are included not only those who have professed a doctrine contrary to that of Rome, but even many who continued all their life, and died in her communion. In the second part were contained the names of particular books which are condemned, though other books of the same authors be not. In the third, beside some anonymous writings specified, there is one general rule, whereby all those books are forbidden, which do not bear the author's name, published since the year 1519. Nay, many authors and books are condemned, which for three hundred, two hundred, or one hundred years, had passed through the hands of all the men of letters in the church, and of which the Roman pontiffs had been in the knowledge for so long a time without finding fault. Nay, what is still more extraordinary, some modern books were included in the prohibition, which had been printed in Italy, even in Rome, with the approbation of the inquisitors, nay, of the pope himself, signified by his brief accompanying the publication. Of this kind are the annotations of Erasmus on the New Testament, to which Leo the tenth, after having read them, gave his approbation in a brief, dated at Rome 1518. Above all, it is worthy of notice, that under colour of faith and religion, those books are prohibited, and their authors condemned, wherein the authority of princes and civil magistrates is defended against ecclesiastical usurpations; those wherein the authority of bishops and councils is defended against the usurpations of the court of Rome; and those wherein are disclosed the tyranny and hypocrisy with which, under pretence of religion, the people is abused either by deceit, or by violence. In brief, a better expedient was never devised, (had it been a little more capable of being carried into effect) for employing religion, so as to divest men not only of all knowledge, but of every vestige of rationality. So far did the Roman inquisition, at that time, proceed, that they made a list of sixty-two printers, prohibiting all the books printed by them, of whatever author, subject, or language, with an additional clause still more comprehensive, to wit, and all the books printed by other such like printers, who have printed the books of hereticks. In consequence of which, there hardly remained any books to read. Nay, to show the incredible excess of their rigour, the prohibition of every book, contained in the catalogue was on pain of excommunication to the reader ipso facto, reserving to the pope the power of inflicting the deprivation of offices, and benefices, incapacitation, perpetual infamy, and other arbitrary pains. Thus was the court of Rome, in defence, as was falsely pretended, of the doctrine of Christ, but in reality of her own

despotism, as the Turks and Saracens, in defence of the superstition of the impostor Mahomet, engaged in a war against literature and knowledge, tending evidently to the extermination of arts and sciences, and to the transformation of men, in every thing but external form, into brutes. And with equal reason was this the aim of both mahometism and popery. False religion, of every kind, must be a mortal enemy to knowledge: for nothing is more certain, than that knowledge is a mortal enemy to all false religion.

How similar have been the aims and the pretensions of pagan and of papal Rome! Both aspired, and with amazing success, at universal empire. But how dissimilar have been the means employed for the attainment of the end. The former pagan Rome, secured the superiority which her arms had gained, by diffusing knowledge, and civilizing the conquered nations: thus making, as it were, compensation to them by her arts for the injustice she had done them by her arms. The latter, papal Rome, who, for a long time indeed, employed more fraud than violence, (though far from rejecting the aid of either) secured her conquests by lulling the people in ignorance, diverting their curiosity with monstrous legends, and monkish tales and by doing what she could to render and keep them barbarians.

In regard to the expedient, of which I have here been treating, the prohibition of books by an index expurgatorius, there seem to have been two capital errours in Rome's method of managing this affair, notwithstanding her political wisdom. But nothing human is on all sides perfect. One was, that she was some centuries too late in adopting this measure. It would be difficult to say what might have been effected, had the attempt been earlier made, and supported with her usual firmness. The other errour was, that things had proceeded too far for so violent a remedy. Had less been attempted, more would have been attained. The inquisitors, in the true spirit of their calling, and in compliance with the impetuous temper of the reigning pontiff, breathed nothing but extirpation and perdition. They had not so much knowledge of legislation as to perceive, that when a certain point is exceeded in the severity of laws, they are actually enfeebled by what was intended to invigorate them. Hardly was there a man that could read, who was not involved in the excommunication denounced by an act so extravagant. Nor could any thing render the sentence more contemptible, or prove a greater bar to its execution, than its being made thus to comprehend almost every body.

This errour was quickly perceived. Recourse was had, not without effect, to Paul's successour, Pius the fourth, who, being a man of more temper than his predecessor, remitted to the council of Trent, then sitting, the consideration of the affair. They, accordingly, committed to some of the fathers! and doctors the examination of suspected books, and the revisal and correction of that absurd act of pope Paul, acknow ledging, that it had produced scruples, and given cause for complaints. Since that time, the prohibitory laws, though, in other respects, far from being more moderate, have avoided the most exceptionable of those indefinite and comprehensive clauses complained of in the former; and I suspect, have by consequence proved more effectual, at least in Italy and Spain, in retarding the progress of knowledge.

Indeed, for some ages past, no heresy has appeared so damnable in Italy to the ghostly fathers, to whom the revisal of books is intrusted, as that which ascribes any kind of authority to magistrates, independent of the pope: no doctrine so divine, as that which exalts the ecclesiastical authority above the civil, not only in spiritual matters, but in secular. Nay, the tenet on this subject, in highest vogue, with the canonists, is that which stands in direct opposition to the apostle Paul's. The very pinnacle of orthodoxy with those gentlemen is, that the lawful commands of the civil magistrate do not bind the conscience; that our only motive to obedience here is prudence, from fear of the temporal punishment denounced by him; and that, if we have the address to elude his vigilance, and escape the punishment, our disobedience is no sin in the sight of God. It is impossible for any thing to be more flatly contradictory to the doctrine of all antiquity, particularly that of the great apostle, who commands us to be subject to those powers, not only for fear of their wrath, but for conscience sake. It was lucky for Paul, the apostle I mean, not the pope, that he had published his sentiments, on this subject, about 1500 years before that terrible expedient of the index was devised. He had, by this means, obtained an authority in the christian world, which Rome herself, though she may, where her influence is greatest, for a time, elude it, cannot totally destroy. Otherwise that missionary of Christ must have long ago had a place in the Index expurgatorius.

But to return; Rome has obstructed the progress of knowledge, not only by suppressing altogether books not calculated to favour her views, but by reprinting works, which had too great a currency for them to suppress, mutilated and grossly adulterated. Those editions, when they came abroad, being

for the most part neatly, many of them elegantly, printed, and well executed, were ignorantly copied by the printers of other countries, who knew not their defects. In this way those corruptions have been propagated. Besides, Rome wants not her instruments in most countries, protestant as well as popish, such as priests and confessors, who are always ready to lend their assistance in forwarding her views. Hence it is often rendered extremely difficult to distinguish the genuine editions from the spurious. For let it be observed, that their visitors of books do not think it enough to cancel whatever displeases them in the authors they examine: they even venture to foist in what they judge proper, in the room of what they have expunged. In the year 1607, the index expurgatorius, published at Rome, specified and condemned all the obnoxious places in certain authors, which were judged worthy to be blotted out. This, to those who possess that index, shows plainly what were the things which, in several authors of reputation, were either altered or rased. But such indexes, which, in the hands of a critick, would prove extremely useful for restoring old books to their primitive purity and integrity, are now to be found only in the libraries of a very few, in the southern parts of Europe. Whether there be any of them in this island I cannot say. But the consequence of the freedom, above related, which has been taken by the court of Rome with christian writers of the early ages, (for it luckily did not answer their purpose to meddle with the works of pagans) has rendered it, at this day, almost impossible to know the real sentiments of many old authors of great name, both ecclesiasticks and historians: there being of several of them scarcely any edition extant at present, except those which have been so miserably garbled by the court of Rome, or, which amounts to the same thing, editions copied from those which they had vitiated by their interpolations and corrections.

But what would appear the most incredible of all, if the act, were not still in being, pope Clement the eighth, in the year 1595, in his catalogue of forbidden books, published a decree, that all the books of catholick authors, written since the year 1515, should be corrected, not only by retrenching what is not conformable to the doctrine of Rome, but also by adding what may be judged proper by the correctors. That you may see I do not wrong him, (for that, in corruptions of this kind, they should be so barefaced is indeed beyond belief) it is necessary to subjoin his own words: In libris catholicorum recentiorum, qui post annum christianæ salutis 1515 conscripti sint, si id quod corrigendum occurrit, paucis demptis aut additis emendari posse videatur, id correctores faciendum curent; sin

minus, omnino deleatur. The reason why the year 1515 is particularly specified, as that after which the writings, even of Roman catholicks, were to undergo a more strict examination and scrunity than any published by such before, is plainly this: It was in the year immediately following, that Luther began to declaim against indulgences, which proved the first dawn of the reformation. His preaching and publications produced a very hot controversy. Now many of those who defended what was called the catholick cause, and strenuously maintained the perfect purity of the church's doctrine, did not hesitate to acknowledge corruptions in her discipline, and particularly in the conduct of Rome, which needed to be reformed. They affected to distinguish between the court and the church of Rome, a distinction no way palatable to the former. Now it would have been exceedingly imprudent to suppress those controversial pieces altogether, especially at that time, when they were universally considered as being, and in fact were, the best defence of the Romish cause against the encroachments of protestantism, and the reformation. On the other hand, the concessions made in them, in regard to discipline, and the court of Rome, and the distinctions they contained, bore an aspect very unfavourable to Roman despotism. Hence the determination of correcting them, not only by expunging what was not relished at court, but by altering and inserting whatever was judged proper to alter, or insert, by the ruling powers in the church. Authors had been often falsified before, and made to say what they never meant, nay, the reverse of what they actually said: but of a falsification so imprudently conducted, this of pope Clement was the first example. Their interpolations, however, of the works even of Roman catholicks, though not so avowedly made, have by no means been confined to those who have written since the year 1515, Platina, a writer of the fifteenth, and therefore of the former century, who gave the world a history of the popes, though far from being unfavourable to the pretensions of Rome, has not escaped unhurt their jealous vigilance. For though he had said very little, as Bower well observes, that could be suspected of being any way offensive, that very little has been thought too much. Accordingly, he has been taught, in all the editions of his work, since the middle of the sixteenth century, to speak with more reserve, and to suppress, or disguise, some truths which he had formerly told.

Hence it happens, that in regard to all the books which have passed through the hands of Roman licensers, or inquisitors, we can conclude nothing from what we find in them, in regard to the sentiments of their authors, but solely in regard