Book burning -- Great Britain; Censorship -- Great Britain -- History; Prohibited books -- Great Britain -- History
Molyneux, however, was soon to know this himself, for on May 21st
his book was submitted to the examination of a committee; and on
the committee's report (June 22nd) that it was "of dangerous
consequence to the Crown and people of England, by denying the
authority of the King and Parliament of England to bind the
kingdom and people of Ireland," an address was presented to the
King praying him to punish the author of such "bold and
pernicious assertions," and to discourage all things that might
lessen the dependence of Ireland upon England; to which William
replied that he would take care that what they complained of
should be prevented and redressed. Perhaps the dedication of the
book to the King restrained the House from voting it to the
flames; but, anyhow, there is not the least contemporary evidence
of their doing so. Molyneux did not survive the year of the
condemnation of his book; but, in spite of his fears, he spent
five weeks with Locke at Oates in the autumn of the same year,
his book surviving him, to attest his wonderful foresight as much
as later events justified his spirited remonstrance.
There is, however, no doubt about the burning of a book for its
theological sentiments at this time, though it was no Parliament
but only an university which committed it to the fire. Oxford
University has always tempered her love for learning with a
dislike for inquiry, and set the cause of orthodoxy above the
cause of truth. This phase of her character was never better
illustrated than in the case of _The Naked Gospel_, by the Rev.
Arthur Bury, Rector of Exeter College (1690).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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