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 discovery 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 Com-monwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprifon, and do sharpeft 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 vigo-roufly 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, un- • leffe 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 destroyes 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 master fpirit, imbalm'd and treasur❜d up on purpose to a life beyond

life.

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 worfe. 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 strikes at that ethereall and fift effence, the breath of reafon it felfe, flaies an immortality rather than a life.

But

But left I should 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 busier then in any other part of Greece, I finde but only two sorts of writ ings which the Magistrate 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 banifht the territory for a 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 course 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 voluptuoufneffe, 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