But that a Book in wors condition then a peccant foul, fhould 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 paffe the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till that mysterious iniquity provokt and troubl❜d at the first entrance of Reformation, fought 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 morfell fo officiously fnatcht up, and fo ilfavourdly imitated by our inquifiturient Bifhops, and the attendant minorites their Chaplains. That ye like not now these most certain Authors of this licencing order, and that all finifter intention

intention was farre diftant from your thoughts, when ye were importun'd the paffing it, all men who know the integrity of

your actions, and how ye honour Truth, will clear yee readily.

But fome will fay, What though the Inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be good? It may fo; yet if that thing be no fuch deep invention, but obvious, and eafie for any man to light on, and yet beft and wifeft Commonwealths through all ages, and occafions have forborne to use it, and falsest feducers, and oppreffers of men were the firft who tooke it up, and to no other purpose but to obftruct and hinder the first approach of Reformation; I am of those who beleeve, it will be a har

der

der alchymy then Lullius ever knew, to fublimat any good ufe out of fuch 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 deferves, for the tree that bore it, untill I can diffect one by one the properties it has. But I have first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be thought in generall of reading Books, what ever fort they be, and whether be more the benefit, or the harm that thence proceeds?

Not to infift upon the examples of Mofes, Daniel, & Paul, who were fkilfull in all the learning of the Egyptians, Caldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their Books

of

of all forts, in Paul especially, who thonght it no defilement to infert into holy Scripture the fentences of three Greek Poets, and one of them a Tragedian, the question was, notwithstanding fometimes controverted among the Primitive Doctors, but with great odds on that fide which affirm'd it both lawfull and profitable, as was then evidently perceiv'd, when Julian the Apoftat, and futtleft enemy to our faith, made a deeree forbidding Chriftians the ftudy of heathen learning: for, faid he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our owne arts and sciences they overcome us. And indeed the Chriftians were put fo to ther fhifts by this crafty means, and fo much in danger to decline into all

ignorance,

ignorance, that the two Apollinarii were fain as a man may fay, to coin all the feven liberall Sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of Orations, Poems, Dialogues, ev'n to the calculating of a new Chriftian Grammar. But faith the Hiftorian Socrates, The providence of GoD provided better then the induftry of Apollinarius and his fon, 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 perfecution more undermining, and fecretly decaying the Church, then the open cruelty of Decius or Dioclefian. And perhaps it was the fame politick drift that the Divell whipt St. Jerom in a lenten