Ondersoek en antwoord [...] op 't request door de gedeputeerden der Noordhollandsche synode tot Edam

everyone else also wants to have the freedom to judge it, to accept it, or to reject it. Not only Faith, but also Morals are poorly instructed by the Greek and Latin books that our youth are taught in all schools. Why these were not abolished first of all has always been my question, even when I myself held the office of Rector headmaster of a Latin school thirty-six years ago. Did the books of Simon Richard Simon, a pioneer of biblical criticism (it is true, a papist Catholic) deserve to be forbidden, where he treats only one chapter of the Scripture in a Catholic manner, and even then not in a crude way? And shall such a person who wants to forbid it go and buy the Catholic writers themselves, for example Bellarmine Robert Bellarmine, a prominent Jesuit theologian and others, where the entire Papacy and the idolatry of Images and the Mass are defended? Would he not consider his library sufficiently provided if he did not have those authors? Here in Amsterdam itself, and in other cities of our land, Catholic books are printed; and what do I say, Catholic? Heathen and all sorts of books, without any refutation added to them. And shall one forbid others that still contain Christian doctrine, although with some mixture of so-called errors? I say "so-called errors" because one person considers them such, and another does not. If it is now judged as such by the majority of the clergy, as has happened again: must the Government therefore believe it so? There would be a great deal more to say about that, but I would rather mention another reason now. When such a book is forbidden, will it then be gone from the world? Will no one then read it who might be "infected" by it? Far from it: original: "nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata" we always strive for the forbidden, and we desire what is denied. Experience teaches us this about nothing more than about books. He does the booksellers a service who can manage to have a book forbidden. I already found this to be true twenty-two years ago. My book De Vaste Spyse Solid Food was for sale for four schellingen a type of silver coin; afterward it was worth a dukaton a high-value silver coin. And the Frisian edition of De Betoverde Weereld The World Bewitched has since cost more guilders than it previously did schellingen, simply because it was not so easy to get, and was judged to have more of those words in it that people had begun to criticize. Additionally, such books, out of curiosity, are read with more attention than they might otherwise be. And so the danger is all the greater that people will be more infected or misled by forbidden books than if they stood freely for sale. And if they are no longer to be obtained, people lend them to one another, and then read them all the more diligently to the end so that they may give them back, which they would not make such a haste to do if it were their own, or if they knew they could always get it in the shops. What more proof do I need of this than what happens with my own work? And it is too well known by everyone to say more about it in this place. But now, even if it were the case that a book were forbidden, confiscated, indeed burned and never reprinted: then I usually stipulate that no one should re-