his actual perfuafion is of whom he writes, can demonftrate that he flatters not; the former two of thefe I have heretofore endeavoured, refcuing the employment from him who went-about to impair your merits with a trivial and malignant encomium; the latter, as belonging chiefly to mine own acquittal, "that whom I fo extolled I did not flatter," hath been referved opportunely to this occafion. 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 covenant of his fidelity; and that his loyaleft affection and his hope waits on your proceedings. His highest praifing is not flattery, and his plainest advice is a kind of praifing; for, though I should affirm and hold by argument, that it would fare better with truth, with learning, and the commonwealth, if one of your published orders, which I should name, were called-in; yet at the fame time it could not but much redound to the luftre of your mild and equal government, whenas private perfons are hereby animated to think ye better pleased with publick advice, than other ftatifts have been delighted heretofore with publick flattery. And men will then fee what difference there is between the magnanimity of a triennial parliament, and that jealous haughtiness of prelates and cabin-counsellors* that ufurped of late, when as they shall observe ye, in the midst of your victories and fucceffes, more gently brooking written exceptions against a voted order, than other courts, which had produced nothing worth memory but the weak oftentation of wealth, would have endured the least fignified dislike at any fudden proclamation. If I should thus far prefume upon the meck demeanor of

That is, chamber-counsellors, or counsellors who are assembled by the king in a private chamber, as it were in the cabin of a ship, to give him advice in matters of state.

your

your civil and gentle greatnefs, Lords and Commons ! as what your published order hath directly faid, that to gainsay, I might defend myself with ease, if any should accuse me of being new or infolent, did they but know how much better I find ye esteem it to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece, than the barbaric pride of a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness. And out of thofe ages, to whofe polite wisdom and letters we owe that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders, I could name him who from his private house wrote that difcourfe to the parliament of Athens, that perfuades them to change the form of democraty which was then established. Such honour was done in those days to men who profeffed the ftudy of wifdom and eloquence, not only in their own country, but in other lands, that cities and figniories heard them gladly, and with great refpect, if they had aught in publick to admonifh the ftate. Thus did Dion Prufæus, a ftranger and a private orator, counsel the Rhodians againft a former Edict; and I abound with other like examples, which to fet here would be fuperfluous. But, if from the industry of a life wholly dedicated to ftudious labours, and thofe natural endowments haply not the worst for two and fifty degrees of northern latitude, so much must be derogated, as to count me not equal to any of thofe who had this privilege, I would obtain to be thought not fo inferior, as yourfelves are fuperior to the moft of them who received their counfel; and how far you excel them, be affured, Lords and Commons! there can no greater teftimony appear, than when your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the voice of reafon, from what quarter foever it be heard fpeaking; and renders ye as willing to repeal any act of your own fetting-forth as any fet forth by your predeceffors.

If

The ordi

against

,, unlicensed

If ye be thus refolved, (as it were injury to think ye were not,) I know not what should withhold me from prefenting ye with a fit inftance wherein to show both that love of truth which ye eminently profefs, and that uprightness of your judgment which is not wont to be partial to yourselves; by judging over-again that order which ye have ordained" to regulate printing; that no nance of book, pamphlet, or paper, fhall be henceforth printed, Parliament unless the same be first approved and licensed by such, printing or at least one of fuch, as fhall be thereto appointed." books. For that part which preferves juftly every man's copy to himself, or provides for the poor, I touch not; only with they be not made pretences to abuse and persecute honeft and painful men, who offend not in either of these particulars. But that other clause of licensing books, which we thought had died with his brother quadragefimal and matrimonial when the prelates expired, 1 shall now attend with such a homily, as fhall lay before ye, firft the inventors of it, to be those whom ye will be loth to own; next, what is to be thought in The plan general of reading, whatever fort the books be; and and order of that this order avails nothing to the fuppreffing of course. fcandalous, feditious, and libellous books, which were mainly intended to be fuppreffed. Laft, that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the ftop of truth, not only by disexercifing and blunting our abilities, in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made, both in religious and civil wifdom.

this dis

books on all

I deny not but that it is of greatest con- The great cernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vi- influence of gilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; publick afand thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not abfolutely

fairs.

de ad

sequences

sing good

ones.

dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that foul was whofe progeny they are; nay, they do preferve, as in a vial, the pureft efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as thofe fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being The ill con fown up and down, may chance to spring-up armed men. of suppres. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almoft kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable créature, God's image; but he who deftroys a good book, kills reafon itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a mafter fpirit, imbalmed and treasured-up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can reftore a life, where of perhaps there is no great lofs; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the lofs of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worfe. We should be wary therefore what perfecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we fpill that feafoned life of man, preserved and ftored-up in books; fince we fee a kind of homicide may be thus committed, fometimes a martyrdom; and, if it extend to the whole impreffion, a kind of maffacre, whereof the execution ends not in the flaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the æthereal and fifth effence, the breath of reason itself; flays an immortality rather than a life. A view of But, left I should be condemned of introducing licence, thods taken while I oppofe licenfing, I refufe not the pains to be fo by ancient much historical, as will ferve to fhow what hath been wealths, to done by ancient and famous commonwealths, against publication this diforder, till the very time that this project of licensous books. ing crept-out of the Inquifition, was catched-up by our Prelates, and hath caught fome of our Presbyters.

the me

common

restrain the

of pernici

In

In Athens, where books and wits were In Athens. ever bufier than in any other part of Greece, I find but only two forts of writings which the magiftrate cared to take notice of; thofe either blafphemous and atheistical, or libellous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by the judges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himfelf banished the territory, for a difcourfe, begun with his confeffing not to know," whether there were gods, or whether not." And against defaming, it was agreed that none fhould be traduced by name, as was the manner of Vetus Comedia, whereby we may guefs how they cenfured libelling; and this courfe was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the defperate wits of other atheifts, and the open way of defaming, as the event fhewed. Of other fects and opinions, though tending to voluptuoufnefs, and the denying of Divine providence, they took no heed. Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine school of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded, that the writings of thofe old comedians were fuppreffed, though the acting of them were forbid; and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of them all, to his royal scholar Dionyfius, is commonly known, and may be excufed, if holy Chryfoftom, as is reported, nightly studied fo much the fame author, and had the art to cleanse a fcurrilous vehemence into the ftyle of a roufing sermon.

mon.

That other leading city of Greece, Lacedæmon, con- In Lacedæfidering that Lycurgus, their lawgiver, was fo addicted to elegant learning, as to have been the first that brought out of Ionia the scattered works of Homer, and fent the poet Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the Spartan furlinefs with his smooth fongs and odes, the better to plant among them law and civility; it is to be wondered how