Areopagitica | Page 6

in general of reading books, whatever sort they be, and whether be
more the benefit or the harm that thence proceeds.
Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were
skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks,

which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts; in
Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into Holy
Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a
tragedian; the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted
among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which
affirmed it both lawful and profitable; as was then evidently perceived,
when Julian the Apostate and subtlest enemy to our faith made a decree
forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning: for, said he, they
wound us with our own weapons, and with our own arts and sciences
they overcome us. And indeed the Christians were put so to their shifts
by this crafty means, and so much in danger to decline into all
ignorance, that the two Apollinarii were fain, as a man may say, to coin
all the seven liberal sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers
forms of orations, poems, dialogues, even to the calculating of a new
Christian grammar. But, saith the historian Socrates, the providence of
God provided better than the industry of Apollinarius and his son, by
taking away that illiterate law with the life of him who devised it. So
great an injury they then held it to be deprived of Hellenic learning; and
thought it a persecution more undermining, and secretly decaying the
Church, than the open cruelty of Decius or Diocletian.
And perhaps it was the same politic drift that the devil whipped St.
Jerome in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it was a phantasm
bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an angel been his
discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms,
and had chastised the reading, not the vanity, it had been plainly partial;
first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus, whom
he confesses to have been reading, not long before; next to correct him
only, and let so many more ancient fathers wax old in those pleasant
and florid studies without the lash of such a tutoring apparition;
insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may be made of
Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and why not
then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same purpose?
But if it be agreed we shall be tried by visions, there is a vision
recorded by Eusebius, far ancienter than this tale of Jerome, to the nun
Eustochium, and, besides, has nothing of a fever in it. Dionysius

Alexandrinus was about the year 240 a person of great name in the
Church for piety and learning, who had wont to avail himself much
against heretics by being conversant in their books; until a certain
presbyter laid it scrupulously to his conscience, how he durst venture
himself among those defiling volumes. The worthy man, loath to give
offence, fell into a new debate with himself what was to be thought;
when suddenly a vision sent from God (it is his own epistle that so
avers it) confirmed him in these words: READ ANY BOOKS
WHATEVER COME TO THY HANDS, FOR THOU ART
SUFFICIENT BOTH TO JUDGE ARIGHT AND TO EXAMINE
EACH MATTER. To this revelation he assented the sooner, as he
confesses, because it was answerable to that of the Apostle to the
Thessalonians, PROVE ALL THINGS, HOLD FAST THAT WHICH
IS GOOD. And he might have added another remarkable saying of the
same author: TO THE PURE, ALL THINGS ARE PURE; not only
meats and drinks, but all kind of knowledge whether of good or evil;
the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will
and conscience be not defiled.
For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil
substance; and yet God, in that unapocryphal vision, said without
exception, RISE, PETER, KILL AND EAT, leaving the choice to each
man's discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or
nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not
unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good
nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of
bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many
respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Whereof
what better witness can ye expect I should produce, than one of your
own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this
land, Mr. Selden; whose volume of