William Penn was equally celebrated with Barclay as a scholar.  His works afford abundant proof of his erudition, or of the high cultivation of his mind.  Like the rest of his associates, he was no advocate for learning, as a qualification for a minister of the Gospel, but he was yet a friend to it, on the principle, that it enlarged the understanding, and that it added to the innocent pleasures of the mind.  He entreated his wife, in the beautiful letter which he left her, before he embarked on his first voyage to America, “not to be sparing of expence in procuring learning for his children, for that by such parsimony all was lost that was saved.”  And he recommended also in the same letter the mathematical or philosophical education which I have described.

Thomas Ellwood, a celebrated writer among the early Quakers, and the friend of the great John Milton, was so sensible of the disadvantages arising from a want of knowledge, that he revived his learning, with great industry, even after he had become a Quaker.  Let us hear the account which he gives of himself in his own Journal.  “I mentioned before, says he, that, when I was a boy, I made some progress in learning, and that I lost it all again before I came to be a man.  Nor was I slightly sensible of my last therein, till I came amongst the Quakers.  But then I both saw my loss, and lamented it; and applied myself with the utmost diligence, at all leisure times to recover it.  So false I found that charge to be, which in those times was east as a reproach upon the Quakers, that they despised and decried all human learning, because they denied it to be essentially necessary to a Gospel ministry, which was one of the controversies of those times.”

“But though I toiled hard, and spared no pains to regain what I had once been master of, yet I found it a matter of so great difficulty, that I was ready to say, as the noble eunuch to Philip, in another case, how can I, unless I had some man to guide me?”

“This I had formerly complained of to my especial friend Isaac Pennington, but now more earnestly; which put him upon considering and contriving a means for my assistance.”

“He had an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning, throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he had Written on various subjects and occasions.”

“This person, having filled a public station in the former times, lived now a private and retired life in London; and, having wholly lost his sight, kept always a man to read to him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom in kindness he took to improve in his learning.”

“Thus by the mediation of my friend Isaac Pennington with Dr. Paget, and of Dr. Paget with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him; not as a servant to him (which at that time he needed not) nor to be in the house with him; but only to have the liberty of coming to his house at certain hours, when I would, and to read to him what books he should appoint me, which was all the favour I desired.”