I touch not, only wish they be not made pretences to abuse and persecute
honest and painful men, who offend not in either of these particulars.
But that other clause of licensing books, which we thought had died with
his brother quadragesimal and matrimonial when the prelates expired, I
shall now attend with such a homily, as shall lay before ye, first the
inventors of it to be those whom ye will be loath to own; next what is
to be thought in general of reading, whatever 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
suppressed. 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 hindering and cropping
the discovery that might be yet further made both in religious and civil
wisdom.

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and
Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean 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 do
contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose
progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy
and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they
are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's
teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill
a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,
God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills
the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden
to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master
spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis