fome of evill fubftance; and yet God, in that unapocryphall vifion, faid without exception, Rife Peter, kill and cat, leaving the choice to each mans discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated ftomach differ little or nothing from unwholefome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occafions of evill. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourifhment in the healthieft concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a difcreet and judicious Reader ferve in many refpects to difcover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illuftrate. Wherof what better witness can ye expect I fhould produce, then one of your own now fitting in Parlament, the chief of learned men reputed

in this Land, Mr. Selden, whose volume of naturall & national laws proves, not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquifite reasons and theorems almoft mathematically demonftrative, that all opinions, yea errors, known, read, and collated, are of main service and affistance towards the speedy attainment of what is trueft. I conceive therefore, that when God did enlarge the univerfall diet of mans body, faving ever the rules of temperance, he then alfo, as before, left arbitrary the dyeting and repafting of our minds; as wherein every mature man might have to exercife his owne leading capacity. How great a vertue is temperance, how much of moment through the whole life

of

of man! yet GoD commits the managing fo great a truft, without particular Law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man. therefore when he himself tabl'd the

And i

every mans daily portion of manna, is computed to have bin more then might have well fuffic'd the heartieft feeder' thrice as many meals. For thofe actions which enter into a man, rather then iffue out of him, and therefore defile not, GOD ufes not to captivat under a per-·· petuall childhood of prefcription, but trufts him with the gift of reafon to be his own choofer; there were but littlework left for preaching, if law and compulfion fhould grow fo faft upon : S 4 those

thofe things which hertofore were govern'd only by exhortation. Salomon informs us that much reading is a wearines to the flesh; but neither he, nor other infpir'd author tells us that such, or fuch reading is unlawfull; yet certainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it had bin much more expedient to have told us what was unlawfull, then what was wearifome. As for the burning of thofe Ephefian books by St. Pauls converts, tis reply'd the books were magick, the Syriack fo renders them. It was a privat act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a voluntary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books which were their own; the Magiftrat by this example is not appointed: these men practiz'd

practiz'd the books, another might perhaps have read them in fome fort usefully. Good and evill we know in the field of this World grow up together almost infeparably; and the knowledge of good is fo involv'd and interwoven: with the knowledge of evill, and in fo many cunning refemblances hardly to be difcern'd, that those confufed feeds which were impos'd on Pfyche as an inceffant labour to cull out, and fort asunder, were not more intermixt. It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to fay of knowing good