I have one thing more to add, and that is the disaffection I am charged withal to the universities. Concerning the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, I ever held them for the greatest and noblest means of advancing learning of all kinds, where they should be therein employed, as being furnished with large endowments and other helps of study, and frequented with abundance of young gentlemen of good families and good breeding from their childhood. On the other side, in case the same means and the same wits should be employed in the advancing of the doctrines that tend to the weakening of the public, and strengthening of the power of any private ambitious party, they would also be very effectual for that; and consequently that if any doctrine tending to the diminishing of the civil power were taught there, not that the Universities were to blame, but only those men that in the universities, either in lectures, sermons, printed books, or theses, did teach such doctrine to their hearers or readers. Now you know very well that in the time of the Roman religion, the power of the Pope in England was upheld principally by such teachers in the universities. You know also how much the divines that held the same principles in Church government with you, have contributed to our late troubles. Can I therefore be justly taxed with disaffection to the universities for wishing this to be reformed? And it hath pleased God of late to reform it in a great measure, and indeed as I thought totally, when out comes this your _Thesis_ boldly maintained to show the contrary. Nor can I yet call this your doctrine the doctrine of the university; but surely it will not be unreasonable to think so, if by public act of the university it be not disavowed, which done, and that as often as there shall be need, there can be no longer doubt but that the universities of England are not only the noblest of all Christian universities, but also absolutely, and of the greatest benefit to this commonwealth that can be imagined, except that benefit of the head itself that uniteth and ruleth all. I have not here particularized at length all the ill consequences that may be deduced from this _Thesis_ of yours, because I may, when further provoked, have somewhat to say that is new. So much for the third ϛιγμὴ. AN EXTRACT OF A LETTER CONCERNING THE GRAMMATICAL PART OF THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN MR. HOBBES AND DR. WALLIS.