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Dissenting Academics.
one of the most remarkable features in the history both of theological and general literature in
England is found in the great number of academical institutions which have been established in connexion with almost every denomination if Dissenters, for the supply of their churches with learned and qualified ministers, and also for the liberal education of the youth of their more opulent families.
The universities of
Oxford and
Cambridge, which only
ought to be, what they are called,
national seats of education, have been placed under the exclusive guardianship of the established Church.
Its clergy have at all times possessed the entire and uncontrolled direction of these seminaries; and their whole constitution and the course of study pursued in them, has consequently been regulated with a reference to its interests.
Dissent is not acknowledged or tolerated at either of them; and no youth can partake of the advantages professedly provided by the liberality of our ancestors for the benefit of the nation at large without at least an external and temporary conformity to the discipline and worship of the church.
In
one, a formal subscription to her articles of faith is exacted, on their first entrance, from boys, who cannot be supposed to have given even the most cursory and superficial attention to the variety of disputed points which
