than the issue of the womb: no envious juno sat cross-legged over
the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring; but if it proved a
monster, who denies, but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the
sea? But that a book, in worse condition than a peccant soul, should
be to stand before a jury ere it be born to the world, and undergo yet
in darkness the judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can
pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till
that mysterious iniquity, provoked and troubled at the first
entrance of Reformation, sought out new limbos and new bells wherein
they might include our books also within the number of their damned.
And this was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up, and so
ill-favouredly imitated by our inquisiturient bishops, and the
attendant minorities their chaplains. That ye like not now these
most certain authors of this licensing order, and that all sinister
intention was far distant from your thoughts, when ye were
importuned the passing it, all men who know the integrity of your
actions, and how ye honour Truth, will clear ye readily.

  But some will say, What though the inventors were bad, the thing for
all that may be good? It may be so; yet if that thing be no such
deep invention, but obvious, and easy for any man to light on, and yet
best and wisest commonwealths through all ages and occasions have
foreborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of men were
the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct
and hinder the first approach of Reformation; I am of those who
believe it will be a harder alchymy than Lullius ever knew, to
sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet this only is what
I request to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous
and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore
it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has. But I have
first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be thought in general
of reading books, whatever sort they be, and whether be more the
benefit or the harm that thence proceeds?

  Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were
skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks,
which could not probably be without reading their books of all
sorts; in Paul especially, Who thought it no defilement to insert into
Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a
tragedian; the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted
among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which
affirmed it both lawful and profitable; as was then evidently
perceived, when Julian the Apostate and subtlest enemy to our faith
made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning:
for, said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our own
arts and sciences they overcome us. And indeed the Christians were put
so to their shifts by this crafty means, and so much in danger to
decline into all ignorance, that the two Apollinarii were fain, as a
man may to coin all the seven liberal sciences out of the Bible,
reducing it into divers forms of orations, poems, dialogues, even to
the calculating of a new Christian grammar. But, saith the historian
Socrates, the providence of God provided better than the industry of
Apollinarius and his son, by taking away that illiterate law with
the life of him who devised it. So great an injury they then held it
to be deprived of Hellenic learning; and thought it a persecution more
undermining, and secretly decaying the Church, than the open cruelty
of Decius or Diocletian.

  And perhaps it was the same politic drift that the devil whipped St.
Jerome in a Lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it was a
phantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an angel
been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon
Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading, not the vanity, it
had been plainly first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for
scurril Plautus, he confesses to have been reading, not long before;
next to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers wax old
in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of such a
tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may
be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer;
and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same
purpose?

  But if it be agreed we shall be tried by visions, there is a
vision recorded by Eusebius, far ancienter than this tale of Jerome to
the nun Eustochium, and, besides, has nothing of a fever in it.
Dionysius Alexandrinus was about the year 240 a person of great name
in the Church for piety and learning, who had wont to avail himself
much against heretics by being conversant in their books; until a
certain presbyter laid it scrupulously to his conscience, how he durst
venture himself among those defiling volumes. The worthy man, loth
to give offence, fell into a new debate with himself what was to be
thought; when suddenly a vision sent from God (it is his own epistle
that so avers it) confirmed him in these words: Read any books
whatever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge
aright, and to examine each matter. To this revelation he assented the
sooner, as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the
Apostle to the Thessalonians, Prove all things, hold fast that which
is good. And he might have added another remarkable saying of the same
author: To the pure, all things are pure; not only meats and drinks,
but all kind of knowledge whether of good or evil; the knowledge
cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and
conscience be not defiled.

  For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil
substance; and yet God, in that unapocryphal vision, said without
exception, Rise, Peter, kill and eat, leaving the choice to each man's
discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or
nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not
unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good
nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is