back
And now the time in special is, by
privilege to write and speak
what may help to the further discussing of matters in
agitation.
The temple of
Janus with his two controversial faces might now not
unsignificantly be set open. And though all the winds of
doctrine
were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we
do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her
strength.
Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put
to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her
confuting is the
best and surest suppressing. He who hears what praying there is
for light and clearer knowledge to be sent down among us, would
think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of
Geneva, framed and fabricked 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 hidden treasures early and
late, that another order shall enjoin us to know nothing but by
statute? When a man hath been labouring the hardest labour in the
deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all
their equipage: drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged:
scattered 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 opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a
narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though
it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice
in the wars of Truth.
For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty?
She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her
victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses
against her power. Give her but room, and 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 and 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,
until she be adjured into her own likeness. Yet is it not
impossible that she may have more shapes than one. What else is
all that rank of things indifferent, wherein Truth may be on this
side or on the other, without being unlike herself? What but a
vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordinances, that
hand-writing nailed to the cross? 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
do 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 chief stronghold of our hypocrisy 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 linen decency yet
haunts us. We stumble and are impatient at the least dividing of
one visible congregation from another, though it be not in
fundamentals; and through our forwardness to suppress, and our
backwardness to recover any enthralled piece 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 do not see
that, while we still affect by all means a rigid external
formality, we may as soon fall again into a gross conforming
stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and
stubble, forced and frozen together, which is more to the sudden
degenerating of a Church than 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 precious
stones: it is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the
tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must be the Angels'
ministry at the end of mortal things. Yet if all cannot be of one
mind--as who looks they should be?--this doubtless is more
wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be
tolerated, rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated popery,
and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and
civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first
that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and
regain the weak and the misled: that also which is impious or evil
absolutely either against faith or manners no law can possibly
permit, that intends not to unlaw itself: but those neighbouring
differences, or rather indifferences, 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 meanwhile if any one would write, and bring his helpful
hand to the slow-moving Reformation which we labour under, if Truth
have spoken to him before others, or but seemed at least to speak,
who hath so bejesuited us that we should trouble that man with
asking license to do so worthy a deed? and not consider this, that
if it come to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be
prohibited than truth itself; whose first appearance to our eyes,
bleared and dimmed with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and
unplausible than many errors, even as the person is of many a great
man slight and contemptuous to see to. And what do 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 do 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 kingdom with strong and healthful
commotions to a general reforming, 'tis 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 than common industry, not only to look back and
revise what hath been taught heretofore, but to gain further and go
on some new enlightened steps in the discovery of truth. For such
is the order of God's enlightening 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 confined, where and out of what
place these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for he sees
not as man sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we should devote
ourselves again to set places, and assemblies, and outward callings
of men; planting our faith one while in the old Convocation house,
and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith
and religion that shall be there canonized is not sufficient
without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction
to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest
Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and not in the letter
of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there
made; no, though Harry VII himself there, with all his liege tombs
about him, should lend them voices from the dead, to swell their
number.
And if the men be erroneous who appear to be the leading
schismatics, what withholds us but our sloth, our self-will, and
distrust in the right cause, that we do not give them gentle
meetings and gentle dismissions, that we debate not and examine the
matter thoroughly with liberal and frequent audience; if not for
their sakes, yet for our own? seeing no man who hath tasted
learning, but will confess the many ways of profiting by those who,
not contented with stale receipts, are able to manage and set forth
new positions to the world. And were they but as the dust and
cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they may yet serve
to polish and brighten the armoury of Truth, even for that respect
they were not utterly to be cast away. But if they be of those
whom God hath fitted for the special use of these times with
eminent and ample gifts, and those perhaps neither among the
priests nor among the Pharisees, and we in the haste of a
precipitant zeal shall make no distinction, but resolve to stop
their mouths, because we fear they come with new and dangerous
opinions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we understand them; no
less than woe to us, while, thinking thus to defend the Gospel, we
are found the persecutors.
There have been not a few since the beginning of this Parliament,
both of the presbytery and others, who by their unlicensed books,
to the contempt of an Imprimatur, first broke that triple ice clung
about our hearts, and taught the people to see day: I hope that
none of those were the persuaders to renew upon us this bondage
which they themselves have wrought so much good by contemning. But
if neither the check that Moses gave to young Joshua, nor the
countermand which our Saviour gave to young John, who was so ready
to prohibit those whom he thought unlicensed, be not enough to
admonish our elders how unacceptable to God their testy mood of
prohibiting is; if neither their own remembrance what evil hath
abounded in the Church by this set of licensing, and what good they
themselves have begun by transgressing it, be not enough, but that
they will persuade and execute the most Dominican part of the
Inquisition over us, and are already with one foot in the stirrup
so active at suppressing, it would be no unequal distribution in
the first place to suppress the suppressors themselves: whom the
change of their condition hath puffed up, more than their late
experience of harder times hath made wise.
And as for regulating the press, let no man think to have the
honour of advising ye better than yourselves have done in that
Order published next before this, "that no book be printed, unless
the printer's and the author's name, or at least the printer's, be
registered." Those which otherwise come forth, if they be found
mischievous and libellous, the fire and the executioner will be the
timeliest and the most effectual remedy that man's prevention can
use. For this authentic Spanish policy of licensing books, if I
have said aught, will prove the most unlicensed book itself within
a short while; and was the immediate image of a Star Chamber decree
to that purpose made in those very times when that Court did the
rest of those her pious works, for which she is now fallen from the
stars with Lucifer. Whereby ye may guess what kind of state
prudence, what love of the people, what care of religion or good
manners there was at the contriving, although with singular
hypocrisy it pretended to bind books to their good behaviour. And
how it got the upper hand of your precedent Order so well
constituted before, if we may believe those men whose profession
gives them cause to inquire most, it may be doubted there was in it
the fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of
bookselling; who under pretence of the poor in their Company not to
be defrauded, and the just retaining of each man his several copy,
which God forbid should be gainsaid, brought divers glossing
colours to the House, which were indeed but colours, and serving to
no end except it be to exercise a superiority over their
neighbours; men who do not therefore labour in an honest profession
to which learning is indebted, that they should be made other men's
vassals. Another end is thought was aimed at by some of them in
procuring by petition this Order, that, having power in their
hands, malignant books might the easier scape abroad, as the event
shows.
But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not.
This I know, that errors in a good government and in a bad are
equally almost incident; for what magistrate may not be
misinformed, and much the sooner, if liberty of printing be reduced
into the power of a few? But to redress willingly and speedily
what hath been erred, and in highest authority to esteem a plain
advertisement more than others have done a sumptuous bride, is a
virtue (honoured Lords and Commons) answerable to your highest actions,
and whereof none can participate but greatest and wisest men.
End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Areopagitica, by John Milton