a plain unthrift of his own hours, is ever likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary of a press-corrector, we may easily foresee what kind of licensers we are to expect hereafter either ignorant imperious and remiss, or basely pecuniary This is what I had to show, wherein this Order cannot conduce to that end, whereof it bears the intention. I lastly proceed from the no good it can do to the manifest hurt it causes, in being first the greatest discouragement and 840 affront that can be offered to learning and to learned men. It was the complaint and lamentation of prelates, upon every least breath of a motion to remove pluralities and distribute more equally Church revenues, that then all learning would be for ever dashed and discouraged. But as for that opinion, I never found cause to think that the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the clergy: nor could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy speech of any churchman who had a competency left him. If therefore ye be loth to dishearten utterly and discontent, not the mercenary crew of false pre- 850 tenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were born to study and love learning for itself, not for lucre or any other end but the service of God and of Truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of mankind, then know, that so far to distrust the judgment and the honesty of one who hath but a common repute in learning and 833. plain unthrift, manifest waster. 834. salary, originally meant salt-money. Latin salsalt. 838. whereof, &c., which it is intended to effect. 842. lamentation of prelates. "They shame not to profess that unless we fat them like boars, and cram them as they list with wealth, with Deaneries and Pluralities, with Baronies and Stately Preferments, all Learning and Religion will go underfoot." These were the arguments 843. pluralities, the holding of two or more church appointments, 845. dashed, dashed down. 850. discontent, make discontented, ཏ never yet offended, as not to count him fit to print his mind 860 without a tutor and examiner, lest he should drop a schism or something of corruption, is the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him. What advantage is it to be a man over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only scaped the ferular to come under the fescu of an Imprimatur, if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporising and extemporising licenser? He who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to 870 be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no 1 great argument to think himself reputed in the Commonwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes as well as any that writ before him. If in this the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring him 880 to that state of maturity as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings and expense of Palladian oil to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, |