The use and custom of our country has already chosen a kind of penning, in which she has set down her religion, her laws, her private and public dealings; every private man has, with the approval of his country, so drawn his private writings, his evidence, his letters, that the thing seems impossible to be removed by so strong an alteration, though it be most willing to receive some reasonable pruning, so that the substance may remain, and the change take place in such points only as may please without novelty, and profit without forcing. For were it not in good sooth too violent a step to offer to overthrow a custom so generally received, so definitely settled--nay, grounded so securely as shall shortly appear--by altering either all or most of our letters? Were it not a sign of a very simple orator to think that by so strange an innovation he could persuade custom to divorce himself from so long and so lawful a match? Nay, were it not wonderful even but to wish that all our English scripture and divinity, all our laws and policy, all our evidence and writings were penned anew, because we have not that set down in writing which our forefathers meant, but either more or less, owing to the insufficiency of our writing, which is not able to set faithfully and fully down what the mind conceives? They will say that they do not mean so radical a change. But they must needs mean it, because it must either follow at once upon the admitting of this new alteration, which is too great in sense, or, after a term of years, which is too great in thought. For with a new writing coming in, and the old character growing out of knowledge, all records of whatever kind must needs either come over to the new fashion, or remain worm-eaten like an old relic, to be read as the Roman religion written down under Numa Pompilius was read by those of Cicero’s time, when every word was as uncouth and strange as if it had come from some other world. But am I not undertaking a needless task in disapproving what I need not fear, because there is no danger in it, the very usage of our country refusing it already? I grant I am. But yet I must say something that I may not seem to contemn, since if I say nothing my opponents may then seem to have said something. But certainly I hold the thing to be much too cumbersome and inconvenient, even though it were likely to be profitable, but where no likelihood of any profit at all is in sight, and the change itself seems neither necessary nor easy, I cannot approve the means, though I bear no grudge to its proposers, who deserve great thanks for their good intentions. For their labour is very profitable to help forward some redress, though they themselves have not hit on it. For while different men attempt to solve the problem, some one or other will hit it at last, whereas the case would be desperate if it were never dealt with. But this amendment of theirs is too far-fetched,