A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in Our Foreign Plantations, and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, By a College to Be Erected in the Summer Islands, Otherwise Called the Isles of BermudaBerkeley, George
Religion
A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in Our Foreign Plantations, and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, By a College to Be Erected in the Summer Islands, Otherwise Called the Isles of Bermuda
After all, it must be acknowledged, that though every thing else should
concur with our wishes, yet if a set of good governors and teachers be
wanting, who are acquainted with the methods of education, and have the
zeal and ability requisite for carrying on a design of this nature, it
would certainly come to nothing.
An institution of this kind should be set on foot by men of prudence,
spirit, and zeal, as well as competent learning, who should be led to
it by other motives than the necessity of picking up a maintenance. For
upon this view, what man of merit can be supposed to quit his native
country, and take up with a poor college-subsistence in another part of
the world, where there are so many considerable parishes actually void,
and so many others ill supplied for want of fitting incumbents? Is it
likely, that fellowships of fifty or sixty pounds a year should tempt
abler or worthier men, than benefices of many times their value?
And except able and worthy men do first engage in this affair, with a
resolution to exert themselves in forming the manners of the youth, and
giving them a proper education, it is evident the mission and the
college will be but in a very bad way. This inconvenience seems the
most difficult to provide against, and, if not provided against, it
will be the most likely to obstruct any design of this nature. So true
it is, that where ignorance or ill manners once take place in a
seminary, they are sure to be handed down in a succession of illiterate
or worthless men.
But this apprehension, which seems so well grounded, that a college in
any part of America would either lie unprovided, or be worse provided
than their churches are, hath no place in Bermuda; there being at this
time several gentlemen in all respects very well qualified, and in
possession of good preferments, and fair prospects at home, who having
seriously considered the great benefit that may arise to the church and
to mankind from such an undertaking, are ready to engage in it, and to
dedicate the remainder of their lives to the instructing the youth of
America, and prosecuting their own studies upon a very moderate
subsistence in a retirement, so sweet, and so secure, and every way so
well fitted for a place of education, and study, as Bermuda.
Thus much the writer hereof thought himself obliged to say of his
associates: for himself, he can only say, that as he values no
preferment upon earth, so much as that of being employed in the
execution of this design; so he hopes to make up for other defects, by
his industry and zeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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