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gether, almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances, hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche, as an incessant labour, to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. 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. As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and prefer that which is truly better, he is the true war-faring Christian. cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised, and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness; which was the reason why our sage and serious poet, Spenser, (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas,) describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of errour to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity, than by all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?"

After having thus forcibly shewn the necessity, nay the use of promiscuous reading, he answers the supposed objections which may be urged against it: 1st, the spread of infection. This he clearly proves to be an irremediable evil, and humourously adds

"I am unable to see how this cautelous enterprize of licensing can be exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly disposed, could not well avoid to liken it to the exploit of that gallant man, who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate."

And he justly finishes his refutation by saying, that "if

* P. 108.

"it be true, that a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather 66 gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a "fool with the best book, yea, or without a book; there is

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no reason that we should deprive a wise man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a fool "that which being restrained will be no hinderance to his 66 folly." He then passes on to the next objection, viz. that we should not expose ourselves to temptations, without necessity, or employ our time in vain things. His triumphant answer is, that this is a subject over which the state has no just or practicable controul. For if books are to be licensed on this account, there must be licensing for dancing, music, dress, and even diet and company. He saysImpunity and remissness for certain are the bane of a commonwealth; but here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work. If every action which is good or evil in a man at ripe years, were to be under pittance, prescription, and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to well doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent?" "They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to remove sin, by removing the matter of sin; for, besides that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it may for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in such a universal thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin remains entire. Ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue for the matter of them both is the same: remove that, and ye remove them both alike."

....

He closes this part of his subject by demonstrating that the task of licensing never can effect the end intended by it; and asks "if Italy and Spain be one scruple the better, the “honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitorial

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rigour that hath been executed upon books?" This brings him to the last branch of his great argument, from "the no good it can do, to the manifest hurt it causes, in being the greatest discouragement that can be offered to learning.”And he utters this bitter and eloquent complaint from the depths of his capacious soul, which appears to me, I confess, of itself sufficient to settle the whole question.

"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 consumate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proofs of his abilities, can bring him 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, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing; and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety, that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning."

"Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be more than worldly wise; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common steadfast dunce, will be the only pleasant life, and ouly in request."*

He expresses his fears for the laxity and indifference to knowledge, which would probably prevail among people in general, if the system of licensing were continued. And this brings him to the concluding part, wherein he rises to his full gigantic height, foreseeing in beatific vision, as all the really great men have done, the onward course, the progressive destiny of his race. The advance of truth is here his topic, and it is handled as such a topic, by such a man, should be. The style becomes sublime.

"The light which we have gained, was given us not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. Lords and Commons of England! consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse; not beneath the reach of any point, the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learning, in her deepest sciences, have been so ancient, and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgment, have been persuaded that even the school of Pythagoras, and the Persian wisdom, took beginning from the old philosophy of this island. And that wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Cæsar, preferred the natural wits of Britain before the laboured

* P. 112.

studies of the French."

"Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed, and sounded forth, the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate preverseness of our prelates, against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Husse and Jerom, nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been known; the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours."*

He then refers to the inquiring spirit abroad, and even to the variety of sects and opinions, with a glorious glow of satisfaction, that at last finds utterance in a passage, often quoted, but never too often, which is probably one of the grandest sentences that ever came from the pen of man.

“For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital but to rational faculties, and this in the acutest and pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention; it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, by casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself, like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.t

He proceeds with equal confidence to express his reliance on the victory, if only Truth and Error be left to themselves. to fight the battle out.

"And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest sup

"to

pressing. He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new light, which we beg for, shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose if it come not first in at their casement. What a collusion is this, when as we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence, seek for wisdom as for hidden treasures," early and late, that another order shall enjoin us, to know nothing but by statute? When a man hath been labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for his opponents then to sculk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass; though it be valour enough in soldiership, it is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth. For who knows not that truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power: give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound, but then rather she turns herself into all shapes except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be adjured into her own likeness."

Strong in this confidence, like Milton, of the final victory of Truth; like him, also, let us say, "give us the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to con"science, above all liberties!"

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