Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England — John Shaqi
Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of EnglandMilton, John
Philosophy
Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England
Milton, John
Freedom of the press -- Early works to 1800
Thus much we are hindered and disinured by this course of licensing,
toward the true knowledge of what we seem to know. For how much it hurts
and hinders the licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry,
more than any secular employment, if they will discharge that office as
they ought, so that of necessity they must neglect either the one duty
or the other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it to
their own conscience, how they will decide it there.
There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible loss
and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to; more than if some
enemy at sea should stop up all our havens and ports and creeks, it
hinders and retards the importation of our richest merchandise, truth;
nay, it was first established and put in practice by Antichristian
malice and mystery on set purpose to extinguish, if it were possible,
the light of Reformation, and to settle falsehood; little differing from
that policy wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran, by the prohibition
of printing. 'Tis not denied, but gladly confessed, we are to send our
thanks and vows to Heaven louder than most of nations, for that great
measure of truth which we enjoy, especially in those main points between
us and the Pope, with his appurtenances the prelates: but he who thinks
we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of
reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us,
till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares
that he is yet far short of truth.
Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was
a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his
Apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race
of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his
conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin
Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them
to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth,
such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for
the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb,
still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and
Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; he shall
bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into
an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these
licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity,
forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to
do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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