he hath in such a thing; this is a prescription: but custom is local, and always applied to a certain place; as, time out of mind there has been such a custom in such a place, &c. And prescription belongeth to one or a few only, but custom is common to all. Usage differs from both, for it may be either to persons or places; as to inhabitants of a town to have a way, &c.

A custom and prescription are in the right; usage is in the possession; and a prescription that is good for the matter and substance, may be bad by the manner of setting it forth: but where that which is claimed as a custom, in or for many, will be good, that regularly will be so when claimed by prescription for one. Prescription is to be time out of mind; though it is not the length of time that begets the right of prescription, nothing being done by time, although every thing is done in time; but it is a presumption in law, that a thing cannot continue so long quiet, if it was against right, or injurious to another.

Scots Law. See LAW, p. 675. and 702.

Theology, was a kind of argument pleaded by Tertullian and others in the 3d century against erroneous doctors. This mode of arguing has been despised by some, both because it has been used by Papists, and because they think that truth has no need of such a support. But surely in disputed points, if it can be shown that any particular doctrine of Christianity was held in the earliest ages, even approaching the apostolic, it must have very considerable weight; and indeed that it has so, appears from the universal appeals