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Areopagitica: Part III
Areopagitica: Part III
And as it is a particular disesteem of every knowing person alive, and
most injurious to the written labors and monuments of the dead, so to me it
seems an undervaluing and vilifying^79 of the whole nation. I can not 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^80 and statutes, and standards. We must not think to make a staple
commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our
broadcloth, and our wool packs. 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
any one 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^81 and suspectful prohibition, may plainly be understood what
a disparagement it is. So much the more, when as debtors and delinquents may
walk abroad without a keeper, but unoffensive books must not stir forth
without a visible jailer in their title. Not is it to the common people less
than a reproach; for if we be so jealous over^82 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 estate 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 can not pretend, whenas in
those popish places where the laity are most hated and despised the same
strictness is used over them. Wisdom we can not call it, because it stops but
one breach of license, nor that neither; whenas those corruptions which it
seeks to prevent, break in faster at other doors which can not be shut.
[Footnote 79: Cheapening.]
[Footnote 80: Receipts.]
[Footnote 81: Distrusting.]
[Footnote 82: Suspect.]
And in conclusion it reflects to the disrepute of our ministers also, of
whose labors 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 be still frequented with
such an unprincipled, unedified, and laick^83 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 unsalable, should not be armor enough against one single enchiridion,^84
without the castle St. Angelo^85 of an Imprimatur.
[Footnote 83: Ignorant.]
[Footnote 84: A pun on the two meanings of dagger and hand-book.]
[Footnote 85: The Pope`s fortress.]
And lest some should persuade ye, Lord and Commons, that these arguments
of learned men`s discouragement at this you 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 honor 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 disclosed myself a companion
of their discontent, I might say, if without envy, that he^86 whom an honest
quaestorship had endeared to the Sicilians, was not more by them importuned
against Verres, than the favorable opinion which I had among many who honor
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 can not 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 prelacy 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: whereas 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 mystica`
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
most excellent books and ablest authors that write them. This is not, ye
covenants and protestations that we have made, this is not to put down
prelacy, this is but to chop^87 an episcopacy, this is but to translate the
palace Metropolitan from one kind of dominion into another, this is but an old
canonical sleight^88 of commuting our penance.^89 To startle thus betimes at a
mere unlicensed pamphlet will after a while be afraid of every conventicle,^90
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, can not 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 learned 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.
[Footnote 86: Cicero.]
[Footnote 87: Exchange.]
[Footnote 88: Trick allowed by the canon law.]
[Footnote 89: Exchanging one kind of penance for another.]
[Footnote 90: Non-conformist assembly.]
Who can not but discern the fineness of this politic drift, and who are
the contrivers; that while bishops were to be baited^91 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^92 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 defenses 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.
[Footnote 91: Worried (as by dogs).]
[Footnote 92: Abolished.]
Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives
by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion.^93 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 gladder post off to another, than the
charge and care of their religion. There be, who knows not that there be of
Protestants and professors^94 who live and die in as errant and implicit^95
faith, as any lay Papist or Loretto.^96 A wealthy man addicted to his pleasure
and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so
many piddling^97 accounts, that of all mysteries^98 he can not skill^99 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 neighbors in that. What
does he therefore, but resolves to give over toiling, and to find himself out
some factor,^100 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 an individual^101 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,^102 or some well spiced bruage,^103 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.
[Footnote 93: Constitution.]
[Footnote 94: Puritans.]
[Footnote 95: Taken on Trust.]
[Footnote 96: A famous place of pilgrimage in central Italy.]
[Footnote 97: Petty.]
[Footnote 98: Trades.]
[Footnote 99: Manage.]
[Footnote 100: Agent.]
[Footnote 101: Separable.]
[Footnote 102: The morning draft of wine.]
[Footnote 103: Ale, or other drink.]
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^104 that have the tunaging and
the poundaging^105 of all free spoken truth, will straight give themselves up
into your hands, make them and cut them 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^106 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.
[Footnote 104: Tax-collectors.]
[Footnote 105: A reference to the illegal tax levied by Charles I.]
[Footnote 106: Why.]
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^107 in a warm benefice, to be
easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may rouse up his studies, to
finish his circuit^108 in an English concordance and a topic folio,^109 the
gatherings and savings of a sober graduateship, a Harmony^110 and a
Catena,^111 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 book-craft, 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,^112 breviaries,^113
synopses,^114 and other loitering gear.^114 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:^115 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,^116 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.
[Footnote 107: Limit of his ambition, as the Straits of Gibraltar were the
limits of the ancient world.]
[Footnote 108: i.e., of studies.]
[Footnote 109: Commonplace book.]
[Footnote 110: e.g., of the Gospels.]
[Footnote 111: Chain or list of authorities.]
[Footnote 112: Translations.]
[Footnote 113: Abridgments.]
[Footnote 114: Lazy man`s apparatus.]
[Footnote 115: "i.e., our largest and busiest marts are as well stocked with
sermons as with any other ware whatever." - Hales.]
[Footnote 116: Palisaded.]
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 can not 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 inability?
Thus much we are hindered and disinured^117 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.
[Footnote 117: Put out of practise.]
There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible loss,
and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to, more than if some
enemy at sea should stop up all our havens and ports, and creeks, it hinders
and retards the importation of our richest merchandise, truth; nay it was
first established and put into practise by antichristian malice and
mystery^118 on set purpose to extinguish, if it were possible, the light of
Reformation, and to settle falsehood; little differing from that policy
wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran, by the prohibition of printing. `Tis
not denied, but gladly confessed, we are to send our thanks and vows to
heaven, louder than most of nations, for that great measure of truth which we
enjoy, especially in those main points between us and the pope, with his
appurtenances the prelates: but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here,
and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation, that the mortal glass
wherein we contemplate, can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that
man by this very opinion declares, that he is yet far short of truth.
[Footnote 118: Trickery.]
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 straight arose a wicked race of deceivers,
who as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they
dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form
into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time
ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as dare appear, imitating the
careful search that Isis made for the mangled 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 do, till her Master`s second
coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mold them
into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these
licensing 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 martyred saint. We boast our light; but if we look
not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness. Who can discern
those planets that are oft Combust,^119 and those stars of brightest magnitude
that rise and set with the sun, until the opposite motion of their orbs bring
them to such a place in the firmament, where they may be seen evening or
morning. The light which we have gained, was given 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 unmitering 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
economical and political be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so
long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath beaconed 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. `Tis their
own pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing, who neither will hear
with meekness, nor can convince, yet all must be suppressed which is not
found in their Syntagma.^120 They are the troublers, they are the dividers
of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissevered pieces
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,^121 and proportional) this is the golden
rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony
in a church; not the forced and outward union of cold, and neutral, and
inwardly divided minds.
[Footnote 119: Within 8 1/2 degrees of the sun.]
[Footnote 120: Summary of doctrine.]
[Footnote 121: All made up of truth.]
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