It is not easy in this 20th century fully to realise the state of mind of the individuals, whether ecclesiastics or civilians, whether of Rome, of Paris, or of London, who have not hesitated to assume for themselves the wisdom requisite to pass upon all divisions of knowledge and who have been willing to take the responsibility for the direction, the restriction, and the continued control of intellectual activity in all realms of thought. I may recall the eloquent argument in behalf of the freedom of the press which was made three centuries back by one great thinker, who was at the time (as it is fair to remember) protesting against the oppressive action not of the Church of Rome, but of the Parliament of Protestant England. John Milton writes in the _Areopagitica_: “For Bookes are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that Soule was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bread them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous Dragons’ teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be used, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Booke; who destroyes a good Booke, kills Reason itselfe; Kills the image of God as it were in the eye. Many a Man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasured but on purpose to a Life beyond Life. ’Tis true, no age can restore a Life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse; and revolutions of ages doe not often recover the losse of a rejected Truth, for want of which whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that seasoned life of Man preserved and stored up in Bookes; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes even a martyrdom; and if to extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementalle Life, but strikes at that etherialle and first essence, the breath of Reason itselfe and slaies an Immortality rather than a Life.”[11] CHAPTER II CENSORSHIP IN THE EARLY CHURCH, 150–768