Proclus, they met with no interdict that can be cited, till about
the year 400, in a Carthaginian Council, wherein bishops themselves
were forbid to read the books of Gentiles, but heresies they might
read: while others long before them, on the contrary, scrupled more
the books of heretics than of Gentiles. And that the primitive
Councils and bishops were wont only to declare what books were not
commendable, passing no further, but leaving it to each one's
conscience to read or to lay by, till after the year 800, is
observed already by Padre Paolo, the great unmasker of the Trentine
Council.

  After which time the Popes of Rome, engrossing what they pleased
of political rule into their own hands, extended their dominion over
men's eyes, as they had before over their judgments, burning and
prohibiting to be read what they fancied not; yet sparing in their
censures, and the books not many which they so dealt with: till Martin
V., by his bull, not only prohibited, but was the first that
excommunicated the reading of heretical books; for about that time
Wickliffe and Huss, growing terrible, were they who first drove the
Papal Court to a stricter policy of prohibiting. Which course Leo X.
and his successors followed, until the Council of Trent and the
Spanish Inquisition engendering together brought forth, or
perfected, those Catalogues and expurging Indexes, that rake through
the entrails of an old good author, with a violation worse than any
could be offered to his tomb. Nor did they stay in matters
heretical, but any subject that was not to their palate, they either
condemned in a Prohibition, or had it straight into the new
Purgatory of an Index.

  To fill up the measure of encroachment, their last invention was
to ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper should be printed (as if
St. Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the press also out of
Paradise) unless it were approved and licensed under the hands of
two or three glutton friars. For example:

    Let the Chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in this present work

       be contained aught that may withstand the printing.

                                 Vincent Rabbatta, Vicar of Florence.

    I have seen this present work, and find nothing athwart the

      Catholic faith and good manners: in witness whereof I have

      given, etc.

                                 Nicolo Cini, Chancellor of Florence.

    Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed that this present

      work of Davanzati may be printed.

                                               Vincent Rabbatta, etc.

        It may be printed, July 15.

                       Friar Simon Mompei d'Amelia, Chancellor of the

                                             holy office in Florence.

  Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless pit had not long
since broke prison, that this quadruple exorcism would bar him down. I
fear their next design will be to get into their custody the licensing
of that which they say Claudius intended, but went not through with.
Vouchsafe to see another of their forms, the Roman stamp:

    Imprimatur, If it seem good to the reverend master of the holy

      Palace.

                                               Belcastro, Vicegerent.

    Imprimatur, Friar Nicolo Rodolphi, Master of the holy Palace.

  Sometimes five Imprimaturs are seen together dialogue-wise in the
piazza of one title-page, complimenting and ducking each to other with
their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in
perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the
sponge. These are the pretty responsories, these are the dear
antiphonies, that so bewitched of late our Prelates and their
chaplains with the goodly echo they made; and besotted us to the gay
imitation of a lordly Imprimatur, one from Lambeth House, another from
the west end of Paul's; so apishly romanising, that the word of
command still was set down in Latin; as if the learned grammatical pen
that wrote it would cast no ink without Latin; or perhaps, as they
thought, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure
conceit of an Imprimatur; but rather, as I hope, for that our English,
the language of men, ever famous and foremost in the achievements of
liberty, will not easily find servile letters enow to spell such a
dictatory presumption English.

  And thus ye have the inventors and the original of book-licensing
ripped and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can
be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity or church; nor by any
statute left us by our ancestors elder or later; nor from the modern
custom of any reformed city or church abroad; but from the most
anti-christian council and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever
inquired. Till then books were ever as freely admitted into the
world as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled