This notion of the Quakers, that human learning and academical honours are not necessary for the priesthood, is very ancient. Though George Fox introduced it into his new society, and this without any previous reading upon the subject, yet it had existed long before his time. In short, it was connected with the tenet, early disseminated in the church, that no person could know spiritual things but through the medium of the spirit of God, from whence it is not difficult to pass to the doctrine, that none could teach spiritually except they had been taught spiritually themselves. Hence we find Justin the Martyr, a Platonic philosopher, but who was afterwards one of the earliest Christian writers after the Apostles, and other learned men after him down to Chrysostom, laying aside their learning and their philosophy for the school of Christ. The first authors also of the reformation, contended for this doctrine. Luther and Calvin, both of them, supported it. Wickliffe, the first reformer of the English church, and Tyndal the Martyr, the first translator of the Bible into the English language, supported it also. In 1652, Sydrach Simpson, Master of Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge, preached a sermon before the University, contending that the Universities corresponded with the schools of the prophets, and that human learning was an essential qualification for the priesthood. This sermon, however, was answered by William Dell, Master of Caius College in the same University, in which he stated, after having argued the points in question, that the Universities did not correspond with the schools of the prophets, but with those of Heathen men; that Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, were more honoured there, than Moses or Christ; that grammar, rhetoric, logic, ethics, physics, metaphysics, and the mathematics, were not the instruments to be used in the promotion or the defence of the Gospel; that Christian schools had originally brought men from Heathenism to Christianity, but that the University schools were likely to carry men from Christianity to Heathenism again. This language of William Dell was indeed the general language of the divines and pious men in those times in which George Fox lived, though unquestionably the opposite doctrine had been started, and had been received by many. Thus the great John Milton, who lived in these very times, may be cited as speaking in a similar manner on the same subject. "Next, says he, 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. [111]Thus St. Matthew says, 'Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.' Thus St. Luke: [112] 'The flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.' Thus St.