These peaceable directions I call, and not I alone, by the simple name of _general learning_, comprising under it all the arts of peace and the ministry of tranquillity--a matter of great moment, being the only right means to so blessed a thing as fortunate peace, imparting the benefit of public quietness to every household, as a central fountain serves every man’s cistern by private pipes, and if it be not sound, conveying the blemish like the infected water of a fountain, or the corrupt blood that escaping from the liver poisons the whole body. Even war itself, a professed enemy to learning, because it is in feud with peace, may by just handling be shown to work for peace at home by uniting the minds of all against a common foe. By the employment of learning in every department all princes govern their States; the general control is exercised through grave and learned counsellors and wise and faithful justiciaries, and the particular control, in religion by divines, in the health of the body by physicians, in the maintenance of right by lawyers, and so on in every particular profession, from the greatest to the meanest, throughout the whole government--a most blessed means to a most blessed end, a learned maintenance of a heavenly happiness in an earthly State of a heavenly constitution. Therefore, any error in this means is an injury indeed, and deserves to be thought of as a hindrance to peace, and a pernicious destroyer of the best public end, beginning perhaps as a small spark, but always gathering strength by the confluence of similar infection in some other parts, till at last it sets all on fire, and bursts out in a confusion, the more to be feared that it festers before it breaks into flame, and shrouding itself under a show of peace, consumes without suspicion, and escapes being brought to terms as a professed enemy. I may say that in my reflection on this subject of the ascent of learning from the elementary stage, I thought I found these four imperfections in the whole body of learning--in some places an excess, in others a defect, in others too great a variety, in others too much disagreement. These are four great enormities in a peaceable means, breeding great diseases, and bidding defiance to quiet, both within the State in the governing direction, and outside it by evident inflammation, and they are therefore to be thought of not only for complaint in particular cases, but by magistrates in regard to their amendment.