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From Ariel Poetica. Milton's defence of the freedom of the Press written to Parliament.

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And now the time in special is my privilege to write and speak what may help to the further discussing of matters in agitation.

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The Temple of Janus with his two controversial faces, might now not insignificantly be set open.

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And though all the windows of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth.

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So truth be in the field we do injurious by licensing and prohibiting to miss doubt her strength

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let her and falsehood grapple who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter,

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her consulting is the best and surest suppressing he who hears what praying that is for light and clear knowledge

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to be sent down among us would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva,

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framed and fabricate already to our hands.

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Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us,

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there be who envy and oppose if it come not first in it that casement's water collusion is this when,

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as we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence to seek for wisdom as for hidden

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treasures early and late that another order shall enjoin us to know nothing.

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But by statute,

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when a man have been labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage,

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drawn forth his reasons, as it were, a battle ranged scattered and defeated.

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All objections in his way calls out his adversary into the plane, offers him the advantage of wind and sun,

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if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument for his opponents then to skulk,

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to lay ambush months to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass

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though it be valour enough in soldier ship is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth.

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For? Who knows? Not the truth is strong next to the Almighty.

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She needs no policies nor stratagems, nor licensing to make her victorious.

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Those are the ships and the defences that ERA uses against her power.

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Give her much room and do not bind her when she sleeps.

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But then she speaks. Not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound.

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But then, rather, she turns herself into all shapes except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time,

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as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be abjured into her own likeness.

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Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes than one?