are; nay they do preferve as in a violl the pureft efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as thofe fabulous Dragons teeth; and being fown

up

and

down, may chance to fpring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unleffe warineffe be us'd, as good almost kill a man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, GOD's image; but hee who deftroyes a good Booke, kills reason itself, 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 lifeblood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treafur'd up on purpose to a life beyond

life. "Tis true, no age can reftore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loffe; and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the loffe of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse. We fhould be wary therefore what perfecution we raife against the living labours of publick men, how we fpill that feafon'd life of man preferv'd and ftor'd up in Books; fince we fee a kinde of homicide may be thus committed, fometimes a martyrdome, and if it extend to the whole impreffion,. a kinde of maffacre, whereof the execution ends not in the flaying of an elementall life, but ftrikes at that ethereall and fift effence, the breath of reafon it felfe, flaies an immortality rather than a life.

But

But left I fhould be condemn'd of introducing licence, while I oppofe Licenfing, I refufe not the paines to be fo much Hiftoricall, as will ferve to fhew 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 Inquifition, was catcht up by our Prelates, and hath caught fome of our Presbyters.

In Athens where Books and Wits were ever bufier then in any other part of Greece, I finde but only two forts of writings which the Magiftrate car'd to take notice of; thofe either blafphemous and Atheisticall, or Libellous. Thus the Books of Protagoras were by the Iudges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt,

and

and himselfe banisht the territory for à difcourfe begun with his confeffing not to know whether there were gods, or whether not And against defaming, it was decreed that none fhould be traduc'd by name, as was the manner of Vetus Comadia, whereby we may gueffe how they cenfur'd libelling: and this courfe was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the defperate wits of other Atheists, and the open way of defaming, as the event fhew'd. Of other fects and opinions though tending 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 Cyrene, or what the Cynick impudence utter'd, was ever quef

tion'd by the Laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of thofe old Comedians were fuppreft, though the acting of them were forbid; and that Plato commended the reading of Ariftophanes the loofeft of them all, to his royall fcholler Dionyfius, is commonly known and may be excus'd, if holy Chryfoftome, as is reported, nightly studied fo much the fame Author and had the art to cleanse a fcurrilous vehemence into the stile of a roufing Sermon. That other leading City of Greece, Lacedamon, confidering that Lycurgus their Law-giver was fo addicted to elegant learning, as to have been the first that brought out of Jonia the fcatter'd workes of Homer, and fent the Poet Thales from

Creet