rtunity of using for the glory of God and the good of his brethren
the gifts with which the Spirit of God had furnished him. It may be
questioned whether some such institution is not as much needed in the
present day, if the members of the church are to be preserved from the
temptations to doubt with which they are surrounded, and if they are to
be encouraged to supplement the labours of their ministers and elders in
winning back those who have been seduced into the paths of error or sin;
and whether its influence, if it were only set about with earnestness,
would be less powerful to preserve and reclaim than it was in those
earlier times.

IV. _Education of the Young and University Reform._

[Sidenote: Schools.]

The care and anxiety of our reformers were not confined to the adult
members of the church. They were extended in a special manner to the
young, and were manifested towards them, if possible, with more intense
earnestness and loving tenderness. Though parish schools, in the later
sense, were not yet devised, detailed arrangements were made that the
readers at the several kirks should impart religious knowledge and the
elements of primary education to the young of the flock, and that those
who showed an aptitude for learning and capability of being trained to
be of service to kirk or common-weal should have access at various
centres to higher training. "Seeing," they say in their importunate
pleading with the nobles on their behalf, "that God hath determined that
His kirke here in earth shall be taught not by angels but by men, and
seeing that men are borne ignorant of God and of all godlinesse, ... of
necessity it is that your honours be most careful for the vertuous
education and godly upbringing of the youth of this realm, if either ye
now thirst unfainedly [for] the advancement of Christ's glorie or yet
desire the continuance of His benefits to the generation following; for
as the youth must succeed to us, so we ought to be carefull that they
have knowledge and erudition to profit and comfort that which ought to
be most deare to us, to wit, the kirk and spouse of our Lord
Jesus."[213] To secure this noble end it was deemed necessary that,
besides the readers' schools, every considerable town should have at
least one schoolmaster appointed who was competent to teach grammar and
the Latin tongue; and that in the more notable towns, especially the old
cathedral cities, where the revenues of the prebendar