afe him good precepts, and by consequence
not willingly admit him to good books; as being certain that a wise man
will make better use of an idle pamphlet, than a fool will do of sacred
Scripture.

'Tis next alleged we must not expose ourselves to temptations without
necessity, and next to that, not employ our time in vain things. To both
these objections one answer will serve, out of the grounds already laid,
that to all men such books are not temptations, nor vanities, but useful
drugs and materials wherewith to temper and compose effective and strong
medicines, which man's life cannot want. The rest, as children and
childish men, who have not the art to qualify and prepare these working
minerals, well may be exhorted to forbear, but hindered forcibly they
cannot be by all the licensing that Sainted Inquisition could ever yet
contrive. Which is what I promised to deliver next: that this order of
licensing conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed; and hath
almost prevented me by being clear already while thus much hath been
explaining. See the ingenuity of Truth, who, when she gets a free and
willing hand, opens herself faster than the pace of method and discourse
can overtake her.

It was the task which I began with, to show that no nation, or
well-instituted state, if they valued books at all, did ever use this
way of licensing; and it might be answered, that this is a piece of
prudence lately discovered. To which I return, that as it was a thing
slight and obvious to think on, so if it had been difficult to find
out, there wanted not among them long since who suggested such a course;
which they not following, leave us a pattern of their judgment that it
was not the rest knowing, but the not approving, which was the cause of
their not using it.

Plato, a man of high authority, indeed, but least of all for his
Commonwealth, in the book of his Laws, which no city ever yet received,
fed his fancy by making many edicts to his airy burgomasters, which they
who otherwise admire him wish had been rather buried and excused in
the genial cups of an Academic night sitting. By which laws he seems to
tolerate no kind of learning but by unalterable decree, consisting most
of practical traditions, to the attainment whereof a library of smaller
bulk than his own Dialogues would be abundant. And there also enacts,
that no poet should so much as read to any private man what he had
written, until the judges and law-keepe