think best. And those uses may be, no doubt, much rather than as glebes and augmentations are now bestowed, to grant such requests as these of the churches; or, to erect in greater number, all over the land, schools, and competent libraries to those schools, where languages and arts may be taught free together, without the needless, unprofitable, and inconvenient removing to another place. So all the land would be soon better civilized, and they who are taught freely at the public cost might have their education given them on this condition: that, therewith content, they should not gad for preferment out of their own country, but continue there thankful for what they received freely, bestowing it as freely on their own country, without soaring above the meanness wherein they were born. But how they shall live, when they are thus bred and dismissed, will be still the sluggish objection. To which is answered that those public foundations may be so instituted as the youth therein may be at once brought up to a competence of learning and to an honest trade; and the hours of teaching so ordered as their study may be no hindrance to their labor or other calling. This was the breeding of St. Paul, though born of no mean parents, a free citizen of the Roman Empire; so little did his trade debase him that it rather enabled him to use that magnanimity of preaching the Gospel through Asia and Europe at his own charges. Thus those preachers among the poor Waldenses, the ancient stock of our Reformation, without these helps which I speak of, bred up themselves in trades, and especially in physic and surgery, as well as in the study of Scripture (which is the only true theology), that they might be no burden to the Church, and, by the example of Christ, might cure both soul and body; through industry joining that to their ministry which He joined to His by gift of the Spirit. Thus relates Peter Gilles in his History of the Waldenses in Piedmont. But our ministers think scorn to use a trade, and count it the reproach of this age that tradesmen preach the Gospel.1 1 Prose Works 3. 23-8. They pretend that their education, either at school or university, hath been very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in future by a plentiful maintenance; whenas it is wellknown that the better half of them (and oft-times poor and pitiful boys, of no merit or promising hopes that might entitle them to the public provision but their poverty and the unjust favor of friends) have had the most of their breeding, both at school and university, by scholarships, exhibitions, and fellowships, at the public cost-which might engage them the rather to give freely as they have freely received. Or, if they have missed of these helps at the latter place, they have, after two or three years, left the course of their studies there, if they ever well began them, and undertaken, though furnished with little else but ignorance, boldness, and ambition, if with no worse vices, a chaplainship in some gentleman's house, to the frequent embasing of his sons with illiterate and narrow principles. Or, if they have lived there upon their own, who knows not that seven years' charge of living there, to them who fly not from the government of their parents to the licence of a university, but come seriously to study, is no more than may be well defrayed and reimbursed by one year's revenue of an ordinary good benefice? If they had then means of breeding from their parents, it is likely they have more now; and, if they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous in them to bring a bill of charges for the learning of those liberal arts and sciences which they have learned (if they have indeed learned them, as they seldom have) to their own benefit and accomplish ment. Next, it is a fond error, though too much believed among us, to think that the university makes a minister of the Gospel. What it may conduce to other arts and sciences I dispute not now; but that which makes fit a minister, the Scripture can best inform us to be only from above, whence also we are bid to seek them.. All this is granted, you will say, but yet that it is also requisite he should be trained in other learning, which can be nowhere better had than at universities. I answer that what learning, either human or divine, can be necessary to a minister, may as easily and less chargeably be had in any private house. How deficient else, and to how little purpose, are all those piles of sermons, notes, and comments on all parts of the Bible, bodies and marrows of divinity, besides all other sciences, in our English tongue; many of the same books which in Latin they read at the university! And the small necessity of going thither to learn divin ity I prove first from the most part of themselves, who seldom continue there till they have well got through logic, their first rudiments; though, to say truth, logic also may much better be wanting in disputes of divinity than in the subtile debates of lawyers and statesmen, who yet seldom or never deal with syllogisms. And those theological disputations there held by professors and graduates are such as tend least of all to the edification or capacity of the people, but rather perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash than enable any minister to the better preaching of the Gospel. Whence we may also compute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of his needful library; which, though some shame not to value at £600, may be competently furnished for £60. If any man for his own curiosity or delight be in books further expensive, that is not to be reckoned as necessary to his ministerial either breeding or function. 'But Papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted without Fathers and councils-immense volumes, and of vast charges.' I will show them therefore a shorter and a better way of confutation (Titus 1.9): 'Holding fast the faithful word, as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort, and to convince gainsayers'-who are confuted as soon as heard, bringing that which is either not in Scripture, or against it. To pursue them further through the obscure and entangled wood of antiquity-Fathers and councils fighting one against another—is needless, endless, not requisite in a minister, and refused by the first reformers of our religion. And yet we may be confident, if these things be thought needful-let the State but erect in public good store of libraries, and there will not want men in the Church who of their own inclinations will become able in this kind against Papist or any other adversary. I have thus at large examined the usual pretences of hirelings, colored over most commonly with the cause of learning and universities; as if with divines learning stood and fell, wherein for the most part their pittance is so small. And, to speak freely, it were much better there were not one divine in the universities, no school-divinity known-the idle sophistry of monks, the canker of religion-and that they who intended to be ministers were trained up in the Church only by the Scripture, and in the original languages thereof at school, without fetching the compass of other arts and sciences more than what they can well learn at secondary leisure, and at home. Neither speak I this in contempt of learning or the ministry, but hating the common cheats of both; hating that they who have preached out bishops, prelates, and canonists should, in what serves their own ends, retain their false opinions, their pharisaical leaven, their avarice, and closely their ambition, their pluralities, their non-residences, their odious fees, and use their legal and Popish arguments for tithes. Doubtless, if God only be He who gives ministers to His Church till the world's end, and through the whole Gospel never sent us for ministers to the schools of philosophy, but rather bids us beware of such 'vain deceit,' . . . if all the faithful be now 'a holy and a royal priesthood,' not excluded from the dispensation of things holiest, ... there will not want ministers elected out of all sorts and orders of men; for the Gospel makes no difference from the magistrate himself to the meanest artificer, if God evidently favor him with spiritual gifts, as He can easily, and oft hath done, while those bachelor divines and doctors of the tippet have been passed by.1 1 Prose Works 3. 35-40. 10. THE EDUCATION OF STATESMEN From Comus (1637). And all this tract that fronts the falling sun Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide From An Apology for Smectymnuus (1642). Now, although it be a digression from the ensuing matter, yet, because it shall not be said I am apter to blame others than to make trial myself; and that I may after this harsh discord. touch upon a smoother string, awhile to entertain myself, and him that list, with some more pleasing fit; and, not the least, to testify the gratitude which I owe to those public benefactors of their country for the share I enjoy in the common peace and good by their incessant labors; I shall be so troublesome to this disclaimer for once as to show him what he might have better said in their praise; wherein I must mention only some few things of many, for more than that to a digression may not be granted. Although certainly their actions are worthy not thus to be spoken of by the way, yet, if hereafter it befall me to attempt something more answerable to their great merits, I perceive how hopeless it will be to reach the height of their praises at the accomplishment of that expectation that waits upon their noble deeds, the unfinishing whereof already surpasses what others before them have left enacted with their utmost performance through many ages. And to the end we may be confident that what they do proceeds neither from uncertain opinion nor sudden counsels, but from mature wisdom, deliberate virtue, and dear affection to the 1 Comus 30-6. |