uld give proof of itself. If it were executed, you'll say.
But certain, if execution be remiss or blindfold now, and in this
particular, what will it be hereafter and in other books? If then the
Order shall not be vain and frustrate, behold a new labour, Lords and
Commons, ye must repeal and proscribe all scandalous and unlicensed
books already printed and divulged; after ye have drawn them up into a
list, that all may know which are condemned, and which not; and ordain
that no foreign books be delivered out of custody, till they have
been read over. This office will require the whole time of not a few
overseers, and those no vulgar men. There be also books which are partly
useful and excellent, partly culpable and pernicious; this work will ask
as many more officials, to make expurgations and expunctions, that the
commonwealth of learning be not damnified. In fine, when the multitude
of books increase upon their hands, ye must be fain to catalogue all
those printers who are found frequently offending, and forbid the
importation of their whole suspected typography. In a word, that this
your Order may be exact and not deficient, ye must reform it perfectly
according to the model of Trent and Seville, which I know ye abhor to
do.

Yet though ye should condescend to this, which God forbid, the Order
still would be but fruitless and defective to that end whereto ye meant
it. If to prevent sects and schisms, who is so unread or so uncatechized
in story, that hath not heard of many sects refusing books as a
hindrance, and preserving their doctrine unmixed for many ages, only by
unwritten traditions? The Christian faith, for that was once a schism,
is not unknown to have spread all over Asia, ere any Gospel or Epistle
was seen in writing. If the amendment of manners be aimed at, look into
Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better, the
honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitional rigour
that hath been executed upon books.

Another reason, whereby to make it plain that this Order will miss
the end it seeks, consider by the quality which ought to be in every
licenser. It cannot be denied but that he who is made judge to sit upon
the birth or death of books, whether they may be wafted into this world
or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious,
learned, and judicious; there may be else no mean mistakes in the
censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean