For the Liberty of UNLICENC'D PRINTING,
To the PARLAMENT of ENGLAND.

This is true Liberty when free born men
Having to advise the public may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise,
Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a State then this?
Eurip. Hicetid.

For the Liberty of unlicenc'd Printing.

They who to States and Governours of the Commonwealth direct their Speech,
High Court of Parlament, or wanting such accesse in a private condition,
write that which they foresee may advance the publick good; I suppose them
as at the beginning of no meane endeavour, not a little alter'd and mov'd
inwardly in their mindes: Some with doubt of what will be the successe,
others with fear of what will be the censure; some with hope, others with
confidence of what they have to speake. And me perhaps each of these dispo-
sitions, as the subject was whereon I enter'd, may have at other times var-
iously affected; and likely might in these formost expressions now also
disclose which of them sway'd most, but that the very attempt of this ad-
dresse thus made, and the thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath got the
power within me to a passion, farre more welcome then incidentall to a Pre-
face. Which though I stay not to confesse ere any aske, I shall be blamelesse,
if it be no other, then the joy and gratulation which it brings to all who
wish and promote their Countries liberty; whereof this whole Discourse pro-
pos'd will be a certaine testimony, if not a Trophey. For this is not the
liberty which wee can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Com-
monwealth, that let no man in this World expect; but when complaints are
freely heard, deeply consider'd and speedily reform'd, then is the utmost
bound of civill liberty attain'd, that wise men looke for. To which if I
now manifest by the very sound of this which I shall utter, that wee are
already in good part arriv'd, and yet from such a steepe disadvantage of
tyranny and superstition grounded into our principles as was beyond the
manhood of a Roman recovery, it will bee attributed first, as is most due,
to the strong assistance of God our deliverer, next to your faithfull guid-
ance and undaunted Wisdome, Lords and Commons of England. Neither is it in
Gods esteeme the diminution of his glory, when honourable things are spoken
of good men and worthy Magistrates; which if I now first should begin to
doe, after so fair a progresse of your laudable deeds, and such a long ob-
ligement upon the whole Realme to your indefatigable virtues, I might be
justly reckn'd among the tardiest, and the unwillingest of them that praise
yee. Nevertheless there being three principall things, without which all
praising is but Courtship and flattery, First, when that only is prais'd
which is solidly worth praise: next, when greatest likelihoods are brought
that such things are truly and really in those persons to whom they are as-
crib'd, the other, when he who praises, by shewing that such his actuall
perswasion is of whom he writes, can demonstrate that he flatters not; the
former two of these I have heretofore endeavour'd, rescuing the employment
from him who went about to impaire your merits with a triviall and malignant
Encomium; the latter as belonging chiefly to mine owne acquittall, that whom
I so extoll'd I did not flatter, hath been reserv'd opportunely to this oc-
casion. For he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not
to declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best cov'nant
of his fidelity; and that his loyalest affection and his hope waits on your
proceedings. His highest praising is not flattery, and his plainest advice
is a kinde of praising; for though I should affirme and hold by argument,
that it would fare better with truth, with learning, and the Commonwealth,
if one of your publisht Orders which I should name, were call'd in, yet at
the same time it could not but much redound to the lustre of your milde and
equall Government, when as private persons are hereby animated to thinke ye
better pleas'd with publick advice, then other statists have been delighted
heretofore with publicke flattery. And men will then see what difference
there is between the magnanimity of a trienniall Parlament, and that jealous
hautinesse of Prelates and cabin Counsellours that usurpt of late, when as
they shall observe yee in the midd'st of your Victories and successes more
gently brooking writt'n exceptions against a voted Order, then other Courts,
which had produc't nothing worth memory but the weake ostentation of wealth,
would have endur'd the least signifi'd dislike at any sudden Proclamation. If
I should thus farre presume upon the meek demeanour of your civill and gentle
greatnesse, Lords and Commons, as what your publisht Order hath directly said,
that to gainsay, I might defend my selfe with ease, if any should accuse me of
being new or insolent, did they but know how much better I find ye esteem it
to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece, then the barbarick pride of
a Hunnish and Norwegian statelines. And out of those ages, to whose polite wis-
dom and letters we ow that we are not yet Gothes and Jutlanders, I could name
him who from his private house wrote that discourse to the Parlament of Athens,
that perswades them to change the forme of Democraty which was then establisht.
Such honour was done in those dayes to men who profest the study of wisdome
and eloquence, not only in their own Country, but in other Lands, that Cities and
Siniories heard them gladly, and with great respect, if they had aught in pub-
lick to admonish the State. Thus did Dion Prusæus, a stranger and a privat Or-
ator counsell the Rhodians against a former Edict: and I abound with other like
examples, which to set heer would be superfluous. But if from the industry of a
life wholly dedicated to studious labours, and those naturall endowments haply
not the worst for two and fifty degrees of northern latitude, so much must be
derogated, as to count me not equall to any of those who had this priviledge,
I would obtain to be thought not so inferior, as your selves are superior to
the most of them who receiv'd their counsell: and how farre you excell them, be
assur'd, Lords and Commons, there can no greater testimony appear, then when
your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeyes the voice of reason from what quar-
ter soever it be heard speaking; and renders ye as willing to repeal any Act of
your own setting forth, as any set forth by your Predecessors.

If ye be thus resolv'd, as it were injury to think ye were not; I know not what
should withhold me from presenting ye with fit instance wherein to shew both
that love of truth which ye eminently professe, and that uprightnesse of your
judgement which is not wont to be partiall to your selves; by judging over a-
gain that Order which ye have ordain'd to regulate Printing, That no Book, pam-
phlet, or paper shall be henceforth Printed, unlesse the same be first approv'd
and licenc't by such, or at least one of such as shall be thereto appointed.
For that part which preserves justly every mans Copy to himselfe, or provides
for the poor, I touch not, only wish they be not made pretenses to abuse and
persecute honest and painfull Men, who offend not in either of these particu-
lars. But that other clause of Licencing Books, which we thought had dy'd with
his brother quadragesimal and matrimonial when the Prelats expir'd, I shall now
attend with such a Homily, as shall lay before ye, first the inventors of it to
bee those whom ye will be loath to own; next what is to be thought in generall
of reading, what ever sort the Books be; and that this Order avails nothing to
the suppressing of scandalous, seditious, and libellous Books, which were mainly
intended to be supprest. Last, that it will be primely to the discouragement of
all learning, and the stop of Truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our
abilities in what we know already, but by hindring and cropping the discovery
that might bee yet further made both in religious and civill Wisdome.

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Common-
wealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves as well as men;
and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as male-
factors: For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie
of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay
they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that liv-
ing intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously pro-
ductive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance
to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us'd,
as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reason-
able creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it
selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden
to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit,
imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age
can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse; and revolutions of
ages do not oft recover the losse of a rejected truth, for the want of which
whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we
raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that season'd
life of man preserv'd and stor'd up in Books; since we see a kinde of homicide
may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdome, and if it extend to the whole
impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying
of an elementall life, but strikes at that ethereall and fift essence, the
breath of reason it selfe, slaies an immortality rather then a life. But lest
I should be condemn'd of introducing licence, while I oppose Licencing, I re-
fuse not the paines to be so much Historicall, as will serve to shew what hath
been done by ancient and famous Commonwealths, against this disorder, till the
very time that this project of licencing crept out of the Inquisition, was
catcht up by our Prelates, and hath caught some of our Presbyters.

In Athens where Books and Wits were ever busier then in any other part of Greece,
I finde but only two sorts of writings which the Magistrate car'd to take notice
of; those either blasphemous and Atheisticall, or Libellous. Thus the Books of
Protagoras were by the Iudges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himselfe
banisht the territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know whe-
ther there were gods, or whether not: And against defaming, it was decreed that
none should be traduc'd by name, as was the manner of Vetus Comœdia, whereby we
may guesse how they censur'd libelling: And this course was quick enough, as
Cicero writes, to quell both the desperate wits of other Atheists, and the open
way of defaming, as the event shew'd. Of other sects and opinions, though tend-
ing to voluptuousnesse, and the denying of divine providence, they tooke no heed.
Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine school of Cy-
rene, or what the Cynick impudence utter'd, was ever question'd by the Laws.
Neither is it recorded that the writings of those old Comedians were suppresst,
though the acting of them were forbid; and that Plato commended the reading of
Aristophanes, the loosest of them all, to his royall scholler Dionysius, is com-
monly known, and may be excus'd, if holy Chrysostome, as is reported, nightly
studied so much the same Author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence
into the stile of a rousing Sermon. That other leading city of Greece, Lacedæmon,
considering that Lycurgus their Law-giver was so addicted to elegant learning,
as to have been the first that brought out of Ionia the scatter'd workes of Homer,
and sent the poet Thales from Creet to prepare and mollifie the Spartan surli-
nesse with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law and civ-
ility, it is to be wonder'd how muselesse and unbookish they were, minding nought
but the feats of Warre. There needed no licencing of Books among them for they
dislik'd all, but their owne Laconick Apothegms, and took a slight occasion to
chase Archilochus out of their City, perhaps for composing in a higher straine
then their own souldierly ballats and roundels could reach to: Or if it were for
his broad verses, they were not therein so cautious, but they were as dissolute
in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirmes in Andromache, that
their women were all unchaste. Thus much may give us light after what sort Bookes
were prohibited among the Greeks. The Romans also for many ages train'd up only
to a military roughnes, resembling most the Lacedæmonian guise, knew of learning
little but what their twelve Tables, and the Pontifick College with their Augurs
and Flamins taught them in Religion and Law, so unacquainted with other learning,
that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the Stoick Diogenes comming Embassadors to
Rome, tooke thereby occasion to give the City a tast of their Philosophy, they were
suspected for seducers by no lesse a man then Cato the Censor, who mov'd it in the
Senat to dismisse them speedily, and to banish all such Attick bablers out of Italy.
But Scipio and others of the noblest Senators withstood him and his old Sabin aus-
terity; honour'd and admir'd the men; and the Censor himself at last in his old age
fell to the study of that whereof before hee was so scrupulous. And yet at the same
time Nævius and Plautus the first Latine comedians had fill'd the City with all the
borrow'd Scenes of Menander and Philemon. Then began to be consider'd there also
what was to be don to libellous books and Authors; for Nævius was quickly cast into
prison for his unbridl'd pen, and releas'd by the Tribunes upon his recantation: We
read also that libels were burnt, and the makers punisht by Augustus. The like sever-
ity no doubt was us'd if ought were impiously writt'n against their esteemed gods.
Except in these two points, how the world went in Books, the Magistrat kept no reck-
ning. And therefore Lucretius without impeachment versifies his Epicurism to Memmius,
and had the honour to be set forth the second time by Cicero so great a father of the
Commonwealth; although himselfe disputes against that opinion in his own writings.
Nor was the Satyricall sharpnesse, or naked plainnes of Lucilius, or Catullus, or
Flaccus, by any order prohibited. And for matters of State, the story of Titus Livius,
though it extoll'd that part which Pompey held, was not therefore suppresst by Octa-
vius Cæsar of the other Faction. But that Naso was by him banisht in his old age, for
the wanton Poems of his youth, was but a meer covert of State over some secret cause:
and besides, the Books were neither banisht nor call'd in. From hence we shall meet
with little else but tyranny in the Roman Empire, that we may not marvell, if not so
often bad, as good Books were silenc't. I shall therefore deem to have bin large
anough in producing what among the ancients was punishable to write, save only which,
all other arguments were free to treat on.

By this time the Emperors were become Christians, whose discipline in this point I
doe not finde to have bin more severe then what was formerly in practice. The Books
of those whom they took to be grand Hereticks were examin'd, refuted, and condemn'd
in the general Councels; and not till then were prohibited, or burnt by autority of
the Emperor. As for the writings of Heathen authors, unlesse they were plaine invec-
tives against Christianity, as those of Porphyrius and Proclus, they met with no in-
terdict that can be cited, till about the year 400. in a Carthaginian Councel, where-
in Bishops themselves were forbid to read the Books of Gentiles, but Heresies they
might read: while others long before them on the contrary scrupl'd more the Books of
Hereticks, then of Gentiles. And that the primitive Councels and Bishops were wont
only to declare what Books were not commendable, passing no furder, but leaving it
to each ones conscience to read or to lay by, till after the yeare 800. is observ'd
already by Padre Paolo the great unmasker of the Trentine Councel. After which time
the Popes of Rome, engrossing what they pleas'd of Politicall rule into their owne
hands, extended their dominion over mens eyes, as they had before over their judge-
ments, burning and prohibiting to be read, what they fancied not; yet sparing in
their censures, and the Books not many which they so dealt with: till Martin the 5.
by his Bull not only prohibited, but was the first that excommunicated the reading
of hereticall Books; for about that time Wicklef and Husse growing terrible, were
they who first drove the Papall Court to a stricter policy of prohibiting. Which
cours Leo the 10, and his successors follow'd, untill the Councell of Trent, and
the Spanish Inquisition engendring together brought forth, or perfeted those Cata-
logues, and expurging Indexes that rake through the entralls of many an old good
Author, with a violation wors then any could be offer'd to his tomb. Nor did they
stay in matters Hereticall, but any subject that was not to their palat, they either
condemn'd in a prohibition, or had it strait into the new Purgatory of an Index. To
fill up the measure of encroachment, their last invention was to ordain that no Book,
pamphlet, or paper should be Printed (as if St. Peter had bequeath'd them the keys
of the Presse also out of Paradise) unlesse it were approv'd and licenc't under the
hands of 2 or 3 glutton Friers. For example:

Let the Chancellor Cini be pleas'd to see if in this present work be contain'd
ought that may withstand the Printing.

Vincent Rabbatta, Vicar of Florence.

I have seen this present work, and finde nothing athwart the Catholick faith and
good manners: in witness whereof I have given, &c.

Nicolo Cini, Chancellor of Florence.

Attending the precedent relation, it is allow'd that this present work of Davanzati
may be printed.

Vincent Rabbatta, &c.

It may be printed, July 15.

Friar Simon Mompei d'Amelia, Chancellor of the holy office in Florence.

Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomlesse pit had not long since broke
prison, that this quadruple exorcism would barre him down. I fear their next designe
will be to get into their custody the licensing of that which they say Claudius in-
tended, but went not through with. Voutsafe to see another of their forms the Roman
stamp:

Imprimatur, If it seem good to the reverend Master of the holy Palace.
Belcastro Vicegerent.

Imprimatur
Friar Nicolo Rodolphi, Master of the holy Palace.

Sometimes 5 Imprimaturs are seen together dialogue-wise in the Piatza of one Title
page, complementing and ducking each to other with their shav'n reverences, whether
the Author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his Epistle, shall to the Presse
or to the spunge. These are the prety responsories, these are the dear Antiphonies,
that so bewitcht of late our Prelats, and their Chaplaines with the goodly Eccho they
made; and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly Imprimatur, one from Lambeth
house, another from the West end of Pauls; so apishly Romanizing, that the word of
command still was set downe in Latine; as if the learned Grammaticall pen that wrote
it, would cast no ink without Latine: or perhaps, as they thought, because no vulgar
tongue was worthy to expresse the pure conceit of an Imprimatur; but rather, as I
hope, for that our English, the language of men ever famous, and formost in the at-
chievements of liberty, will not easily finde servile letters anow to spell such a
dictatorie presumption in English. And thus ye have the Inventors and the originall
of Book-licencing ript up and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not,
that can be heard of, from any ancient State, or politie, or Church, nor by any
Statute left us by our Ancestors elder or later; nor from the moderne custom of any
reformed Citty, or Church abroad; but from the most Antichristian Councel and the
most tyrannous Inquisition that ever inquir'd. Till then Books were ever as freely
admitted into the World as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more sti-
fl'd then the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sate cros-leg'd over the nativity
of any mans intellectuall off spring; but if it prov'd a Monster, who denies, but
that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the Sea. But that a Book in wors condition
then a peccant soul, should be to stand before a Jury ere it be borne to the World,
and undergo yet in darknesse the judgement of Radamanth and his Collegues, ere it
can pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till that mysterious
iniquity, provokt and troubl'd at the first entrance of Reformation, sought out new
limbo's and new hells wherein they might include our Books also within the number of
their damned. And this was the rare morsell so officiously snatcht up, and so ilfa-
vourdly imitated by our inquisiturient Bishops, and the attendant minorites their
Chaplains. That ye like not now these most certain Authors of this licencing order,
and that all sinister intention was farre distant from your thoughts, when ye were
importun'd the passing it, all men who know the integrity of your actions, and how
ye honour Truth, will clear yee readily.

But some will say, What though the inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be
good? It may be so; yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but obvious, and
easie for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest Commonwealths through all ages,
and occasions have foreborne to use it, and falsest seducers, and oppressors of men
were the first who tooke it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder
the first approach of Reformation; I am of those who beleeve, it will be a harder al-
chymy then Lullius ever knew, to sublimat any good use out of such an invention. Yet
this only is what I request to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous
and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, untill I
can dissect one by one the properties it has. But I have first to finish, as was pro-
pounded, what is to be thought in generall of reading Books, what ever sort they be,
and whether be more the benefit, or the harm that thence proceeds?

Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, & Paul, who were skilfull in all
the learning of the Agyptians, Caldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be
without reading their Books of all sorts; in Paul especially, who thought it no de-
filement to insert into holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek Poets, and one
of them a Tragedian, the question was, notwithstanding sometimes controverted among
the Primitive Doctors, but with great odds on that side which affirm'd it both law-
full and profitable, as was then evidently perceiv'd, when Julian the Apostat, and
suttlest enemy to our faith, made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen
learning: for, said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our owne arts
and sciences they overcome us. And indeed the Christians were put so to their shifts
by this crafty means, and so much in danger to decline into all ignorance, that the
two Apollinarii were fain as a man may say, to coin all the seven liberall Sciences
out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of Orations, Poems, Dialogues, ev'n
to the calculating of a new Christian grammar. But, saith the Historian Socrates,
The providence of God provided better then the industry of Apollinarius and his son,
by taking away that illiterat law with the life of him who devis'd it. So great an
injury they then held it to be depriv'd of Hellenick learning; and thought it a per-
secution more undermining, and secretly decaying the Church, then the open cruelty
of Decius or Dioclesian. And perhaps it was the same politick drift that the Divell
whipt St. Jerom in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it was a fantasm bred
by the feaver which had then seis'd him. For had an Angel bin his discipliner, un-
lesse it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, & had chastiz'd the reading,
not the vanity, it had bin plainly partiall; first to correct him for grave Cicero,
and not for scurrill Plautus, whom he confesses to have bin reading not long before;
next to correct him only, and let so many more ancient Fathers wax old in those plea-
sant and florid studies without the lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that
Basil teaches how some good use may be made of Margites, a sportfull Poem, not now
extant, writ by Homer; and why not then of Morgante, an Italian Romanze much to the
same purpose. But if it be agreed we shall be try'd by visions, there is a vision re-
corded by Eusebius far ancienter then this tale of Jerom to the Nun Eustochium, and
besides has nothing of a feavor in it. Dionysius Alexandrinus was about the year 240,
a person of great name in the Church for piety and learning, who had wont to avail
himself much against hereticks by being conversant in their Books; untill a certain
Presbyter laid it scrupulously to his conscience, how he durst venture himselfe among
those defiling volumes. The worthy man loath to give offence fell into a new debate
with himselfe what was to be thought; when suddenly a vision sent from God, it is his
own Epistle that so averrs it, confirm'd him in these words: Read any books what ever
come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each
matter. To this revelation he assented the sooner, as he confesses, because it was
answerable to that of the Apostle to the Thessalonians, Prove all things, hold fast
that which is good. And he might have added another remarkable saying of the same
Author; To the pure, all things are pure, not only meats and drinks, but all kinde
of knowledge whether of good or evill; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently
the books, if the will and conscience be not defil'd. For books are as meats and vi-
ands are; some of good, some of evill substance; and yet God in that unapocryphall
vision, said without exception, Rise Peter, kill and eat, leaving the choice to each
mans discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomack differ little or nothing from
unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of
evill. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but
herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious Reader
serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Wher-
of what better witnes can ye expect I should produce, then one of your own now sitting
in Parlament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden, whose volume
of naturall & national laws proves, not only by great autorities brought together, but
by exquisite reasons and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opini-
ons, yea errors, known, read, and collated, are of main service & assistance toward
the speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive therefore, that when God did en-
large the universall diet of mans body, saving ever the rules of temperance, he then
also, as before, left arbitrary the dyeting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every
mature man might have to exercise his owne leading capacity. How great a vertue is tem-
perance, how much of moment through the whole life of man? yet God committs the man-
aging so great a trust, without particular Law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour
of every grown man. And therefore when he himself tabl'd the Jews from heaven, that
Omer which was every mans daily portion of Manna, is computed to have bin more then
might have well suffic'd the heartiest feeder thrice as many meals. For those actions
which enter into a man, rather then issue out of him, and therefore defile not, God
uses not to captivat under a perpetuall childhood of prescription, but trusts him with
the gift of reason to be his own chooser; there were but little work left for preaching,
if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which hertofore were gov-
ern'd only by exhortation. Salomon informs us that much reading is a wearines to the
flesh; but neither he, nor other inspir'd author tells us that such, or such reading
is unlawfull: yet certainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it had bin much
more expedient to have told us what was unlawfull, then what was wearisome. As for the
burning of those Ephesian books by St. Pauls converts, tis reply'd the books were magick,
the Syriack so renders them. It was a privat act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a
voluntary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books which were their own; the
Magistrat by this example is not appointed; these men practiz'd the books, another
might perhaps have read them in some sort usefully. Good and evill we know in the
field of this World grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is
so involv'd and interwoven with the knowledge of evill, and in so many cunning resem-
blances hardly to be discern'd, that those confused seeds which were impos'd on Psyche
as an incessant labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixt. It was
from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two
twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom
which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to say of knowing good by e-
vill. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdome can there be to choose, what
continence to forbeare without the knowledge of evill? He that can apprehend and con-
sider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distin-
guish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never
sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall
garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence
into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and
triall is by what is contrary. That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the
contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers,
and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure; her whitenesse is but an excrement-
all whitenesse; Which was the reason why our sage and serious Poet Spencer, whom I
dare be known to think a better teacher then Scotus or Aquinas, describing true tem-
perance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of
Mammon, and the bowr of earthly blisse that he might see and know, and yet abstain.
Since therefore the knowledge and survay of vice is in this world so necessary to
the constituting of human vertue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of
truth, how can we more safely, and with lesse danger scout into the regions of sin
and falsity then by reading all manner of tractats, and hearing all manner of reason?
And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read. But of the harm
that may result hence three kinds are usually reckn'd. First, is fear'd the infection
that may spread; but then all human learning and controversie in religious points must
remove out of the world, yea the Bible it selfe; for that oftimes relates blasphemy not
nicely, it describes the carnall sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in hol-
iest men passionately murmuring against providence through all the arguments of Epicurus:
in other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader: And ask a
Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and all the Prophets
cannot perswade him to pronounce the textuall Chetiv. For these causes we all know the
Bible it selfe put by the Papist into the first rank of prohibited books. The ancientest
Fathers must be next remov'd, as Clement of Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of Evan-
gelick preparation, transmitting our ears through a hoard of heathenish obscenities to
receive the Gospel. Who finds not that Irenaus, Epiphanius, Jerom, and others discover
more heresies then they well confute, and that oft for heresie which is the truer opin-
ion. Nor boots it to say for these, and all the heathen Writers of greatest infection,
if it must be thought so, with whom is bound up the life of human learning, that they
writ in an unknown tongue, so long as we are sure those languages are known as well to
the worst of men, who are both most able, and most diligent to instill the poison they
suck, first into the Courts of Princes, acquainting them with the choicest delights,
and criticisms of sin. As perhaps did that Petronius whom Nero call'd his Arbiter, the
Master of his revels; and that notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded, and yet dear to
the Italian Courtiers. I name not him for posterities sake, whom Harry the 8. nam'd in
merriment his Vicar of hell. By which compendious way all the contagion that foreine
books can infuse, will find a passage to the people farre easier and shorter then an
Indian voyage, though it could be sail'd either by the North of Cataio Eastward, or of
Canada Westward, while our Spanish licencing gags the English Presse never so severely.
But on the other side that infection which is from books of controversie in Religion,
is more doubtfull and dangerous to the learned, then to the ignorant; and yet those
books must be permitted untoucht by the licencer. It will be hard to instance where
any ignorant man hath bin ever seduc't by Papisticall book in English, unlesse it were
commended and expounded to him by some of that Clergy: and indeed all such tractats
whether false or true are as the Prophesie of Isaiah was to the Eunuch, not to be un-
derstood without a guide. But of our Priests and Doctors how many have bin corrupted
by studying the comments of Jesuits and Sorbonists, and how fast they could transfuse
that corruption into the people, our experience is both late and sad. It is not forgot,
since the acute and distinct Arminius was perverted meerly by the perusing of a name-
lesse discourse writt'n at Delf, which at first he took in hand to confute. Seeing
therefore that those books, & those in great abundance which are likeliest to taint
both life and doctrine, cannot be suppresst without the fall of learning, and of all
ability in disputation, and that these books of either sort are most and soonest
catching to the learned, from whom to the common people whatever is hereticall or dis-
solute may quickly be convey'd, and that evill manners are as perfectly learnt without
books a thousand other ways which cannot be stopt, and evill doctrine not with books
can propagate, except a teacher guide, which he might also doe without writing, and
so beyond prohibiting, I am not able to unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of lic-
encing can be exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts. And he who
were pleasantly dispos'd could not well avoid to lik'n it to the exploit of that gal-
lant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his Parkgate. Besides another
inconvenience, if learned men be the first receivers out of books & dispredders both
of vice and error, how shall the licencers themselves be confided in, unlesse we can
conferr upon them, or they assume to themselves above all others in the Land, the
grace of infallibility, and uncorruptednesse? And again if it be true, that a wise
man like a good refiner can gather gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool
will be a fool with the best book, yea or without book, there is no reason that we
should deprive a wise man of any advantage to his wisdome, while we seek to restrain
from a fool, that which being restrain'd will be no hindrance to his folly. For if
there should be so much exactnesse always us'd to keep that from him which is unfit
for his reading, we should in the judgement of Aristotle not only, but of Salomon,
and of our Saviour, not voutsafe him good precepts, and by consequence not willingly
admit him to good books; as being certain that a wise man will make better use of an
idle pamphlet, then a fool will do of sacred Scripture. 'Tis next alleg'd we must
not expose ourselves to temptations without necessity, and next to that, not imploy
our time in vain things. To both these objections one answer will serve, out of the
grounds already laid, that to all men such books are not temptations, nor vanities;
but usefull drugs and materialls wherewith to temper and compose effective and strong
med'cins, which mans life cannot want. The rest, as children and childish men, who
have not the art to qualifie and prepare these working mineralls, well may be exhort-
ed to forbear, but hinder'd forcibly they cannot be by all the licencing that Saint-
ed Inquisition could ever yet contrive; which is what I promis'd to deliver next,
That this order of licencing conduces nothing to the end for which it was fram'd;
and hath almost prevented me by being clear already while thus much hath bin explain-
ing. See the ingenuity of Truth, who when she gets a free and willing hand, opens her-
self faster then the pace of method and discours can overtake her. It was the task
which I began with, To shew that no Nation, or well instituted State, if they valu'd
books at all, did ever use this way of licencing; and it might be answer'd, that this
is a piece of prudence lately discover'd. To which I return, that as it was a thing
slight and obvious to think on, so if it had bin difficult to finde out, there wanted not
among them long since, who suggested such a cours; which they not following, leave
us a pattern of their judgement, that it was not the not knowing, but the not approv-
ing, which was the cause of their not using it. Plato, a man of high autority, indeed,
but least of all for his Commonwealth, in the book of his laws, which no City ever yet
receiv'd, fed his fancie with making many edicts to his ayrie Burgomasters, which they
who otherwise admire him, wish had bin rather buried and excus'd in the genial cups of
an Academick night-sitting. By which laws he seems to tolerat no kind of learning, but
by unalterable decree, consisting most of practicall traditions, to the attainment
whereof a Library of smaller bulk then his own dialogues would be abundant. And there
also enacts that no Poet should so much as read to any privat man, what he had writt'n,
untill the Judges and Law-keepers had seen it, and allow'd it: But that Plato meant
this Law peculiarly to that Commonwealth which he had imagin'd, and to no other, is ev-
ident. Why was he not else a Law-giver to himself, but a transgressor, and to be expell'd
by his own Magistrats; both for the wanton epigrams and dialogues which he made, and his
perpetuall reading of Sophron Mimus and Aristophanes, books of grossest infamy, and also
for commending the latter of them, though he were the malicious libeller of his chief
friends, to be read by the Tyrant Dionysius, who had little need of such trash to spend
his time on? But that he knew this licencing of Poems had reference and dependence to
many other proviso's there set down in his fancied republic, which in this world could
have no place: and so neither he himself, nor any Magistrat, or City ever imitated that
cours, which tak'n apart from those other collaterall injunctions, must needs be vain
and fruitlesse. For if they fell upon one kind of strictnesse, unlesse their care were
equall to regulat all other things of like aptnes to corrupt the mind, that single en-
deavour they knew would be but a fond labour; to shut and fortifie one gate against cor-
ruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about wide open. If we think to regu-
lat Printing, thereby to rectifie manners, we must regulat all recreations and pastimes,
all that is delightful to man. No musick must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what
is grave and Dorick. There must be licencing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deport-
ment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such
Plato was provided of; It will ask more then the work of twenty licencers to examin all
the lutes, the violins, and the ghittarrs in every house; they must not be suffer'd to
prattle as they doe, but must be licenc'd what they may say. And who shall silence all
the airs and madrigalls, that whisper softnes in chambers? The Windows also, and the Bal-
cone's must be thought on, there are shrewd books, with dangerous Frontispices set to
sale; who shall prohibit them, shall twenty licencers? The villages also must have their
visitors to enquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebbeck reads ev'n to the ballatry,
and the gammuth of every municipal fidler, for these are the Countrymans Arcadia's and
his Monte Mayors. Next, what more Nationall corruption, for which England hears ill a-
broad, then houshold gluttony; who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting? and what
shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that frequent those houses where drunk'nes is
sold and harbour'd? Our garments also should be referr'd to the licencing of some more
sober work-masters to see them cut into a lesse wanton garb. Who shall regulat all the
mixt conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this
Country, who shall still appoint what shall be discours'd, what presum'd, and no furder?
Lastly, who shall forbid and separat all idle resort, all evill company? These things
will be, and must be; but how they shall be lest hurtfull, how lest enticing, herein
consists the grave and governing wisdom of a State. To sequester out of the world into
Atlantick and Eutopian polities which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our
condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evill, in the midd'st whereof God
hath plac't us unavoidably. Nor is it Plato's licencing of books will doe this, which
necessarily pulls along with it so many other kinds of licencing, as will make us all
both ridiculous and weary, and yet frustrat; but those unwritt'n, or at least uncon-
straining laws of vertuous education, religious and civill nurture, which Plato there
mentions, as the bonds and ligaments of the Commonwealth, the pillars and the sustainers
of every writt'n Statute; these they be which will bear chief sway in such matters as
these, when all licencing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissenes, for certain
are the bane of a Commonwealth, but here the great art lyes to discern in what the law
is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things perswasion only is to work. If
every action which is good, or evill in man at ripe years, were to be under pittance,
and prescription, and compulsion, what were vertue but a name, what praise could be
then due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just or continent? many there be
that complain of divin Providence for suffering Adam to transgresse, foolish tongues!
when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing;
he had bin else a meer artificiall Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We our
selves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore
left him free, set before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes herein con-
sisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence. Where-
fore did he creat passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly
temper'd are the very ingredients of vertu? They are not skilfull considerers of human
things, who imagin to remove sin by removing the matter of sin; for, besides that it is
a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it may
for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in such a universall
thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin remains entire. Though ye take
from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewell left, ye cannot bereave him
of his covetousnesse. Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest
discipline that can be exercis'd in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste, that
came not thither so: such great care and wisdom is requir'd to the right managing of
this point. Suppose we could expell sin by this means; look how much we thus expell of
sin, so much we expell of vertue: for the matter of them both is the same; remove that,
and ye remove them both alike. This justifies the high providence of God, who though
he command us temperance, justice, continence, yet powrs out before us ev'n to a pro-
fusenes all desirable things, and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and
satiety. Why should we then affect a rigour contrary to the manner of God and of nature,
by abridging or scanting those means, which books freely permitted are, both to the
triall of vertue and the exercise of truth. It would be better done to learn that the
law must needs be frivolous which goes to restrain things, uncertainly and yet equally
working to good, and to evill. And were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be
preferr'd before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evill-doing. For God sure
esteems the growth and compleating of one vertuous person, more then the restraint of
ten vitious. And albeit whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, or
conversing may be fitly call'd our book, and is of the same effect that writings are,
yet grant the thing to be prohibited were only books, it appears that this order hither-
to is far insufficient to the end which it intends. Do we not see, not once or oftner,
but weekly that continu'd Court-libell against the Parlament and City, Printed, as the
wet sheets can witnes, and dispers't among us, for all that licencing can doe. yet this
is the prime service a man would think, wherein this order should give proof of it self.
If it were executed, you'l say. But certain, if execution be remisse or blindfold now,
and in this particular, what will it be hereafter and in other books? If then the order
shall not be vain and frustrat, behold a new labour, Lords and Commons, ye must repeal
and proscribe all scandalous and unlicenc't books already printed and divulg'd; after
ye have drawn them up into a list, that all may know which are condemn'd, and which not;
and ordain that no forrein books be deliver'd out of custody, till they have bin read
over. This office will require the whole time of not a few overseers, and those no vul-
gar men. There be also books which are partly usefull and excellent, partly culpable
and pernicious; this work will ask as many more officials, to make expurgations, and ex-
punctions, that the Commonwealth of Learning be not damnify'd. In fine, when the multi-
tude of books encrease upon their hands, ye must be fain to catalogue all those Printers
who are found frequently offending, and forbidd the importation of their whole suspected
typography. In a word, that this your order may be exact, and not deficient, ye must
reform it perfectly according to the model of Trent and Sevil, which I know ye abhorre
to doe. Yet though ye should condescend to this, which God forbid, the order still would
be but fruitlesse and defective to that end whereto ye meant it. If to prevent sects and
schisms, who is so unread or so uncatechis'd in story, that hath not heard of many sects
refusing books as a hindrance, and preserving their doctrine unmixt for many ages, only
by unwritt'n traditions. The Christian faith, for that was once a schism, is not unknown
to have spread all over Asia, ere any Gospel or Epistle was seen in writing. If the a-
mendment of manners be aym'd at, look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one
scruple the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitionall
rigor that hath been executed upon books.

Another reason, whereby to make it plain that this order will misse the end it seeks,
consider by the quality which ought to be in every licencer. It cannot be deny'd but that
he who is made judge to sit upon the birth, or death of books whether they may be wafted
into this world, or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious,
learned, and judicious; there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is pass-
able or not; which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth as behoovs him, there
cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing Journey-work, a greater losse of time levied upon
his head, then to be made the perpetuall reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, oftimes
huge volumes. There is no book that is acceptable unlesse at certain seasons; but to be
enjoyn'd the reading of that at all times, and in a hand scars legible, whereof three
pages would not down at any time in the fairest Print, is an imposition I cannot beleeve
how he that values time, and his own studies, or is but of a sensible nostrill should be
able to endure. In this one thing I crave leave of the present licencers to be pardon'd
for so thinking: who doubtlesse took this office up, looking on it through their obedie-
nce to the Parlament, whose command perhaps made all things seem easie and unlaborious to
them; but that this short triall hath wearied them out already, their own expressions and
excuses to them who make so many journeys to sollicit their licence, are testimony anough.
Seeing therefore those who now possesse the imployment, by all evident signs wish them-
selves well ridd of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not a plain unthrift of
his own hours is ever likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary
of a Presse-corrector, we may easily foresee what kind of licencers we are to expect here-
after, either ignorant, imperious, and remisse, or basely pecuniary. This is what I had
to shew, wherein this order cannot conduce to that end, whereof it bears the intention.

I lastly proceed from the no good it can do, to the manifest hurt it causes, in being first
the greatest discouragement and affront, that can be offer'd to learning and to learned men.
It was the complaint and lamentation of Prelats, upon every least breath of a motion to re-
move pluralities, and distribute more equally Church revennu's, that then all learning would
be for ever dasht and discourag'd. But as for that opinion, I never found cause to think that
the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the Clergy: nor could I ever but hold it for a
sordid and unworthy speech of any Churchman who had a competency left him. If therefore ye
be loath to dishearten utterly and discontent, not the mercenary crew of false pretenders to
learning, but the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were born to study, and love
lerning for it self, not for lucre, or any other end, but the service of God and of truth,
and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented
shall be the reward of those whose publisht labours advance the good of mankind, then know,
that so far to distrust the judgement & the honesty of one who hath but a common repute in
learning, and never yet offended, as not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor
and examiner, lest he should drop a scism, or something of corruption, is the greatest dis-
pleasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him. What advantage
is it to be a man over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only scapt the ferular, to
come under the fescu of an Imprimatur? if serious and elaborat writings, as if they were no
more then the theam of a Grammar lad under his Pedagogue must not be utter'd without the
cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licencer. He who is not trusted with his own
actions, his drift not being known to be evill, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty,
has no great argument to think himself reputed in the Commonwealth wherin he was born, for
other then a fool or a foreiner. When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason
and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditats, is industrious, and likely consults
and conferrs with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes himself to be inform'd
in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him; if in this the most consummat act of
his fidelity and ripenesse, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring
him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unlesse he carry
all his considerat diligence, all his midnight watchings, and expence of Palladian oyl, to
the hasty view of an unleasur'd licencer, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferiour
in judgement, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing, and if he be not repulst,
or slighted, must appear in Print like a punie with his guardian, and his censors hand on the
back of his title to be his bayl and surety, that he is no idiot, or seducer, it cannot be but
a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the priviledge and dignity of Learn-
ing. And what if the author shall be one so copious of fancie, as to have many things well
worth the adding, come into his mind after licencing, while the book is yet under the Presse,
which not seldom happ'ns to the best and diligentest writers; and that perhaps a dozen times
in one book. The Printer dares not go beyond his licenc't copy; so often then must the author
trudge to his leav-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewd; and many a jaunt will be
made, ere that licencer, for it must be the same man, can either be found, or found at leisure;
mean while either the Presse must stand still, which is no small damage, or the author loose his
accuratest thoughts, & send the book forth wors then he had made it, which to a diligent writer
is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall. And how can a man teach with autority,
which is the life of teaching, how can he be a Doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had
better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the
correction of his patriarchal licencer to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-
bound humor which he calls his judgement. When every acute reader upon the first sight of a ped-
antick licence, will be ready with these like words to ding the book a coits distance from him,
I hate a pupil teacher, I endure not an instructer that comes to me under the wardship of an o-
verseeing fist. I know nothing of the licencer, but that I have his own hand here for his arro-
gance; who shall warrant me his judgement? The State Sir, replies the Stationer, but has a quick
return, The State shall be my governours, but not my criticks; they may be mistak'n in the choice
of a licencer, as easily as this licencer may be mistak'n in an author: This is some common stuffe:
and he might adde from Sir Francis Bacon, That such authoriz'd books are but the language of the
times. For though a licencer should happ'n to be judicious more then ordnary, which will be a
great jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very office and his commission enjoyns him to let
passe nothing but what is vulgarly receiv'd already. Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work
of any deceased author, though never so famous in his life time, and even to this day, come to
their hands for licence to be Printed, or Reprinted, if there be found in his book one sentence
of a ventrous edge, utter'd in the height of zeal, and who knows whether it might not be the dic-
tat of a divine Spirit, yet not suiting with every low decrepit humor of their own, though it
were Knox himself, the Reformer of a Kingdom that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash:
the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulnesse or the presum-
ptuous rashnesse of a perfunctory licencer. And to what an author this violence hath bin lately
done, and in what book of greatest consequence to be faithfully publisht, I could now instance,
but shall forbear till a more convenient season. Yet if these things be not resented seriously
and timely by them who have the remedy in their power, but that such iron moulds as these shall
have autority to knaw out the choicest periods of exquisitest books, and to commit such a trea-
cherous fraud against the orphan remainders of worthiest men after death, the more sorrow will
belong to that haples race of men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth let
no man care to learn, or care to be more then worldly wise; for certainly in higher matters to
be ignorant and slothfull, to be a common stedfast dunce will be the only pleasant life, and
only in request.

And as it is a particular disesteem of every knowing person alive, and most injurious to the
writt'n labours and monuments of the dead, so to me it seems an undervaluing and vilifying of
the whole Nation. I cannot set so light by all the invention, the art, the wit, the grave and
solid judgement which is in England, as that it can be comprehended in any twenty capacities
how good soever, much lesse that it should not passe except their superintendence be over it,
except it be sifted and strain'd with their strainers, that it should be uncurrant without
their manuall stamp. Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopoliz'd and trad-
ed in by tickets and statutes, and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of
all the knowledge in the Land, to mark and licence it like our broad cloath, and our wooll
packs. What is it but a servitude like that impos'd by the Philistims, not to be allow'd the
sharpning of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licen-
cing forges. Had any one writt'n and divulg'd erroneous things & scandalous to honest life,
misusing and forfeiting the esteem had of his reason among men, if after conviction this only
censure were adjudg'd him, that he should never henceforth write, but what were first examin'd
by an appointed officer, whose hand should be annext to passe his credit for him, that now he
might be safely read, it could not be apprehended lesse then a disgracefull punishment. Whence
to include the whole Nation, and those that never yet thus offended, under such a diffident
and suspectfull prohibition, may plainly be understood what a disparagement it is. So much
the more, when dettors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but unoffensive books
must not stirre forth without a visible jaylor in thir title. Nor is it to the common people
lesse then a reproach; for if we be so jealous over them, as that we dare not trust them with
an English pamphlet, what doe we but censure them for a giddy, vitious, and ungrounded people;
in such a sick and weak estate of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but
through the pipe of a licencer. That this is care or love of them, we cannot pretend, whenas
in those Popish places where the Laity are most hated and dispis'd the same strictnes is us'd
over them. Wisdom we cannot call it, because it stops but one breach of licence, nor that nei-
ther; whenas those corruptions which it seeks to prevent, break in faster at other dores which
cannot be shut.

And in conclusion it reflects to the disrepute of our Ministers also, of whose labours we
should hope better, and of the proficiencie which thir flock reaps by them, then that after
all this light of the Gospel which is, and is to be, and all this continuall preaching, they
should be still frequented with such an unprincipl'd, unedify'd, and laick rabble, as that the
whiffe of every new pamphlet should stagger them out of their catechism, and Christian walking.
This may have much reason to discourage the Ministers when such a low conceit is had of all
their exhortations, and the benefiting of their hearers, as that they are not thought fit to
be turn'd loose to three sheets of paper without a licencer, that all the Sermons, all the
Lectures preacht, printed, vented in such numbers, and such volumes, as have now wellnigh made
all other books unsalable, should not be armor anough against one single enchiridion, without
the castle of St. Angelo of an Imprimatur.

And lest som should perswade ye, Lords and Commons, that these arguments of lerned mens dis-
couragement at this your order, are meer flourishes, and not reall, I could recount what I have
seen and heard in other Countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes; when I have sat
among their lerned men, for that honor I had, and bin counted happy to be born in such a place
of Philosophic freedom, as they suppos'd England was, while themselvs did nothing but bemoan
the servil condition into which lerning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had
dampt the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had bin there writt'n now these many years but
flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a
prisner to the Inquisition, for thinking in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Domin-
ican licencers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the Pre-
laticall yoak, neverthelesse I took it as a pledge of future happines, that other Nations were
so perswaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my hope that those Worthies were then breathing
in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgott'n by any
revolution of time that this world hath to finish. When that was once begun, it was as little
in my fear, that what words of complaint I heard among lerned men of other parts utter'd against
the Inquisition, the same I should hear by as lerned men at home utterd in time of Parlament a-
gainst an order of licencing; and that so generally, that when I had disclos'd my self a compan-
ion of their discontent, I might say, if without envy, that he whom an honest quastorship had
indear'd to the Sicilians, was not more by them importun'd against Verres, then the favourable
opinion which I had among many who honour ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me with
entreaties and perswasions, that I would not despair to lay together that which just reason
should bring into my mind, toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon lerning. That this
is not therefore the disburdning of a particular fancie, but the common grievance of all those
who had prepar'd their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others, and
from others to entertain it, thus much may satisfie. And in their name I shall for neither
friend nor foe conceal what the generall murmur is; that if it come to inquisitioning again,
and licencing, and that we are so timorous of our selvs, and so suspicious of all men, as to
fear each book, and the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the contents are, if some who
but of late were little better then silenc't from preaching, shall come now to silence us from
reading, except what they please, it cannot be guest what is intended by som but a second tyranny
over learning: and will soon put it out of controversie that Bishops and Presbyters are the same
to us both name and thing. That those evills of Prelaty which before from five or six and twenty
Sees were distributivly charg'd upon the whole people, will now light wholly upon learning, is
not obscure to us: whenas now the Pastor of a small unlearned Parish, on the sudden shall be ex-
alted Archbishop over a large dioces of books, and yet not remove, but keep his other cure too,
a mysticall pluralist. He who but of late cry'd down the sole ordination of every novice Batchelor
of Art, and deny'd sole jurisdiction over the simplest Parishioner, shall now at home in his privat
chair assume both these over worthiest and excellentest books and ablest authors that write them.
This is not, Yee Covnants and Protestations that we have made, this is not to put down Prelaty,
this is but to chop an Episcopacy; this is but to translate the Palace Metropolitan from one kind
of dominion into another, this is but an old canonicall sleight of commuting our penance. To start-
le thus betimes at a meer unlicenc't pamphlet will after a while be afraid of every conventicle,
and a while after will make a conventicle of every Christian meeting. But I am certain that a State
govern'd by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a Church built and founded upon the rock of faith
and true knowledge, cannot be so pusillanimous. While things are yet not constituted in Religion,
that freedom of writing should be restrain'd by a discipline imitated from the Prelats, and learnt
by them from the Inquisition to shut us up all again into the brest of a licencer, must needs give
cause of doubt and discouragement to all learned and religious men. Who cannot but discern the fine-
nes of this politic drift, and who are the contrivers; that while Bishops were to be baited down,
then all Presses might be open; it was the peoples birthright and priviledge in time of Parlament,
it was the breaking forth of light. But now the Bishops abrogated and voided out of the Church, as
if our Reformation sought no more, but to make room for others into their seats under another name,
the Episcopall arts begin to bud again, the cruse of truth must run no more oyle, liberty of Print-
ing must be enthrall'd again under a Prelaticall commission of twenty, the privilege of the people
nullify'd, and which is wors, the freedom of learning must groan again, and to her old fetters; all
this the Parlament yet sitting. Although their own late arguments and defences against the Prelats
might remember them that this obstructing violence meets for the most part with an event utterly op-
posite to the end which it drives at: instead of suppressing sects and schisms, it raises them and
invests them with a reputation: The punishing of wits enhaunces their autority, saith the Vicount St.
Albans, and a forbidd'n writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth that flies up in the faces
of them who seeke to tread it out. This order therefore may prove a nursing mother to sects, but I
shall easily shew how it will be a step-dame to Truth: and first by disinabling us to the maintenance
of what is known already.

Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our
limbs and complexion. Truth is compar'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not
in a perpetuall progression, they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be
a heretick in the truth; and if he beleeve things only because his Pastor sayes so, or the Assembly
so determins, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds,
becomes his heresie. There is not any burden that som would gladlier post off to another, then the
charge and care of their Religion. There be, who knows not that there be of Protestants and profes-
sors who live and dye in as arrant an implicit faith, as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man
addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds Religion to be a traffick so entangl'd, and of
so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that
trade. What should he doe? fain he would have the name to be religious, fain he would bear up with
his neighbours in that. What does he therefore, but resolvs to give over toyling, and to find him-
self out som factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious af-
fairs; som Divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the whole ware-
house of his religion, with all the locks and keyes into his custody; and indeed makes the very
person of that man his religion; esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commend-
atory of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself, but is
becom a dividuall movable, and goes and comes neer him, according as that good man frequents the
house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at night,
praies, is liberally supt, and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted, and after the malmsey,
or some well spic't bruage, and better breakfasted then he whose morning appetite would have gladly
fed on green figs between Betheny and Ierusalem, his Religion walks abroad at eight, and leavs his
kind entertainer in the shop trading all day without his religion.

Another sort there be who when they hear that all things shall be order'd, all things regulated and
setl'd, nothing writt'n but what passes through the custom-house of certain Publicans that have the
tunaging and the poundaging of all free spok'n truth, will strait give themselvs up into your hands,
mak'em & cut'em out what religion ye please; there be delights, there be recreations and jolly past-
imes that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightfull
dream. What need they torture their heads with that which others have tak'n so strictly, and so un-
alterably into their own pourveying. These are the fruits which a dull ease and cessation of our
knowledge will bring forth among the people. How goodly, and how to be wisht were such an obedient
unanimity as this, what a fine conformity would it starch us all into? doubtles a stanch and solid
peece of frame-work, as any January could freeze together.

Nor much better will be the consequence ev'n among the clergy themselvs; it is no new thing never
heard of before, for a parochiall Minister, who has his reward, and is at his Hercules pillars in a
warm benefice, to be easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may rouse up his studies, to
finish his circuit in an English concordance and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings of a so-
ber graduatship, a Harmony and a Catena, treading the constant round of certain common doctrinall
heads, attended with their uses, motives, marks and means, out of which as out of an alphabet or sol
fa by forming and transforming, joyning and dis-joyning variously a little book-craft, and two hours
meditation might furnish him unspeakably to the performance of more then a weekly charge of sermoning:
not to reck'n up the infinit helps of interlinearies, breviaries, synopses, and other loitering gear.
But as for the multitude of Sermons ready printed and pil'd up, on every text that is not difficult,
our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry, and adde to boot St. Martin, and St. Hugh, have not with-
in their hallow'd limits more vendible ware of all sorts ready made: so that penury he never need fear
of Pulpit provision, having where so plenteously to refresh his magazin. But if his rear and flanks be
not impal'd, if his back dore be not secur'd by the rigid licencer, but that a bold book may now and
then issue forth, and give the assault to some of his old collections in their trenches, it will con-
cern him then to keep waking, to stand in watch, to set good guards and sentinells about his receiv'd
opinions, to walk the round and counter-round with his fellow inspectors, fearing lest any of his flock
be seduc't, who also then would be better instructed, better exercis'd and disciplin'd. And God send
that the fear of this diligence which must then be us'd, doe not make us affect the lazines of a licen-
cing Church.

For if we be sure we are in the right, and doe not hold the truth guiltily, which becomes not, if we
our selves condemn not our own weak and frivolous teaching, and the people for an untaught and irreli-
gious gadding rout, what can be more fair, then when a man judicious, learned, and of a conscience,
for aught we know, as good as theirs that taught us what we know, shall not privily from house to house,
which is more dangerous, but openly by writing publish to the world what his opinion is, what his rea-
sons, and wherefore that which is now thought cannot be sound. Christ urg'd it as wherewith to justifie
himself, that he preacht in publick; yet writing is more publick then preaching; and more easie to refu-
tation, if need be, there being so many whose businesse and profession meerly it is, to be the champions
of Truth; which if they neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth, or unability?

Thus much we are hinder'd and dis-inur'd by this cours of licencing toward the true knowledge of what we
seem to know. For how much it hurts and hinders the licencers themselves in the calling of their Ministery,
more then any secular employment, if they will discharge that office as they ought, so that of necessity
they must neglect either the one duty or the other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave
it to their own conscience, how they will decide it there.

There is yet behind of what I purpos'd to lay open, the incredible losse, and detriment that this plot of
licencing puts us to, more then if som enemy at sea should stop up all our hav'ns and ports, and creeks,
it hinders and retards the importation of our richest Marchandize, Truth: nay it was first establisht and
put in practice by Antichristian malice and mystery on set purpose to extinguish, if it were possible, the
light of Reformation, and to settle falshood; little differing from that policie wherewith the Turk upholds
his Alcoran, by the prohibition of Printing. 'Tis not deny'd, but gladly confest, we are to send our thanks
and vows to heav'n louder then most of Nations, for that great measure of truth which we enjoy, especially
in those main points between us and the Pope, with his appertinences the Prelats: but he who thinks we are
to pitch our tent here, and have attain'd the utmost prospect of reformation, that the mortall glasse where-
in we contemplate, can shew us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares,
that he is yet farre short of Truth.

Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look
on: but when he ascended, and his Apostles after Him were laid asleep, then strait arose a wicked race of
deceivers, who as that story goes of the Agyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good
Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewd her lovely form into a thousand peeces, and scatter'd them to the four
winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the carefull
search that Isis made for the mangl'd body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as
they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall doe, till her Masters
second comming; he shall bring together every joynt and member, and shall mould them into an immortall fea-
ture of lovelines and perfection. Suffer not these licencing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportu-
nity forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body
of our martyr'd Saint. We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the Sun it self, it smites us into
darknes. Who can discern those planets that are oft Combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude that rise
and set with the Sun, untill the opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a place in the firmament,
where they may be seen evning or morning. The light which we have gain'd, was giv'n us, not to be ever star-
ing on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a
Priest, the unmitring of a Bishop, and the removing him from off the Presbyterian shoulders that will make us
a happy Nation, no, if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life both economicall and po-
liticall be not lookt into and reform'd, we have lookt so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath
beacon'd up to us, that we are stark blind. There be who perpetually complain of schisms and sects, and make
it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims. 'Tis their own pride and ignorance which causes
the disturbing, who neither will hear with meeknes, nor can convince, yet all must be suppresst which is not
found in their Syntagma. They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not
others to unite those dissever'd peeces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth. To be still searching what
we know not, by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body is homogeneal,
and proportionall), this is the golden rule in Theology as well as in Arithmetick, and makes up the best har-
mony in a Church; not the forc't and outward union of cold, and neutrall, and inwardly divided minds.

Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the
governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute
to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that
human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learning in her deepest Sciences have bin
so ancient, and so eminent among us, that Writers of good antiquity, and ablest judgement have
bin perswaded that ev'n the school of Pythagoras, and the Persian wisdom took beginning from
the old Philosophy of this Iland. And that wise and civill Roman, Julius Agricola, who govern'd
once here for Casar, preferr'd the naturall wits of Britain, before the labour'd studies of the
French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from as
farre as the mountanous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wildernes, not their youth,
but their stay'd men, to learn our language, and our theologic arts. Yet that which is above
all this, the favour and the love of heav'n we have great argument to think in a peculiar man-
ner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this Nation chos'n before any other,
that out of her as out of Sion should be proclam'd and sounded forth the first tidings and trum-
pet of Reformation to all Europ. And had it not bin the obstinat perversenes of our Prelats a-
gainst the divine and admirable spirit of Wicklef, to suppresse him as a schismatic and innova-
tor, perhaps neither the Bohemian Husse and Jerom, no nor the name of Luther, or of Calvin had
bin ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had bin compleatly ours. But now, as
our obdurat Clergy have with violence demean'd the matter, we are become hitherto the latest
and backwardest Schollers, of whom God offer'd to have made us the teachers. Now once again by
all concurrence of signs, and by the generall instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily
and solemnly expresse their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in
his Church, ev'n to the reforming of Reformation it self: what does he then but reveal Himself
to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his English-men; I say as his manner is, first
to us, though we mark not the method of his counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast
City: a City of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompast and surrounded with his protect-
ion; the shop of warre hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates
and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguer'd Truth, then there be pens and heads
there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and idea's
wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty the approaching Reformation: others
as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What
could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge. What
wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soile, but wise and faithfull labourers, to make a
knowing people, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies. We reck'n more then five months
yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white
already. Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writ-
ing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic
terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and under-
standing which God hath stirr'd up in this city. What some lament of, we rather should rejoyce
at, should rather praise this pious forwardnes among men, to reassume the ill deputed care of
their Religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of
one another, and som grain of charity might win all these diligences to joyn, and unite into
one generall and brotherly search after Truth; could we but forgoe this Prelaticall tradition
of crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I doubt
not, if some great and worthy stranger should come among us, wise to discern the mould and tem-
per of a people, and how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity
of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would
cry out as Pirrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage, if such were my Epirots, I would
not despair the greatest design that could be attempted to make a Church or Kingdom happy. Yet
these are the men cry'd out against for schismaticks and sectaries; as if, while the Temple of
the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there
should be a sort of irrationall men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many
dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when
every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be con-
tiguous in this world; neither can every peece of the building be of one form; nay rather the
perfection consists in this, that out of many moderat varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that
are not vastly disproportionall arises the goodly and the gracefull symmetry that commends the
whole pile and structure. Let us therefore be more considerat builders, more wise in spirituall
architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the
great Prophet may sit in heav'n rejoycing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his ful-
fill'd, when not only our sev'nty Elders, but all the Lords people are become Prophets. No mar-
vell then though some men, and some good men too perhaps, but young in goodnesse, as Joshua then
was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own weaknes are in agony, lest these divisions and
subdivisions will undoe us. The adversarie again applauds, and waits the hour, when they have
brancht themselves out, saith he, small anough into parties and partitions, then will be our
time. Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches: nor will
be ware untill he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill uni-
ted and unweildy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms,
and that we shall not need that solicitude honest perhaps though over timorous of them that vex
in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end, at those malicious applauders of our differences, I
have these reasons to perswade me.

First, when a City shall be as it were besieg'd and blockt about, her navigable river infested,
inrodes and incursions round, defiance and battell oft rumour'd to be marching up ev'n to her
walls, and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more then at other times,
wholly tak'n up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reform'd, should be
disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, ev'n to a rarity, and admiration, things
not before discourst or writt'n of, argues first a singular good will, contentednesse and confi-
dence in your prudent foresight, and safe government, Lords and Commons; and from thence derives
it self to a gallant bravery and well grounded contempt of their enemies, as if there were no
small number of as great spirits among us, as his was, who when Rome was nigh besieg'd by Hanibal,
being in the City, bought that peece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hanibal himself encampt
his own regiment. Next it is a lively and cherfull presage of our happy successe and victory.
For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but
to rationall faculties, and those in the acutest, and the pertest operations of wit and suttlety,
it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so when the cherfulnesse of the peo-
ple is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safe-
ty, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversie, and new
invention, it betok'ns us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatall decay, but casting off the
old and wrincl'd skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entring the glo-
rious waies of Truth and prosperous vertue destin'd to become great and honourable in these lat-
ter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man
after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: Methinks I see her as an Eagle muing her mighty
youth, and kindling her undazl'd eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long a-
bused sight at the fountain it self of heav'nly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and
flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amaz'd at what she means,
and in their envious gabble would prognosticat a year of sects and schisms.

What would ye doe then, should ye suppresse all this flowry crop of knowledge and new light sprung
up and yet springing daily in this City, should ye set an Oligarchy of twenty ingrossers over it,
to bring a famin upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measur'd to us by
their bushel? Beleeve it, Lords and Commons, they who counsell ye to such a suppressing, doe as
good as bid ye suppresse your selves; and I will soon shew how. If it be desir'd to know the im-
mediat cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assign'd a truer then
your own mild, and free, and human government; it is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your
own valorous and happy counsels have purchast us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits;
this is that which hath rarify'd and enlighten'd our spirits like the influence of heav'n; this
is that which hath enfranchis'd, enlarg'd and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above them-
selves. Ye cannot make us now lesse capable, lesse knowing, lesse eagarly pursuing of the truth,
unlesse ye first make your selves, that made us so, lesse the lovers, lesse the founders of our
true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formall, and slavish, as ye found us; but you
then must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they
were from whom ye have free'd us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more e-
rected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your owne
vertu propagated in us; ye cannot suppresse that unlesse ye reinforce an abrogated and mercilesse
law, that fathers may dispatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to
ye, and excite others? not he who takes up armes for cote and conduct, and his four nobles of
Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace better, if
that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience,
above all liberties.

What would be best advis'd then, if it be found so hurtfull and so unequall to suppresse opin-
ions for the newnes, or the unsutablenes to a customary acceptance, will not be my task to say;
I only shall repeat what I have learnt from one of your own honourable number, a right noble and
pious Lord, who had he not sacrific'd his life and fortunes to the Church and Commonwealth, we
had not now mist and bewayl'd a worthy and undoubted patron of this argument. Ye know him I am
sure; yet I for honours sake, and may it be eternall to him, shall name him, the Lord Brook. He
writing of Episcopacy, and by the way treating of sects and schisms, left Ye his vote, or rather
now the last words of his dying charge, which I know will ever be of dear and honour'd regard
with Ye, so full of meeknes and breathing charity, that next to his last testament, who be-
queath'd love and peace to his Disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard words
more mild and peacefull. He there exhorts us to hear with patience and humility those, however
they be miscall'd, that desire to live purely, in such a use of Gods Ordinances, as the best
guidance of their conscience gives them, and to tolerat them, though in some disconformity to
our selves. The book itself will tell us more at large being publisht to the world, and dedi-
cated to the Parlament by him who both for his life and for his death deserves, that what ad-
vice he left be not laid by without perusall.

And now the time in speciall is, by priviledge to write and speak what may help to the furder
discussing of matters in agitation. The temple of Janus with his two controversal faces might
now not unsignificantly be set open. And though all the windes of doctrin were let loose to
play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licencing and prohibiting
to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falshood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the wors,
in a free and open encounter. Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears
what praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be sent down among us, would think
of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, fram'd and fabric't al-
ready to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who
envy, and oppose, if it come not first in at their casements. What a collusion is this, when-
as we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence, to seek for wisdom as for hidd'n trea-
sures early and late, that another order shall enjoyn us to know nothing but by statute.
When a man hath bin labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath fur-
nisht out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battell
raung'd, scatter'd and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the
plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please; only that he may try the mat-
ter by dint of argument, for his opponents then to sculk, to lay ambushments, to keep a nar-
row bridge of licencing where the challenger should passe, though it be valour anough in
souldiership, is but weaknes and cowardice in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth
is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licencings to make
her victorious, those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power: give
her but room, & do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old
Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught & bound, but then rather she turns
herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time,
as Micaiah did before Ahab, untill she be adjur'd into her own likenes. Yet is it not impos-
sible that she may have more shapes then one. What else is all that rank of things indif-
ferent, wherein Truth may be on this side, or on the other, without being unlike her self.
What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordinances, that hand writing nayl'd
to the crosse, what great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of.
His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day, or regards it not, may doe ei-
ther to the Lord. How many other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conscience,
had we but charity, and were it not the chief strong hold of our hypocrisie to be ever judg-
ing one another. I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print
upon our necks; the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us. We stumble and are impatient at
the least dividing of one visible congregation from another, though it be not in fundament-
alls; and through our forwardnes to suppresse, and our backwardnes to recover any enthrall'd
peece of truth out of the gripe of custom, we care not to keep truth separated from truth,
which is the fiercest rent and disunion of all. We doe not see that while we still affect by
all means a rigid externall formality, we may as soon fall again into a grosse conforming
stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and stubble forc't and frozen toge-
ther, which is more to the sudden degenerating of a Church then many subdichotomies of petty
schisms. Not that I can think well of every light separation, or that all in a Church is to
be expected gold and silver and pretious stones: it is not possible for man to sever the
wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other frie; that must be the Angels Ministery
at the end of mortall things. Yet if all cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be?
this doubtles is more wholsome, more prudent, and more Christian that many be tolerated, ra-
ther then all compell'd. I mean not tolerated Popery, and open superstition, which as it ex-
tirpats all religions and civill supremacies, so it self should be extirpat, provided first
that all charitable and compassionat means be us'd to win and regain the weak and the misled:
that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners no law can pos-
sibly permit, that intends not to unlaw it self: but those neighboring differences, or rather
indifferences, are what I speak of, whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline, which
though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of Spirit, if we could but find a-
mong us the bond of peace. In the mean while if any one would write, and bring his helpfull
hand to the slow-moving Reformation which we labour under, if Truth have spok'n to him before
others, or but seem'd at least to speak, who hath so bejesuited us that we should trouble that
man with asking licence to doe so worthy a deed? and not consider this, that if it come to
prohibiting, there is not ought more likely to be prohibited then truth it self; whose first
appearance to our eyes blear'd and dimm'd with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and un-
plausible then many errors, ev'n as the person is of many a great man slight and contemptible
to see to. And what doe they tell us vainly of new opinions, when this very opinion of theirs,
that none must be heard, but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion of all others;
and is the chief cause why sects and schisms doe so much abound, and true knowledge is kept
at distance from us; besides yet a greater danger which is in it. For when God shakes a King-
dome with strong and healthfull commotions to a generall reforming, 'tis not untrue that many
sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing; but yet more true it is, that God
then raises to his own work men of rare abilities, and more then common industry not only to
look back and revise what hath bin taught heretofore, but to gain furder and goe on, some new
enlighten'd steps in the discovery of truth. For such is the order of Gods enlightning his
Church, to dispense and deal out by degrees his beam, so as our earthly eyes may best sustain
it. Neither is God appointed and confin'd, where and out of what place these his chosen shall
be first heard to speak; for he sees not as man sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we
should devote our selves again to set places, and assemblies, and outward callings of men;
planting our faith one while in the old Convocation house, and another while in the Chapell
at Westminster; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canoniz'd, is not suffi-
cient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction to supple the least
bruise of conscience, to edifie the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and
not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no
though Harry the 7. himself there, with all his leige tombs about him, should lend them voi-
ces from the dead, to swell their number. And if the men be erroneous who appear to be the
leading schismaticks, what witholds us but our sloth, our self-will, and distrust in the right
cause, that we doe not give them gentle meeting and gentle dismissions, that we debate not
and examin the matter throughly with liberall and frequent audience; if not for their sakes,
yet for our own? seeing no man who hath tasted learning, but will confesse the many waies of
profiting by those who not contented with stale receits are able to manage, and set forth new
positions to the world. And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in
that notion they may yet serve to polish and brighten the armoury of Truth, ev'n for that res-
pect they were not utterly to be cast away. But if they be of those whom God hath fitted for
the speciall use of these times with eminent and ample gifts, and those perhaps neither among
the Priests, nor among the Pharisees, and we in the hast of a precipitant zeal shall make no
distinction, but resolve to stop their mouths, because we fear they come with new and dange-
rous opinions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we understand them, no lesse then woe to us,
while thinking thus to defend the Gospel, we are found the persecutors.

There have bin not a few since the beginning of this Parlament, both of the Presbytery and
others who by their unlicen't books to the contempt of an Imprimatur first broke that triple
ice clung about our hearts, and taught the people to see day: I hope that none of those were
the perswaders to renew upon us this bondage which they themselves have wrought so much good
by contemning. But if neither the check that Moses gave to young Joshua, nor the countermand
which our Saviour gave to young John, who was so ready to prohibit those whom he thought un-
licenc't, be not anough to admonish our Elders how unacceptable to God their testy mood of
prohibiting is, if neither their own remembrance what evill hath abounded in the Church by
this lett of licencing, and what good they themselves have begun by transgressing it, be not
anough, but that they will perswade, and execute the most Dominican part of the Inquisition
over us, and are already with one foot in the stirrup so active at suppressing, it would be
no unequall distribution in the first place to suppresse the suppressors themselves; whom the
change of their condition hath puft up, more then their late experience of harder times hath
made wise.

And as for regulating the Presse, let no man think to have the honour of advising ye better
then your selves have done in that Order publisht next before this, that no book be Printed,
unlesse the Printers and the Authors name, or at least the Printers be register'd. Those which
otherwise come forth, if they be found mischievous and libellous, the fire and the executioner
will be the timeliest and the most effectuall remedy, that mans prevention can use. For this
authentic Spanish policy of licencing books, if I have said aught, will prove the most unli-
cenc't book it self within a short while; and was the immediat image of a Star-chamber decree
to that purpose made in those very times when that Court did the rest of those her pious works,
for which she is now fall'n from the Starres with Lucifer. Whereby ye may guesse what kinde of
State prudence, what love of the people, what care of Religion, or good manners there was at
the contriving, although with singular hypocrisie it pretended to bind books to their good be-
haviour. And how it got the upper hand of your precedent Order so well constituted before, if
we may beleeve those men whose profession gives them cause to enquire most, it may be doubted
there was in it the fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of book-selling;
who under pretence of the poor in their Company not to be defrauded, and the just retaining of
each man his severall copy, which God forbid should be gainsaid, brought divers glosing colours
to the House, which were indeed but colours, and serving to no end except it be to exercise a
superiority over their neighbours, men who doe not therefore labour in an honest profession to
which learning is indetted, that they should be made other mens vassalls. Another end is thought
was aym'd at by some of them in procuring by petition this Order, that having power in their
hands, malignant books might the easier scape abroad, as the event shews. But of these Sophisms
and Elenchs of marchandize I skill not: This I know, that errors in a good government and in a
bad are equally almost incident; for what Magistrate may not be mis-inform'd, and much the soon-
er, if liberty of Printing be reduc't into the power of a few; but to redresse willingly and
speedily what hath bin err'd, and in highest autority to esteem a plain advertisement more then
others have done a sumptuous bribe, is a vertue (honour'd Lords and Commons) answerable to Your
highest actions, and whereof none can participat but greatest and wisest men.



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