Neither, in conformity with the same idea, can the acquisition of human learning, or the obtaining Academical degrees and honours, be essential qualifications for this office; for though the human intellect is so great, that it can dive as it were into the ocean and discover the laws of fluids, and rise again up to heaven, and measure the celestial motions, yet it is incapable of itself of penetrating into divine things, so as spiritually to know them; while, on the other hand, illiterate men appear often to have more knowledge on these subjects than the most learned.  Indeed the Quakers have no notion of a human qualification for a divine calling.  They reject all school divinity, as necessarily connected with the ministry.  They believe that if a knowledge of Christianity had been attainable by the acquisition of the Greek and Roman languages, and through the medium of the Greek and Roman philosophers, then the Greeks and Romans themselves had been the best proficients in it; whereas, the Gospel was only foolishness to many of these.  They say with St. Paul to the Colossians,[109] “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”  And they say with the same Apostle to Timothy,[110] “O Timothy! keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith.”

[Footnote 109:  Coloss. 2. 8.]

[Footnote 110:  1 Tim. 6, 20, 21]

This notion of the Quakers, that human learning and academical honours are not necessary for the priesthood, is very ancient.  Though George Fox introduced it into his new society, and this without any previous reading upon the subject, yet it had existed long before his time.  In short, it was connected with the tenet, early disseminated in the church, that no person could know spiritual things but through the medium of the spirit of God, from whence it is not difficult to pass to the doctrine, that none could teach spiritually except they had been taught spiritually themselves.  Hence we find Justin the Martyr, a Platonic philosopher, but who was afterwards one of the earliest Christian writers after the Apostles, and other learned men after him down to Chrysostom, laying aside their learning and their philosophy for the school of Christ.  The first authors also of the reformation, contended for this doctrine.  Luther and Calvin, both of them, supported it.  Wickliffe, the first reformer of the English church, and Tyndal the Martyr, the first translator of the Bible into the English language, supported it also.  In 1652, Sydrach Simpson, Master of Pembroke-Hall in Cambridge, preached a sermon before the University, contending that the Universities corresponded with the schools of the prophets, and that human learning was an essential qualification for the priesthood.  This sermon, however, was answered by William Dell,