begun it was as little in my fear that what words of complaint I heard among lerned men of other parts utter'd against the Inquisition the same I shou'd hear by as lerned men at home utterd in time of Parlament against an order of licencing and that so generally that when I had disclos'd my self a companion of their discontent I might say if without envy that he whom an honest questorship had indear'd to the Sicilians was not more by them importun'd against Verres then the favourable opinion which I had among many who honour ye and are known and respected by ye loaded me with entreaties and perswasions 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 lerning That this is not therefore the disburdning of a particular fancie but the common grievance of all those who had prepar'd their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others and from others to entertain it thus much may satisfie And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what the generall murmur is that if it come to inquisitioning again and licencing and that we are so timorous of our selvs 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 then silenc't from preaching shall come now to silence us from reading except what they please it cannot be guest what is intended by som but a second tyranny over learning and will soon put it out of controversie that Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us both name and thing That those evills of Prelaty which before from five or six and twenty Sees were distributivly charg'd 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 dioces of books and yet not remove but keep his other cure too a mysticall pluralist He who but of late cry'd down the sole ordination of every novice Batchelor of Art and deny'd sole jurisdiction over the simplest Parishioner shall now at home in his privat chair assume both these over worthiest and excellentest books and ablest authors that write them This is not Yee Covnants 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 canonicall flight of commuting our penance To startle thus betimes at a meer unlicenc't 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 govern'd 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 restrain'd by a discipline imitated from the Prelats and learnt by them from the Inquisition to shut us up all again into the brest of a licencer must needs give cause of doubt and discouragement to all learned and religious men Who cannot but discern the finenes 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 peoples birthright and priviledge in time of Parlament 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 Episcopall arts begin to bud again the cruse of truth must run no more oyle liberty of Printing must be enthrall'd again under a Prelaticall commission of twenty the privilege of the people nullify'd and which is wors the freedom of learning must groan again and to her old fetters all this the Parlament yet sitting Although their own late arguments and defences against the Prelats 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 enhaunces their autority saith the Vicount St. Albans and a forbidd'n writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth that flies up in the faces of them who seeke to tread it out This order therefore may prove a nursing mother to sects but I shall easily shew how it will be a step-dame to Truth and first by disinabling 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 compar'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain if her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition A man may be a heretick in the truth and if he beleeve things only because his Pastor sayes so or the Assembly so determins without knowing other reason though his belief be true yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresie There is not any burden that som would gladlier post off to another then the charge and care of their Religion There be who knows not that there be of Protestants and professors who live and dye 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 traffick so entangl'd and of so many piddling accounts that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade What should he doe fain he would have the name to be religious fain he would bear up with his neighbours in that What does he therefore but resolvs to give over toyling and to find himself out som factor to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs som Divine of note and estimation that must be To him he adheres resigns the whole ware-house of his religion with all the locks and keyes 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 becom a dividuall movable and goes and comes neer 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 praies is liberally supt and sumptuously laid to sleep rises is saluted and after the malmsey or some well spic't bruage and better breakfasted then he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and
instance wherein to shew both that love of truth which ye eminently professe and that uprightnesse of your judgement which is not wont to be partiall to your selves by judging over again that Order which ye have ordain'd to regulate Printing That no Book pamphlet or paper shall be henceforth Printed unlesse the same be first approv'd and licenc't by such or at least one of such as shall be thereto appointed For that part which preserves justly every mans Copy to himselfe or provides for the poor I touch not only wish they be not made pretenses to abuse and persecute honest and painfull Men who offend not in either of these particulars But that other clause of Licencing Books which we thought had dy'd with his brother quadragesunal and matrimonial when the Prelats expir'd I shall now attend with such a Homily as shall lay before ye first the inventors of it to bee those whom ye will be loath to own next what is to be thought in generall of reading what ever sort the Books be and that this Order avails nothing to the suppressing of scandalous seditious and libellous Books which were mainly intended to be supprest Last that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of Truth not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already but by hindring and cropping the discovery that might bee yet further made both in religious and civill Wisdome I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves as well as men and thereafter to confine imprison and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors For Books are not absolutely dead things but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous Dragons teeth and being sown up and down may chance to spring up armed men And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us'd as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature Gods Image but hee who destroyes a good Booke kills reason it selfe kills the Image of God as it were in the eye Many a man lives a burden to the Earth but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life 'T is true no age can restore a life whereof perhaps there is no great losse and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse of a rejected truth for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men how we spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and stor'd up in Books since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed sometimes a martyrdome and if it extend to the whole impression a kinde of massacre whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall life but strikes at that ethereall and and fist essence the breath of reason it selfe slaics an immortality rather then a life But lest I should be condemn'd of introducing licence while I oppose Licencing I refuse not the paines to be so much Historicall as will serve to shew what hath been done by ancient and famous Commonwealths against this disorder till the very time that this project of licencing crept out of the Inquisition was catcht up by our Prelates and hath caught some of our Presbyters In Athens where Books and Wits were ever busier then in any other part of Greece I finde but only two sorts of writings which the Magistrate car'd to take notice of those either blasphemous and Atheisticall or Libellous Thus the Books of Protagoras were by the Iudges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt and himselfe banisht the territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know whether there were gods or whether not And against defaming it was decreed that none should be traduc'd by name as was the manner of Vetus Comoedia whereby we may guesse how they censur'd libelling And this course was quick enough as Cicero writes to quell both the desperate wits of other Atheists and the open way of defaming as the event shew'd Of other sects and opinions though tending to voluptuousnesse and the denying of divine providence they tooke no heed Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus or that libertine school of Cyrene or what the Cynick impudence utter'd was ever question'd by the Laws Neither is it recorded that the writings of those old Comedians were supprest though the acting of them were forbid and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes the loosest of them all to his royall scholler Dionysius is commonly known and may be excus'd if holy Chrysostome as is reported nightly studied so much the same Author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the stile of a rousing Sermon That other leading City of Greece Lacedaemon considering that Lycurgus their Law-giver was so addicted to elegant learning as to have been the first that brought out of Jonia the scatter'd workes of Homer and sent the Poet Thales from Creet to prepare and mollifie the Spartan surlinesse with his smooth songs and odes the better to plant among them law and civility it is to be wonder'd how musclesse and unbookish they were minding nought but the feats of Warre There needed no licencing of Books among them for they dislik'd all but their owne Laconick Apothegms and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their City perhaps for composing in a higher straine then their owne souldierly ballats and roundels could reach to Or if it were for his broad verses they were not therein so cautious but they were as dissolute in their promiscuous conversing whence Euripides affirmes in Andromache that their women were all unchaste Thus much may give us light after what sort Bookes were prohibited among the Greeks The Romans also for many ages train'd up only to a military roughnes resembling most the Lacedaemonian guise knew of learning little but what their twelve Tables and the Pontifick College with their Augurs and Flamins taught them in Religion and Law so unacquainted with other learning that when Carneades and Critolaus with the Stoick Diogenes comming Embassadors to Rome tooke thereby occasion to give the City a tast of their Philosophy they were suspected for seducers by no lesse a man then Cato the Censor who mov'd it in the Senat to dismisse them speedily and to banish all such Attick bablers out of Italy But Scipio and others of the noblest Senators withstood him and his old Sabin austerity honour'd and admir'd the men and the Censor himself at last in his old age fell to the study of
consider by the quality which ought to be in every licencer It cannot be deny'd 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 behoovs him here cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing Journey-work a greater losse of time levied upon his head then to be made the perpetuall reader of unchosen books and pamphlets oftimes huge volumes There is no book that is acceptable unlesse at certain seasons but to be enjoyn'd the reading of that at all times and in a hand scars legible whereof three pages would not down at any time in the fairest Print is an imposition which I cannot beleeve how he that values time and his own studies or is but of a sensible nostrill should be able to endure In this one thing I crave leave of the present licencers to be pardon'd for so thinking who doublesse took this office up looking on it through their obedience to the Parlament whose command perhaps made all things seem easie and unlaborious to them but that this short triall hath wearied them out already their own expressions and excuses to them who make so many journeys to sollicit their licence are testimony anough Seeing therefore those who now possesse the imployment by all evident signs wish themselves well ridd 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 him'elf to the salary of a Presse-corrector we may easily foresee what kind of licencers we are to expect hereafter either ignorant imperious and remisse or basely pecuniary This is what I had to shew 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 offer'd to learning and to learned men It was the complaint and lamentation of Prelats upon every least breath of a motion to remove pluralities and distribute more equally Church revennu's that then all learning would be for ever dasht and discourag'd 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 lerning for it self 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 publisht labours advance the good of mankind then know that so far to distrust the judgement 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 scism 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 scapt the ferular to come under the fescu of an Imprimatur if serious and elaborat writings as if they were no more then the theam of a Grammar lad under his Pedagogue must not be utter'd without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licencer He who is not trusted with his own actions his drift not being known to be evill and standing to the hazard of law and penalty has no great argument to think himself reputed in the Commonwealth wherin he was born for other then a fool or a foreiner When a man writes to the world he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him he searches meditats is industrious and likely consults and conferrs with his judicious friends after all which done he takes himself to be inform'd in what he writes as well as any that writ before him if in this the most consummat act of his fidelity and ripenesse 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 unlesse he carry all his considerat diligence all his midnight watchings and expence of Palladian oyl to the hasty view of an unleasur'd licencer perhaps much his younger perhaps far his inferiour in judgement perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing and if he be not repulst or slighted must appear in Print like a punic with his guardian and his censors hand on the back of his title to be his bayl and surety that he is no idiot or seducer it cannot be but a dishonor and derogation to the author to the book to the priviledge and dignity of Learning And what if the author shall be one so copious of fancie as to have many things well worth the adding come into his mind after licencing while the book is yet under the Presse which not seldom happ'ns to the best and diligentest writers and that perhaps a dozen times in one book The Printer dares not go beyond his licenc't copy so often then must the author trudge to his leav-giver that those his new insertions may be viewd and many a jaunt will be made ere that licencer for it must be the same man can either be found or found at leisure mean while either the Presse must stand still which is no small damage or the author loose his accuratest thoughts send the book forth wors then 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 autority 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 licencer to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hidebound humor which he calls his judgement When every acute reader upon the first sight of a pedantick licence will be ready with these like words to ding the book a coits distance from him I hate a pupil teacher I endure not an instructer that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing sist I know nothing of the licencer but that I have his own hand here for his arrogance who shall warrant me his judgement The State Sir replies
Ierusalem his Religion walks abroad at eight and leavs 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 order'd all things regulated and setl'd nothing writt'n but what passes through the custom-house of certain Publicans that have the tunaging and the poundaging of all free spok'n truth will strait give themselvs up into your hands mak 'em 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 delightfull dream What need they torture their heads with that which others have tak'n so strictly and so unalterably into their own pourveying 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 wisht were such an obedient unanimity as this what a fine conformity would it starch us all into doubtles a stanch and solid peece of frame-work as any January could freeze together Nor much better will be the consequence ev'n among the Clergy themselvs it is no new thing never heard of before for a parochiall 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 graduatship a Harmony and a Catena treading the constant round of certain common doctrinall heads attended with their uses motives marks and means out of which as out of an alphabet or sol fa by forming and transforming joyning and dis-joyning variously a little book-craft and two hours meditation might furnish him unspeakably to the performance of more then a weekly charge of sermoning not to reck'n up the infinit helps of interlinearies breviaries synopses and other loitering gear But as for the multitude of Sermons ready printed and pil'd up on every text that is not difficult our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry and adde to boot St. Martin and St. Hugh have not within their hallow'd 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 magazin But if his rear and flanks be not impal'd if his back dore be not secur'd by the rigid licencer 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 sentinells about his receiv'd opinions to walk the round and counter-round with his fellow inspectors fearing lest any of his flock be seduc't who also then would be better instructed better exercis'd and disciplin'd And God send that the fear of this diligence which must then be us'd doe not make us affect the lazines of a licencing Church For if we be sure we are in the right and doe not hold the truth guiltily which becomes not if we our selves condemn not our own weak and frivolous teaching and the people for an untaught and irreligious gadding rout what can be more fair then when a man judicious learned and of a conscience for ought 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 found Christ urg'd it as wherewith to justifie himself that he preacht in publick yet writing is more publick then preaching and more easie to refutation if need be there being so many whose businesse and profession meerly 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 hinder'd and dis-inur'd by this cours of licencing toward the true knowledge of what we seem to know For how much it hurts and hinders the licencers themselves in the calling of their Ministery more then 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 There is yet behind of what I purpos'd to lay open the incredible losse and detriment that this plot of licencing puts us to more then if som enemy at sea should stop up all our hav'ns and ports and creeks it hinders and retards the importation of our richest Marchandize Truth nay it was first establisht and put in practice by Antichristian malice and mystery on set purpose to extinguish if it were possible the light of Reformation and to settle falshood little differing from that policie wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran by the prohibition of Printing 'T is not deny'd but gladly confest we are to send our thanks and vows to heav'n louder then most of Nations for that great measure of truth which we enjoy especially in those main points between us and the Pope with his appertinences the Prelats but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here and have attain'd the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortall glasse wherein we contemplate can shew us till we come to beatisic vision that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet farre short of Truth Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on but when he ascended and his Apostles after him were laid asleep then strait arose a wicked race of deceivers who as that story goes of the AEgyptian Typhon with his conspirators how they dealt with the good Osiris took the virgin Truth hewd her lovely form into a thousand peeces and scatter'd them to the four winds From that time ever since the sad friends of Truth such as durst appear imitating the carefull search that Isis made for the mangl'd body of Osiris went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them We have not yet found them all Lords and Commons nor ever shall doe till her Masters second comming he shall bring together every joynt and member and shall mould them into an immortall feature of lovelines and perfection Suffer not these licencing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyr'd Saint We boast our light but if we look not wisely on the Sun it self it smites us into darknes Who can discern those planets that are oft Combust and those stars of brightest magnitude that rise and set with the Sun untill the opposite motion of their orbs bring them
to such a place in the firmament where they may be seen evning or morning The light which we have gain'd was giv'n us not to be ever staring on but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge It is not the unfrocking of a Priest the unmitring of a Bishop and the removing him from off the Presbyterian shoulders that will make us a happy Nation no if other things as great in the Church and in the rule of life both economicall and politicall be not lookt into and reform'd we have lookt so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath beacon'd up to us that we are stark blind There be who perpetually complain of schisms and sects and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims 'T is their own pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing who neither will hear with meeknes nor can convince yet all must be supprest which is not found in their Syntagma They are the troublers they are the dividers of unity who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissever'd peeces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth To be still searching what we know not by what we know still closing up truth to truth as we find it for all her body is homogeneal and proportionall this is the golden rule in Theology as well as in Arithmetick and makes up the best harmony in a Church not the forc't and outward union of cold and neutrall and inwardly divided minds Lords and Commons of England consider what Nation it is wherof ye are and wherof ye are the governours a Nation not slow and dull but of a quick ingenious and piercing spirit acute to invent suttle and sinewy to discours 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 bin so ancient and so eminent among us that Writers of good antiquity and ablest judgement have bin perswaded that ev'n the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the old Philosophy of this Iland And that wise and civill Roman Julius Agricola who govern'd once here for Caesar preferr'd the naturall wits of Britain before the labour'd studies of the French Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transilvanian sends out yearly from as farre as the mountanous borders of Russia and beyond the Hercynian wildernes not their youth but their stay'd men to learn our language and our theologic arts Yet that which is above all this the favour and the love of heav'n we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us Why else was this Nation chos'n before any other that out of her as out of Sion should be proclam'd and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europ And had it not bin the obstinat perversnes of our Prelats against the divine and admirable spirit of Wicklef to suppresse him as a schismatic and innovator perhaps neither the Bohemian Husse and Jerom no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin had bin ever known the glory of reforming all our neighbours had bin compleatly ours But now as our obdurat Clergy have with violence demean'd the matter we are become hitherto the latest and the backwardest Schollers of whom God offer'd to have made us the teachers Now once again by all concurrence of signs and by the generall instinct of holy and devout men as they daily and solemnly expresse their thoughts God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church ev'n to the reforming of Reformation it self what does he then but reveal Himself to his servants and as his manner is first to his English-men I say as his manner is first to us though 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 encompast and surrounded with his protection the shop of warre hath not there more anvils and hammers waking to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguer'd Truth then there be pens and heads there sitting by their studious lamps musing searching revolving new nations and idea's 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 soile but wise and faithfull labourers to make a knowing people a Nation of Prophets of Sages and of Worthies We reck'n more then 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 stirr'd up in this City What some lament of we rather should rejoyce at should rather praise this pious forwardnes among men to reassume the ill deputed care of their Religion into their own hands again A little generous prudence a little forbearance of one another and som grain of charity might win all these diligences to joyn and unite into one generall and brotherly search after Truth could we but forgoe this Prelaticall 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 mould 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 Pirrhus 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 cry'd out against for schismaticks 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 irrationall 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 cannot be united into a continuity it can but be contiguous in this world neither can every peece of the building be of one form nay rather the perfection consists in this that out of many moderat varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportionall arises the goodly and the gracefull symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure Let us therefore be more
it self will tell us more at large being publish to the world and dedicated to the Parlament by him who both for his life and for his death deserve that what advice he left be not laid by without perusall And now the time in speciall is by priviledge to write and speak what may help to the furder discussing of matters in agitation The Temple of Janus with his two controversal faces might now not unsignificantly be set open And though all the windes of doctrin were let loose to play upon the earth so Truth be in the field we do injuriously by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength Let her and Falshood grapple who ever knew Truth put to the wors in a free and open encounter Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva fram'd and fabric't already to our hands Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us there be who envy and oppose if it come not first in at their casements What a collusion is this whenas we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence to seek for wisdom as for hidd'n treasures early and late that another order shall enjoyn us to know nothing but by statute When a man hath bin labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge hath furnisht out his findings in all their equipage drawn forth his reasons as it were a battell raung'd scatter'd and defeated all objections in his way calls out his adversary into the plain offers him the advantage of wind and sun if he please only that he may try the matter by dint of argument for his opponets then to sculk to lay ambushments to keep a narrow bridge of licencing where the challenger should passe though it be valour anough in shouldiership is but weaknes and cowardise in the wars of Truth For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty she needs no policies nor stratagems nor licencings to make her victorious those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power give her but room do not bind her when she sleeps for then she speaks not true as the old Proteus did who spake oracles only when he was caught bound but then rather she turns herself into all shapes except her own and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time as Micaiah did before Ahab untill she be adjur'd into her own likenes Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes then one What else is all that rank of things indifferent wherein Truth may be on this side or on the other without being unlike her self What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordinances that hand writing nayl'd to the crosse what great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of His doctrine is that he who eats or eats not regards a day or regards it not may doe either to the Lord How many other things might be tolerated in peace and left to conscience had we but charity and were it not the chiefstrong hold of our hypocrisie to be ever judging one another I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us We stumble and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible congregation from another though it be not in fundamentalls and through our forwardnes to suppresse and our backwardnes to recover any enthrall'd peece of truth out of the gripe of custom we care not to keep truth separated from truth which is the fiercest rent and disunion of all We doe not see that while we still affect by all means a rigid externall formality we may as soon fall again into a grosse conforming stupidity a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and stubble forc't and frozen together which is more to the sudden degenerating of a Church then many subdichotomies of petty schisms Not that I can think well of every light separation or that all in a Church is to be expected gold and silver and presious stones it is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares the good fish from the other frie that must be the Angels Ministery at the end of mortall things Yet if all cannot be of one mind as who looks they should be this doubtles is more wholsome more prudent and more Christian that many be tolerated rather then all compell'd I mean not tolerated Popery and open superstition which as it extirpats all religions and civill supremacies so it self should be extirpat provided first that all charitable and compassionat means be us'd to win and regain the weak and the misled that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw it self but those neighboring differences or rather indifference are what I speak of whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline which though they may be many yet need not interrupt the unity of Spirit if we could but find among us the bond of peace In the mean while if any one would write and bring his helpfull hand to the slow-moving Reformation which we labour under if Truth have spok'n to him before others or but seem'd at least to speak who hath so bejesuited us that we should trouble that man with asking licence to doe so worthy a deed and not consider this that if it come to prohibiting there is not ought more likely to be prohibited then truth it self whose first appearance to our eyes bleat'd and dimm'd with prejudice and custom is more unsightly and unplausible then many errors ev'n as the person is of many a great man slight and contemptible to see to And what doe they tell us vainly of new opinions when this very opinion of theirs that none must be heard but whom they like is the worst and newest opinion of all others and is the chief cause why sects and schisms doe so much abound and true knowledge is kept at distance from us besides yet a greater danger which is in it For when God shakes a Kingdome with strong and healthfull commotions to a generall reforming 't is not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing but yet more true it is that God then raises to his own work men of rare abilities and more then common industry not only to look back and revise what hath bin taught heretofore but to gain furder and goe on some new enlightn'd steps in the discovery of truth For such is the order of Gods enlightning his Church to dispense and deal out by degrees his beam so as our earthly eyes may best sustain it Neither is God appointed and confin'd where and out of what place these