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 behooves 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 pages would not down at any
time in the fairest print, is an imposition which 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 loath to dishearten
utterly 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 fit to print his mind without a tutor and examiner, lest
he should drop a schism, or something of corruption, is the greatest
displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put
upon him.
What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school,
if we have only escaped the ferula to come under the fescue of an
Imprimatur; if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more
than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered
without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? He
who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to
be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great
argument to think himself reputed in the Commonwealth wherein he was
born for other than a fool or a foreigner. 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 consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no
industry, no former proof 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 his inferior in judgment, perhaps one
who never knew the labour of bookwriting, 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.
And what if the author shall be one so copious of fancy, as to have many
things well worth the adding come into his mind after licensing, while
the book is yet under the press, which not seldom happens to the best
and diligentest writers; and that perhaps a dozen times in one book? The
printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy; so often then must the
author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be
viewed; and many a jaunt will be made, ere that licenser, for it must be
the same man, can either be found, or found at leisure; meanwhile either
the press must stand still, which is no small damage, or the author lose
his accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse than he had made
it, which to a diligent writer is the greatest melancholy and vexation
that can befall.
And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching;
how can he be a doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better
be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the
tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser to blot or
alter what precisely accords not with the hidebound humour which he
calls his judgment? When every acute reader, upon the first sight of a
pedantic licence, will be ready with these like words to ding the book
a quoit's distance from him: I hate a pupil teacher, I endure not an
instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fist. I
know nothing of the licenser, but that I have his own hand here for his
arrogance; who shall warrant me his judgment? The State, sir, replies
the stationer, but has a quick return: The State shall be my governors,
but not my critics; they may be mistaken in the choice of a licenser,
as easily as this licenser may be mistaken in an author; this is
some common stuff; and he might add from Sir Francis Bacon, THAT
SUCH AUTHORIZED BOOKS ARE BUT THE LANGUAGE OF THE TIMES. For though a
licenser should happen to be judicious more than ordinary, which will
be a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very office and his
commission enjoins him to let pass nothing but what is vulgarly received
already.
Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work of any deceased author,
though never so famous in his lifetime and even to this day, come to
their hands for licence to be printed, or reprinted, if there be found
in his book one sentence of a venturous edge, uttered in the height
of zeal (and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine
spirit?) yet not suiting with every low decrepit humour of their own,
though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake it,
they will not pardon him their dash: the sense of that great man shall
to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulness or the presumptuous
rashness of a perfunctory licenser. And to what an author this violence
hath been lately done, and in what book of greatest consequence to be
faithfully published, I could now instance, but shall forbear till a
more convenient season.
Yet if these things be not resented seriously and timely by them who
have the remedy in their power, but that such iron-moulds as these shall
have authority to gnaw out the choicest periods of exquisitest books,
and to commit such a treacherous fraud against the orphan remainders of
worthiest men after death, the more sorrow will belong to that hapless
race of men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. 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 only in request.
And it is a particular disesteem of every knowing person alive, and most
injurious to the written labours and monuments of the dead, so to me it
seems an undervaluing and vilifying of the whole nation. I cannot set
so light by all the invention, the art, the wit, the grave and solid
judgment which is in England, as that it can be comprehended in any
twenty capacities how good soever, much less that it should not pass
except their superintendence be over it, except it be sifted and
strained with their strainers, that it should be uncurrent without
their manual stamp. Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be
monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must
not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land,
to mark and licence it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks. What is it
but a servitude like that imposed by the Philistines, not to be allowed
the sharpening of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from
all quarters to twenty licensing forges? Had anyone written and divulged
erroneous things and scandalous to honest life, misusing and forfeiting
the esteem had of his reason among men, if after conviction this only
censure were adjudged him that he should never henceforth write but
what were first examined by an appointed officer, whose hand should be
annexed to pass his credit for him that now he might be safely read; it
could not be apprehended less than a disgraceful punishment. Whence to
include the whole nation, and those that never yet thus offended, under
such a diffident and suspectful prohibition, may plainly be understood
what a disparagement it is. So much the more, whenas debtors and
delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but unoffensive books must
not stir forth without a visible jailer in their title.
Nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we be
so jealous over them, as that we dare not trust them with an English
pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and
ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak state of faith and
discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a
licenser? That this is care or love of them, we cannot pretend, whenas,
in those popish places where the laity are most hated and despised, the
same strictness is used over them. Wisdom we cannot call it, because
it stops but one breach of licence, nor that neither: whenas those
corruptions, which it seeks to prevent, break in faster at other doors
which cannot be shut.
And in conclusion it reflects to the disrepute of our ministers also, of
whose labours we should hope better, and of the proficiency which their
flock reaps by them, than that after all this light of the Gospel which
is, and is to be, and all this continual preaching, they should still be
frequented with such an unprincipled, unedified and laic rabble, as
that the whiff of every new pamphlet should stagger them out of their
catechism and Christian walking. This may have much reason to discourage
the ministers when such a low conceit is had of all their exhortations,
and the benefiting of their hearers, as that they are not thought fit
to be turned loose to three sheets of paper without a licenser; that all
the sermons, all the lectures preached, printed, vented in such numbers,
and such volumes, as have now well nigh made all other books unsaleable,
should not be armour enough against one single Enchiridion, without the
castle of St. Angelo of an Imprimatur.
And lest some should persuade ye, Lords and Commons, that these
arguments of learned men's discouragement at this your Order are mere
flourishes, and not real, I could recount what I have seen and heard in
other countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes; when I have
sat among their learned men, for that honour I had, and been counted
happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they
supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the
servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought; that
this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had
been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian.
There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a
prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than
the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew
that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke,
nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness, that other
nations were so persuaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my hope that
those worthies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders
to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of
time that this world hath to finish. When that was once begun, it was as
little in my fear that what words of complaint I heard among learned men
of other parts uttered against the Inquisition, the same I should hear
by as learned men at home, uttered in time of Parliament against an
order of licensing; and that so generally that, when I had disclosed
myself a companion of their discontent, I might say, if without envy,
that he whom an honest quaestorship had endeared to the Sicilians was
not more by them importuned against Verres, than the favourable opinion
which I had among many who honour ye, and are known and respected by ye,
loaded me with entreaties and persuasions, that I would not despair to
lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind, toward
the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon learning. That this is
not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, but the common
grievance of all those who had prepared their minds and studies
above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others, and from others to
entertain it, thus much may satisfy.
And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what
the general murmur is; that if it come to inquisitioning again and
licensing, and that we are so timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious
of all men, as to fear each book and the shaking of every leaf, before
we know what the contents are; if some who but of late were little
better than silenced from preaching shall come now to silence us from
reading, except what they please, it cannot be guessed what is intended
by some but a second tyranny over learning: and will soon put it out of
controversy, that bishops and presbyters are the same to us, both name
and thing. That those evils of prelaty, which before from five or six
and twenty sees were distributively charged upon the whole people, will
now light wholly upon learning, is not obscure to us: whenas now the
pastor of a small unlearned parish on the sudden shall be exalted
archbishop over a large diocese of books, and yet not remove, but keep
his other cure too, a mystical pluralist. He who but of late cried down
the sole ordination of every novice Bachelor of Art, and denied sole
jurisdiction over the simplest parishioner, shall now at home in his
private chair assume both these over worthiest and excellentest books
and ablest authors that write them.
This is not, ye Covenants and Protestations that we have made! this is
not to put down prelaty; this is but to chop an episcopacy; this is
but to translate the Palace Metropolitan from one kind of dominion into
another; this is but an old canonical sleight of commuting our penance.
To startle thus betimes at a mere unlicensed pamphlet will after a
while be afraid of every conventicle, and a while after will make a
conventicle of every Christian meeting. But I am certain that a State
governed by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a Church built
and founded upon the rock of faith and true knowledge, cannot be so
pusillanimous. While things are yet not constituted in religion, that
freedom of writing should be restrained by a discipline imitated from
the prelates and learnt by them from the Inquisition, to shut us up all
again into the breast of a licenser, must needs give cause of doubt and
discouragement to all learned and religious men.
Who cannot but discern the fineness of this politic drift, and who are
the contrivers; that while bishops were to be baited down, then all
presses might be open; it was the people's birthright and privilege in
time of Parliament, it was the breaking forth of light. But now, the
bishops abrogated and voided out of the Church, as if our Reformation
sought no more but to make room for others into their seats under
another name, the episcopal arts begin to bud again, the cruse of truth
must run no more oil, liberty of printing must be enthralled again
under a prelatical commission of twenty, the privilege of the people
nullified, and, which is worse, the freedom of learning must groan
again, and to her old fetters: all this the Parliament yet sitting.
Although their own late arguments and defences against the prelates
might remember them, that this obstructing violence meets for the most
part with an event utterly opposite to the end which it drives at:
instead of suppressing sects and schisms, it raises them and invests
them with a reputation. The punishing of wits enhances their authority,
saith the Viscount St. Albans; and a forbidden writing is thought to be
a certain spark of truth that flies up in the faces of them who seek
to tread it out. This Order, therefore, may prove a nursing-mother to
sects, but I shall easily show how it will be a step-dame to Truth: and
first by disenabling us to the maintenance of what is known already.
Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives
by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compared in
Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual
progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.
A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only
because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without
knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he
holds becomes his heresy.
There is not any burden that some would gladlier post off to another
than the charge and care of their religion. There be--who knows not that
there be?--of Protestants and professors who live and die in as arrant
an implicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man, addicted
to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so
entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he
cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade. What should he do?
fain he would have the name to be religious, fain he would bear up with
his neighbours in that. What does he therefore, but resolves to give
over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and
credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some
divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns
the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into
his custody; and indeed makes the very person of that man his religion;
esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory
of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now no more
within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes
near him, according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains
him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at
night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises,
is saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced brewage, and
better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed
on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad
at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day
without his religion.
Another sort there be who, when they hear that all things shall be
ordered, all things regulated and settled, nothing written but what
passes through the custom-house of certain publicans that have the
tonnaging and poundaging of all free-spoken truth, will straight give
themselves up into your hands, make 'em and cut 'em out what religion ye
please: there be delights, there be recreations and jolly pastimes that
will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year
as in a delightful dream. What need they torture their heads with that
which others have taken so strictly and so unalterably into their own
purveying? These are the fruits which a dull ease and cessation of our
knowledge will bring forth among the people. How goodly and how to be
wished were such an obedient unanimity as this, what a fine conformity
would it starch us all into! Doubtless a staunch and solid piece of
framework, as any January could freeze together.
Nor much better will be the consequence even among the clergy
themselves. It is no new thing never heard of before, for a parochial
minister, who has his reward and is at his Hercules' pillars in a warm
benefice, to be easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may
rouse up his studies, to finish his circuit in an English Concordance
and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings of a sober graduateship,
a Harmony and a Catena; treading the constant round of certain common
doctrinal heads, attended with their uses, motives, marks, and
means, out of which, as out of an alphabet, or sol-fa, by forming and
transforming, joining and disjoining variously, a little bookcraft, and
two hours' meditation, might furnish him unspeakably to the performance
of more than a weekly charge of sermoning: not to reckon up the infinite
helps of interlinearies, breviaries, synopses, and other loitering gear.
But as for the multitude of sermons ready printed and piled up, on every
text that is not difficult, our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry,
and add to boot St. Martin and St. Hugh, have not within their hallowed
limits more vendible ware of all sorts ready made: so that penury he
never need fear of pulpit provision, having where so plenteously to
refresh his magazine. But if his rear and flanks be not impaled, if his
back door be not secured by the rigid licenser, but that a bold book
may now and then issue forth and give the assault to some of his old
collections in their trenches, it will concern him then to keep waking,
to stand in watch, to set good guards and sentinels about his
received opinions, to walk the round and counter-round with his fellow
inspectors, fearing lest any of his flock be seduced, who also then
would be better instructed, better exercised and disciplined. And God
send that the fear of this diligence, which must then be used, do not
make us affect the laziness of a licensing Church.
For if we be sure we are in the right, and do not hold the truth
guiltily, which becomes not, if we ourselves condemn not our own weak
and frivolous teaching, and the people for an untaught and irreligious
gadding rout, what can be more fair than when a man judicious, learned,
and of a conscience, for aught we know, as good as theirs that taught
us what we know, shall not privily from house to house, which is more
dangerous, but openly by writing publish to the world what his opinion
is, what his reasons, and wherefore that which is now thought cannot be
sound? Christ urged it as wherewith to justify himself, that he preached
in public; yet writing is more public than preaching; and more easy
to refutation, if need be, there being so many whose business and
profession merely it is to be the champions of truth; which if they
neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth, or unability?
Thus much we are hindered and disinured by this course of licensing,
toward the true knowledge of what we seem to know. For how much it hurts
and hinders the licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry,
more than any secular employment, if they will discharge that office as
they ought, so that of necessity they must neglect either the one duty
or the other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it to
their own conscience, how they will decide it there.