that part which preferves juftly every mans Copy to himfelfe, or provides for the poor, I touch not, only wish they be not made pretenfes to abuse and perfecute honeft and painfull Men, who offend not in either of these particulars.. But that other claufe of Licencing Books, which we thought had dy'd with: his brother quadragefimal and matrimonial when the Prelats expir'd, I fhall now attend with fuch a Homily, as fhall lay before ye, firft the inventors of it to bee those whom ye will be loath to own ;; next what is to be thought in generall of reading, whatever fort the Books be;. and that this Order avails nothing to the fuppreffing of fcandalous, feditious, and libellous Books, which were mainly in tended tended to be fuppreft. Laft, that it will be primely to the difcouragement of all learning, and the ftop of Truth, not only by difexercifing and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindring and cropping the difcovery 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 Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themfelves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprifon, and do fharpeft juftice on them as malefactors: For Books are not abfolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that foule was whofe progeny they are; 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 vigoroufly 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 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 Booke is the pretious lifeblood of a mafter fpirit, 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 raise 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 cffence, 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 Magistrate car'd to take notice of; those either blafphemous and Atheisticall, or Libellous. Thus the Books of Protagoras were by the Iudges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and |