trial of virtue and the exercise of truth? It would be better done, to
learnthat the law must needs be frivolous, which goes to restrain
things, uncertainly and yet equally working to good and to evil. And
were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before
many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God
sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person more
than the restraint of ten vicious.

  And albeit whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking,
travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book, and is of the
same effect that writings are, yet grant the thing to be prohibited
were only books, it appears that this order hitherto is far
insufficient to the end which it intends. Do we not see, not once or
oftener, but weekly, that continued court-libel against the Parliament
and City, printed, as the wet sheets can witness, and dispersed
among us, for all that licensing can do? yet this is the prime service
a man would think, wherein this Order should give proof of itself.
If it were executed, you'll say. But certain, if execution be remiss
or blindfold now, and in this particular, what will it be hereafter
and in other books? If then the Order shall not be vain and frustrate,
behold a new labour, Lords and Commons, ye must repeal and proscribe
all scandalous and unlicensed books already printed and divulged;
after ye have drawn them up into a list, that all may know which are
condemned, and which not; and ordain that no foreign books be
delivered out of custody, till they have been read over. This office
will require the whole time of not a few overseers, and those no
vulgar men. There be also books which are partly useful and excellent,
partly culpable and pernicious; this work will ask as many more
officials, to make expurgations and expunctions, that the Commonwealth
of Learning be not damnified. In fine, when the multitude of books
increase upon their hands, ye must be fain to catalogue all those
printers who are found frequently offending, and forbid the
importation of their whole suspected typography. In a word, that
this your Order may be exact and not deficient, ye must reform it
perfectly according to the model of Trent and Seville, which I know ye
abhor to do.

  Yet though ye should condescend to this, which God forbid, the Order
still would be but fruitless and defective to that end whereto ye
meant it. If to prevent sects and schisms, who is so unread or so
uncatechised in story, that hath not heard of many sects refusing
books as a hindrance, and preserving their doctrine unmixed for many
ages, only by unwritten traditions? The Christian faith, for that
was once a schism, is not unknown to have spread all over Asia, ere
any Gospel or Epistle was seen in writing. If the amendment of manners
be aimed at, look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one
scruple the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all
the inquisitional rigour that hath been executed upon books.

  Another reason, whereby to make it plain that this Order will miss
the end it seeks, consider by the quality which ought to be in every
licenser. It cannot be denied but that he who is made judge to sit
upon the birth or death of books, whether they may be wafted into this
world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both
studious, learned, and judicious; there may be else no mean mistakes
in the censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean
injury. If he be of such worth as behoves him, there cannot be a
more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time
levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen
books and pamphlets, ofttimes huge volumes. There is no book that is
acceptable unless at certain seasons; but to be enjoined the reading
of that at all times, and in a hand scarce legible, whereof three
would not down at any time in the fairest print, is an imposition I
cannot believe how he that values time and his own studies, or is
but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. In this one thing
I crave leave of the present licensers to be pardoned for so thinking;
who doubtless took this office up, looking on it through their
obedience to the Parliament, whose command perhaps made all things
seem easy and unlaborious to them; but that this short trial hath
wearied them out already, their own expressions and excuses to them
who make so many journeys to solicit their licence are testimony
enough. Seeing therefore those who now possess the employment by all
evident signs wish themselves well rid of it; and that no man of
worth, none that is not a plain unthrift of his own hours is ever
likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary of
a press corrector; we may easily foresee what kind of licensers we are
to expect hereafter, either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely
pecuniary. This is what I had to show, wherein this Order cannot
conduce to that end whereof it bears the intention.

  I lastly proceed from the no good it can do, to the manifest hurt it
causes, in being first the greatest discouragement and affront that
can be offered to learning, and to learned men.

  It was the complaint and lamentation of prelates, upon every least
breath of a motion to remove pluralities, and distribute more
equally Church revenues, that then all learning would be for ever
dashed and discouraged. But as for that opinion, I never found cause
to think that the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the
clergy: nor could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy
speech of any churchman who had a competency left him. If therefore ye
be loth to dishearten heartily and discontent, not the mercenary
crew of false pretenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous
sort of such as evidently were born to study, and love learning for
itself, not for lucre or any other end but the service of God and of
truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which
God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose
published labours advance the good of mankind, then know that, so
far to distrust the judgment and the honesty of one who hath but a
common repute in learning, and never yet offended, as not to count him