Areopagitica: A Speech to the Parliament of England for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing

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Ralph Holland & Company, 1905 - 100 pages
 

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Page 30 - It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil; that is to say, of knowing good by evil.
Page 9 - I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book.
Page 68 - Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his church, even to the reforming of reformation itself; what does he then but reveal himself to his servants, and as his mani>er is, first to his Englishmen...
Page 9 - I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men ; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors...
Page 30 - He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.
Page 65 - We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming ; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.
Page 10 - We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books ; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom...
Page 74 - We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, 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 freed us.

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