tubbs, took some pains to cite, but, if these
had been removed, I believe his objections would have ceased.]

Barclay, in his celebrated apology, no where condemns the propriety or
usefulness of human learning, or denies it to be promotive of the
temporal comforts of man. He says that the knowledge of Latin, Greek and
Hebrew, or of logic and philosophy, or of ethics, or of physics and
metaphysics, is not necessary. But not necessary for what? Mark his own
meaning. Not necessary to make a minister of the Gospel. But where does
he say that knowledge, which he himself possessed to such a considerable
extent, was not necessary, or that it did not contribute to the innocent
pleasures of life? What would have been the character of his own book,
or what would have been its comparative value and usefulness, if he had
not been able to quote so many authors to his purpose in their original
texts, or to have detected so many classical errors, or to have
introduced such apposite history, or to have drawn up his propositions
with so much logical and mathematical clearness and precision, or if he
had not been among the first literary characters of his day?

William Penn was equally celebrated with Barclay as a scholar. His works
afford abundant proof of his erudition, or of the high cultivation of
his mind. Like the rest of his associates, he was no advocate for
learning, as a qualification for a minister of the Gospel, but he was
yet a friend to it, on the principle, that it enlarged the
understanding, and that it added to the innocent pleasures of the mind.
He entreated his wife, in the beautiful letter which he left her, before
he embarked on his first voyage to America, "not to be sparing of
expence in procuring learning for his children, for that by such
parsimony all was lost that was saved." And he recommended also in the
same letter the mathematical or philosophical education which I have
described.

Thomas Ellwood, a celebrated writer among the early Quakers, and the
friend of the great John Milton, was so sensible of the disadvantages
arising from a want of knowledge, that he revived his learning, with
great industry, even after he had become a Quaker. Let us hear the
account which he gives of himself in his own Journal. "I mentioned
before, says he, that, when I was a boy, I made some progress in
learning, and that I lost it all again before I came to be a man. Nor
was I slightly sensible of my last therein, till I came