be base, but deceitful) it is necessary to a commonwealth that
she have schools of good literature, or universities of her own.

"We are commanded, as has been said more than once, to search the
Scriptures; and which of them search the Scriptures, they that take
this pains in ancient languages and learning, or they that will not,
but trust to translations only, and to words as they sound to present
circumstances? than which nothing is more fallible, or certain to lose
the true sense of Scriptures, pretended to be above human understanding,
for no other cause than that they are below it. But in searching
the Scriptures by the proper use of our universities, we have been
heretofore blest with greater victories and trophies against the purple
hosts and golden standards of the Romish hierarchy than any nation; and
therefore why we should relinquish this upon the presumption of some,
that because there is a greater light which they have, I do not know.
There is a greater light than the sun, but it does not extinguish the
sun, nor does any light of God's giving extinguish that of nature,
but increase and sanctify it. Wherefore, neither the honor bore by the
Israelitish, Roman, or any other commonwealth that I have shown,
to their ecclesiastics, consisted in being governed by them, but in
consulting them in matters of religion, upon whose responses or oracles
they did afterward as they thought fit.

"Nor would I be here mistaken, as if, by affirming the universities to
be, in order both to religion and government, of absolute necessity, I
declared them or the ministry in any wise fit to be trusted, so far
as to exercise any power not derived from the civil magistrate in the
administration of either, if the Jewish religion were directed and
established by Moses, it was directed and established by the civil
magistrate; or if Moses exercised this administration as a prophet, the
same prophet did invest with the same administration the Sanhedrim, and
not the priests; and so does our commonwealth the Senate, and not the
clergy. They who had the supreme administration or government of
the national religion in Athens, were the first Archon, the rex
sacrificulus, or high-priest, and a polemarch, which magistrates
were ordained or elected by the holding up of hands in the church,
congregation, or comitia of the people. The religion of Lacedaemon was
governed by the kings, who were also high-priests, and officiated at the
sacrifice; th