of an ordinary good benefice?  If they had then means of breeding from their parents, ’tis likely they have more now; and, if they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous in them to bring a bill of charges for the learning of those liberal Arts and Sciences which they have learnt (if they have indeed learnt them, as they seldom have) to their own benefit and accomplishment.  But they will say ’We had betaken us to some other trade or profession, had we not expected to find a better livelihood by the Ministry.’  This is what I looked for,—­to discover them openly neither true lovers of Learning and so very seldom guilty of it, nor true ministers of the Gospel.”

University Education of Ministers not Necessary:  “What Learning, either human or divine, can be necessary to a minister may as easily and less chargeably be had in any private house ...  Those theological disputations there held [i.e. at the Universities] by Professors and Graduates are such as tend least of all to the edification or capacity of the people, but rather perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash than enable any minister to the better preaching of the Gospel.  Whence we may also compute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of his needful library; which, though some shame not to value at L600 [equivalent to L2000 now], may be competently furnished for L60 [equivalent to L200 now].  If any man, for his own curiosity or delight, be in books further expensive, that is not to be reckoned as necessary to his ministerial either breeding or function.  But Papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted without Fathers and Councils, immense volumes and of vast charges!  I will show them therefore a shorter and a better way of confutation:  Tit.  I. 9; ’Holding fast the faithful Word as he hath been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince gainsayers,’—­who are confuted as soon as heard bringing that which is either not in Scripture or against it.  To pursue them further through the obscure and entangled wood of antiquity, Fathers and Councils fighting one against another, is needless, endless, not requisite in a minister, and refused by the first Reformers of our Religion.  And yet we may be confident, if these things be thought needful, let the State but erect in public good store of Libraries, and there will not want men in the Church who of their own inclinations will become able in this kind against Papists or any other Adversary.”

No Parliament that England ever saw, not even the Barebones Parliament itself, could have entertained for a moment, with a view to practical legislation, these speculations of the blind Titan in all their length and breadth.  Disestablishment, Disendowment, Abolition of a Clergy, had been the dream of the Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men of the Barebones Parliament.  Even in that House, however, the battle practically, and on which the House broke up, was on the question