"But though I toiled hard, and spared no pains to regain what I had once been master of, yet I found it a matter of so great difficulty, that I was ready to say, as the noble eunuch to Philip, in another case, how can I, unless I had some man to guide me?" "This I had formerly complained of to my especial friend Isaac Pennington, but now more earnestly; which put him upon considering and contriving a means for my assistance." "He had an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning, throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he had Written on various subjects and occasions." "This person, having filled a public station in the former times, lived now a private and retired life in London; and, having wholly lost his sight, kept always a man to read to him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom in kindness he took to improve in his learning." "Thus by the mediation of my friend Isaac Pennington with Dr. Paget, and of Dr. Paget with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him; not as a servant to him (which at that time he needed not) nor to be in the house with him; but only to have the liberty of coming to his house at certain hours, when I would, and to read to him what books he should appoint me, which was all the favour I desired." By means of this extract, made from the life of Thomas Ellwood, we come to three conclusions. First, that the early Quakers were generally men of eminent learning. Secondly, that they did not decry or depreciate human knowledge. And thirdly, that the calumny of such a depreciation by them arose from the controversy which they thought it right to maintain, in which they denied it to be necessary as a qualification for a Gospel minister. This latter conclusion brings me round again to the point. And here I must observe, that, though this famous controversy occasioned the first Quakers to be unduly blamed on account of such a depreciation, yet it contributed to make some of their immediate successors, as I stated in a former volume, justly chargeable with it. But whether this was or was not the real cause, it is not material to the question. Many of the society, from came cause or other, did undoubtedly, in the age immediately succeeding that of their founders, begin to depreciate human knowledge, the effects of which, though gradually dissipating, have not been wholly done away at the present day. The disadvantages, therefore, of human learning, or the arguments which would be advanced against it by those who may undervalue it, I shall now consider. These arguments may be divided into particular and general. On the former I shall first speak.