God made thee perfect, not immutable.
For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.
O impotence of mind, in body strong! But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
All hell broke loose.
Calm of mind, all passion spent.
But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight; Casting a dim religious light.
Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom.
If we think we regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all regulations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man.
A limbo large and broad, since call’d The Paradise of Fools to few unknown.
So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse Met ever, and to shameful silence brought, Yet gives not o’er though desperate of success.
No mighty trance, or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
Let us descend now therefore from this top Of speculation.
Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav’n itself would stoop to her.
Oh, shame to men! devil with devil damn’d Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational.
It were a journey like the path to heaven, To help you find them.
Heaven open’d wide Her ever during gates, harmonious sound, On golden hinges moving.
So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found; Among the faithless, faithful only he.
If this fail, The pillar’d firmament is rottenness, And earth’s base built on stubble.
Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.