resembling most the Lacedæmonian guise, knew of learning little but
what their twelve tables, and the Pontific College with their augurs
and flamens taught them in religion and law, so unacquainted with
other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the Stoic
Diogenes, coming ambassadors to Rome, took thereby occasion to give
the city a taste of their philosophy, they were suspected for seducers
by no less a man than Cato the Censor, who moved it in the Senate to
dismiss them speedily, and to banish all such Attic babblers out of
Italy. But Scipio and others of the noblest senators withstood him and
his old Sabine austerity; honored and admired the men; and the censor
himself at last, in his old age, fell to the study of that whereof
before he was so scrupulous. And yet at the same time, Nævius and
Plautus, the first Latin comedians, had filled the city with all the
borrowed scenes of Menander and Philemon. Then began to be considered
there also what was to be done to libelous books and authors; for
Nævius was quickly cast into prison for his unbridled pen, and
released by the tribunes upon his recantation; we read also that
libels were burnt, and the makers punished by Augustus. The like
severity, no doubt, was used, if aught were impiously written against
their esteemed gods. Except in these two points, how the world went in
books, the magistrate kept no reckoning.
V
A NOBLE AND PUISSANT NATION[82]
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 ablest 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 labored studies of
the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal
Transylvanian sends out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders
of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but
their staid men, to learn our language and our theologic arts.
Yet that which is above all this, the favor and the love of Heaven we
have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and
propending toward 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 perverseness of our prelates
against the divine and admirable spirit of Wycliff, to suppress him as
a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and
Jerome, no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known:
the glory of reforming all our neighbors had been completely ours. But
now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we
are become hitherto the latest and backwardest scholars, of whom God
offered to have made us the teachers. Now once again by all
concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout
men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is
decreeing to begin some new and great period in His Church, even to
the reforming of Reformation itself: what does He then but reveal
Himself to His servants, and as His manner is, first to His
Englishmen? I say, as His manner is, first to us, tho we mark not the
method of His counsels, and are unworthy.
Behold now this vast city: a city of refuge, the mansion house of
liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection; the shop of
war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the
plates and instruments of armed Justice in defense of beleaguered
Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious
lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to
present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching
Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to
the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more
from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What
wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and
faithful laborers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of
sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to
harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the
fields are white already.
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much
arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but
knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and
schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and
understanding which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament
of, we rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious
forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-reputed care of their
religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a
little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win
all these diligences to join, and unite in one general and brotherly
search after Truth; could we but forego this prelatical tradition of
crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and
precepts of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should
come among us, wise to discern the mold and temper of a people, and
how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent
alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of
truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring
the Roman docility and courage: If such were my Epirots, I would not
despair the greatest design that could be attempted, to make a church
or kingdom happy.
Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and sectaries;
as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some
squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort
of irrational men who could not consider there must be many schisms
and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the
house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully
together, it can not be united into a continuity, it can but be
contiguous in this world; neither can every piece of the building be
of one form; nay rather the perfection consists in this, that, out of
many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not
vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry
that commends the whole pile and structure.
Let us therefore be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual
architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time
seems come, wherein Moses the great prophet may sit in heaven
rejoicing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfilled,
when not only our seventy elders, but all the Lord's people, are
become prophets. No marvel then tho some men, and some good men too
perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua then was, envy them. They
fret, and out of their own weakness are in agony, lest these divisions
and subdivisions will undo us. The adversary again applauds, and waits
the hour: When they have branched themselves out, saith he, small
enough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he
sees not the firm root out of which we all grow, tho into branches:
nor will beware until he see our small divided maniples cutting
through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy brigade. And
that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms,
and that we shall not need that solicitude, honest perhaps tho
over-timorous of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the
end at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these
reasons to persuade me....
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 mewing her mighty youth, and kindling
her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam: purging and unsealing 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.
What should ye do then? should ye suppress all this flowery crop of
knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this
city? should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to
bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but
what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons,
they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye
suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to
know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking,
there can not be assigned a truer than your own mild and free and
humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your
own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is
the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarefied and
enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven; this is that
which hath enfranchised, enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions
degrees above themselves.
Ye can not make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly
pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us
so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can
grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but
you then must first become that which ye can not be, oppressive,
arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That
our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the
search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue
of your own virtue propagated in us; ye can not suppress that, unless
ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may dispatch
at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to ye,
and excite others? not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and
his four nobles of Danegelt. Altho I dispraise not the defense of
just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me
the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience, above all liberties.
VI
OF FUGITIVE AND CLOISTERED VIRTUE[83]
I can not 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 error to the confirmation of truth,
how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions
of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing
all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of
books promiscuously read.
But of the harm that may result hence three kinds are usually
reckoned. First, is feared the infection that may spread; but then all
human learning and controversy in religious points must remove out of
the world, yea the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates blasphemy
not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not
unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against
Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great
disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader. And ask
a Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and
all the prophets can not persuade him to pronounce the textual Chetiv.
For these causes we all know the Bible itself put by the Papist into
the first rank of prohibited books. The ancientest fathers must be
next removed, as Clement of Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of
Evangelic preparation, transmitting our ears through a hoard of
heathenish obscenities to receive the Gospel. Who finds not that
Irenæus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others discover more heresies than
they well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion?
Nor boots it to say for these, and all the heathen writers of greatest
infection, if it must be thought so, with whom is bound up the life of
human learning, that they writ in an unknown tongue, so long as we
are sure those languages are known as well to the worst of men, who
are both most able, and most diligent to instil the poison they suck,
first into the courts of princes, acquainting them with the choicest
delights, and criticisms of sin. As perhaps did that Petronius whom
Nero called his Arbiter, the master of his revels; and the notorious
ribald of Arezzo,[84] dreaded and yet dear to the Italian courtiers. I
name not him for posterity's sake, whom Henry VIII named in merriment
his vicar of hell. By which compendious way all the contagion that
foreign books can infuse will find a passage to the people far easier
and shorter than an Indian voyage, tho it could be sailed either by
the north of Cataio eastward, or of Canada westward, while our Spanish
licensing gags the English press never so severely.
But on the other side that infection which is from books of
controversy in religion is more doubtful and dangerous to the learned
than to the ignorant; and yet those books must be permitted untouched
by the licenser. It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man
hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English, unless it were
commended and expounded to him by some of that clergy: and indeed all
such tractates, whether false or true, are as the prophecy of Isaiah
was to the eunuch, not to be understood without a guide.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 75: From "The Reason of Church Government."]
[Footnote 76: Bembo, cardinal and man of letters, was born in Venice
in 1470 and died in 1547. He wrote poems and other works, and was the
friend of the first men of culture in his age. Several popes honored
him, and he had the intimate friendship of Lucretia Borgia.]
[Footnote 77: Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, died
in Jerusalem in 1100, a year after he had defeated the Sultan of Egypt
at Ascalon.]
[Footnote 78: Chief among the Greek fathers of the church, born about
185 A.D. and the author of many books.]
[Footnote 79: From the "Tractate on Education."]
[Footnote 80: From the "Apology for Smectymnus."]
[Footnote 81: From the "Areopagitica."]
[Footnote 82: From the "Areopagitica."]
[Footnote 83: From the "Areopagitica."]
[Footnote 84: A reference to Pietro Aretino, born in 1492, died in
1557, a notoriously indecent writer and adventurer. Henry VIII once
sent him 300 crowns.]
LORD CLARENDON
Born in 1608, died in 1674; entered Parliament In 1640;
chancellor of the Exchequer in 1643; chief adviser of
Charles the First during the Civil War; lord chancellor
1660-67; impeached and banished; his "History of the
Rebellion" published in 1702-04.
OF CHARLES I[85]
But it will not be unnecessary to add a short character of his person,
that posterity may know the inestimable loss which the nation then
underwent, in being deprived of a prince whose example would have had
a greater influence upon the manners and piety of the nation, than the
most strict laws can have. To speak first of his private
qualifications as a man, before the mention of his princely and royal
virtues; he was, if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an
honest man; so great a lover of justice, that no temptation could
dispose him to a wrongful action, except it was so disguised to him
that he believed it to be just. He had a tenderness and compassion of
nature which restrained him from ever doing a hard-hearted thing; and,
therefore, he was so apt to grant pardon to malefactors, that the
judges of the land represented to him the damage and insecurity to the
public that flowed from such his indulgence. And then he restrained
himself from pardoning either murders or highway robberies, and
quickly discerned the fruits of his severity by a wonderful
reformation of those enormities. He was very punctual and regular in
his devotions; he was never known to enter upon his recreations or
sports, tho never so early in the morning, before he had been at
public prayers; so that on hunting-days his chaplains were bound to a
very early attendance. He was likewise very strict in observing the
hours of his private cabinet devotions, and was so severe an exacter
of gravity and reverence in all mention of religion, that he could
never endure any light or profane word, with what sharpness of wit
soever it was covered; and tho he was well pleased and delighted with
reading verses made upon any occasion, no man durst bring before him
anything that was profane or unclean. That kind of wit had never any
countenance then. He was so great an example of conjugal affection,
that they who did not imitate him in that particular, durst not brag
of their liberty; and he did not only permit, but direct his bishops
to prosecute those scandalous vices, in the ecclesiastical courts,
against persons of eminence, and near relation to his service.
His kingly virtues had some mixture and allay that hindered them from
shining in full luster, and from producing those fruits they should
have been attended with. He was not in his nature very bountiful, tho
he gave very much. This appeared more after the Duke of Buckingham's
death,[86] after which those showers fell very rarely; and he paused
too long in giving, which made those to whom he gave less sensible of
the benefit. He kept state to the full, which made his court very
orderly, no man presuming to be seen in a place where he had no
pretence to be. He saw and observed men long before he received them
about his person; and did not love strangers, nor very confident men.
He was a patient hearer of causes, which he frequently accustomed
himself to at the council board, and judged very well, and was
dexterous in the mediating part; so that he often put an end to causes
by persuasion, which the stubbornness of men's humors made dilatory in
courts of justice.
He was very fearless in his person; but, in his riper years, not very
enterprising. He had an excellent understanding, but was not confident
enough of it; which made him oftentimes change his own opinion for a
worse, and follow the advice of men that did not judge so well as
himself. This made him more irresolute than the conjuncture of his
affairs would admit; if he had been of a rougher and more imperious
nature, he would have found more respect and duty. And his not
applying some severe cures to approaching evils proceeded from the
lenity of his nature, and the tenderness of his conscience, which, in
all cases of blood, made him choose the softer way, and not hearken to
severe counsels, how reasonable soever urged. This only restrained him
from pursuing his advantage.
As he excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance he was so strict
that he abhorred all debauchery to that degree, that, at a great
festival solemnity, where he once was, when very many of the nobility
of the English and Scots were entertained, being told by one who
withdrew from thence, what vast drafts of wine they drank, and "that
there was one earl who had drunk most of the rest down, and was not
himself moved or altered," the king said "that he deserved to be
hanged"; and that earl coming shortly after into the room where his
majesty was, in some gaiety, to shew how unhurt he was from that
battle, the king sent some one to bid him withdraw from his majesty's
presence; nor did he in some days after appear before him.
So many miraculous circumstances contributed to his ruin, that men
might well think that heaven and earth conspired it. Tho he was, from
the first declension of his power, so much betrayed by his own
servants, that there were very few who remained faithful to him, yet
that treachery proceeded not always from any treasonable purpose to do
him any harm, but from particular and personal animosities against
other men. And afterward, the terror all men were under of the
parliament, and the guilt they were conscious of themselves, made them
watch all opportunities to make themselves gracious to those who could
do them good; and so they became spies upon their master, and from one
piece of knavery were hardened and confirmed to undertake another,
till at last they had no hope of preservation but by the destruction
of their master.
And after all this, when a man might reasonably believe that less than
a universal defection of three nations could not have reduced a great
king to so ugly a fate, it is most certain that, in that very hour,
when he was thus wickedly murdered in the sight of the sun, he had as
great a share in the hearts and affections of his subjects in general,
was as much beloved, esteemed and longed for by the people in general
of the three nations, as any of his predecessors had ever been. To
conclude, he was the worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best
friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best Christian that
the age in which he lived produced. And if he were not the greatest
king, if, he were without some parts and qualities which have made
some kings great and happy, no other prince was ever unhappy who was
possest of half his virtues and endowments, and so much, without any
kind of vice.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 85: From the "History of the Rebellion."]
[Footnote 86: George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, the chief
minister of Charles, was assassinated by John Felton in 1628.]
THOMAS FULLER
Born in 1608, died in 1661; educated at Cambridge; Joined
King Charles I at Oxford in 1643; after the Restoration
chaplain to Charles II; published "The Holy State and the
Profane State" in 1642, and "Worthies of England" in 1662.
QUALITIES OF THE GOOD SCHOOLMASTER[87]
There is scarce any profession in the commonwealth more necessary,
which is so slightly performed. The reasons whereof I conceive to be
these: First, young scholars make this calling their refuge; yea,
perchance, before they have taken any degree in the university,
commence schoolmasters in the country, as if nothing else were
required to set up this profession but only a rod and a ferula.
Secondly, others who are able, use it only as a passage to better
preferment to patch the rents in their present fortune, till they can
provide a new one, and betake themselves to some more gainful calling.
Thirdly, they are disheartened from doing their best with the
miserable reward which in some places they receive, being masters to
their children and slaves to their parents. Fourthly, being grown
rich, they grow negligent, and scorn to touch the school but by the
proxy of the usher. But see how well our schoolmaster behaves himself.
His genius inclines him with delight to his profession. Some men had
as well be school-boys as schoolmasters, to be tied to the school, as
Cooper's Dictionary[88] and Scapula's Lexicon are chained to the desk
therein; and tho great scholars, and skilful in other arts, are
bunglers in this. But God, of his goodness, hath fitted several men
for several callings, that the necessity of church and state, in all
conditions, may be provided for. So that he who beholds the fabric
thereof, may say, God hewed out the stone, and appointed it to lie in
this very place, for it would fit none other so well, and here it doth
most excellent. And thus God moldeth some for a schoolmaster's life,
undertaking it with desire and delight, and discharging it with
dexterity and happy success.