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Essay VII
THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES1
O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint!
VIRG. Georg. 2. v. 458.
Too happy, if they knew their happy state.
Or, if a Free-thinker is ignorant of these facts, he may be convinced from the manifest
reason of the thing. Is it not plain that our skill in literature is owing to the knowledge
of Greek and Latin, which, that they are still preserved among us, can be ascribed
only to a religious regard? What else should be the cause why the youth of
Christendom, above the rest of mankind, are educated in the painful study of those
dead languages, and that religious societies should peculiarly be employed in
acquiring that sort of knowledge, and teaching it to others?
And it is more than probable that, in case our Free-thinkers could once achieve their
glorious design of sinking the credit of the Christian religion, and causing those
revenues to be withdrawn which their wiser forefathers had appointed to the support
and encouragement of its teachers, in a little time the Shaster would be as intelligible
as the Greek Testament; and we who want that spirit and curiosity which
distinguished the ancient Grecians would by degrees relapse into the same state of
barbarism which overspread the northern nations before they were enlightened by
Christianity.
Some, perhaps, from the ill tendency and vile taste which appear in their writings,
may suspect that the Free-thinkers are carrying on a malicious design against the
Belles Lettres: for my part, I rather conceive them as unthinking wretches of short
views and narrow capacities, who are not able to penetrate into the causes or
consequences of things.