Areopagitica | Page 8

in religious points must remove out of the
world, yea the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates blasphemy not
nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it
brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence
through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great disputes it
answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader. And ask a
Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and
all the prophets cannot persuade him to pronounce the textual Chetiv.
For these causes we all know the Bible itself put by the Papist must be
next removed, as Clement of Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of

Evangelic preparation, transmitting our ears through a hoard of
heathenish obscenities to receive the Gospel. Who finds not that
Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others discover more heresies than
they well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion?
Nor boots it to say for these, and all the heathen writers of greatest
infection, if it must be thought so, with whom is bound up the life of
human learning, that they writ in an unknown tongue, so long as we are
sure those languages are known as well to the worst of men, who are
both most able and most diligent to instil the poison they suck, first into
the courts of princes, acquainting them with the choicest delights and
criticisms of sin. As perhaps did that Petronius whom Nero called his
Arbiter, the master of his revels; and the notorious ribald of Arezzo,
dreaded and yet dear to the Italian courtiers. I name not him for
posterity's sake, whom Henry VIII. named in merriment his vicar of
hell. By which compendious way all the contagion that foreign books
can infuse will find a passage to the people far easier and shorter than
an Indian voyage, though it could be sailed either by the north of Cataio
eastward, or of Canada westward, while our Spanish licensing gags the
English press never so severely.
But on the other side that infection which is from books of controversy
in religion is more doubtful and dangerous to the learned than to the
ignorant; and yet those books must be permitted untouched by the
licenser. It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man hath been
ever seduced by papistical book in English, unless it were commended
and expounded to him by some of that clergy: and indeed all such
tractates, whether false or true, are as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the
eunuch, not to be UNDERSTOOD WITHOUT A GUIDE. But of our
priests and doctors how many have been corrupted by studying the
comments of Jesuits and Sorbonists, and how fast they could transfuse
that corruption into the people, our experience is both late and sad. It is
not forgot, since the acute and distinct Arminius was perverted merely
by the perusing of a nameless discourse written at Delft, which at first
he took in hand to confute.
Seeing, therefore, that those books, and those in great abundance,

which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine, cannot be suppressed
without the fall of learning and of all ability in disputation, and that
these books of either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned,
from whom to the common people whatever is heretical or dissolute
may quickly be conveyed, and that evil manners are as perfectly learnt
without books a thousand other ways which cannot be stopped, and evil
doctrine not with books can propagate, except a teacher guide, which
he might also do without writing, and so beyond prohibiting, I am not
able to unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of licensing can be
exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts. And he
who were pleasantly disposed could not well avoid to liken it to the
exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by
shutting his park gate.
Besides another inconvenience, if learned men be the first receivers out
of books and dispreaders both of vice and error, how shall the licensers
themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they
assume to themselves above all others in the land, the grace of
infallibility and uncorruptedness? And again, if it be true that a wise
man, like a good refiner, can gather gold out of the drossiest volume,
and that a fool will be a fool with the best book, yea or without book;
there is no reason that we should deprive a wise man of any advantage
to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a fool, that which being
restrained will be no hindrance to his folly. For if there should be so
much exactness always used to keep that from him which is