Then returning towards London by Waltham, I advised the setting up of a school there for teaching boys; and also a girls’ school at Shacklewell, for instructing them in whatsoever things were civil and useful.[31]
This statement would certainly indicate a liberal attitude towards education. Fox himself makes no further comment on what the nature of the school was to be. His interest in these schools, it is asserted, never flagged, and many visits were made in behalf of their prosperity.[32]
But classical education not the first essential for ministers
Fourth, the popular idea that has at times prevailed, that Quakers objected to giving an education such as was enjoyed by other sects, was probably founded on a misunderstanding of certain statements made by Fox with regard to education. Let us examine some of these statements, and seek to learn his intended meaning.
I saw that to be a true believer was another thing than they looked on it to be; and I saw that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge did not qualify or fit a man to be a minister of Christ; what then should I follow such for? So neither these, nor any of the dissenting peoples could I join with, but was a stranger to all, relying wholly upon the Lord Jesus Christ.[33]
I was to bring people off from Jewish ceremonies and from heathenish fables, and from men’s inventions and worldly doctrines, by which they blew the people about this way and the other way, from sect to sect; and from all their beggarly rudiments, with their schools and colleges for making ministers of Christ, who are indeed ministers of their own making but not of Christ; ...[34]
They could not know the spiritual meaning of Moses; the prophets and John’s words, nor see their paths and travels, much less see through them, and to the end of them into the kingdom, unless they had the spirit of Jesus; nor could they know the words of Christ and of his apostles without his Spirit.[35]
Then we came to Durham, where was a man come from London to set up a college there, to make ministers of Christ, as they said. I went, with some others, to reason with him and to let him see that to teach men Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and the seven arts, which were all but the teachings of the natural man, was not the way to make them ministers of Christ.[36]
These statements represent a small selection from many similar ones, and may be fairly taken as indicative of his position concerning this one point. They are the most drastic prohibitory statements made on the subject in all of his works. But even here we fail to find either (1) a condemnation of general or ordinary education or (2) a wholesale condemnation of classical education; indeed we read no objection to a minister’s possessing a knowledge of classical authors, such as was the case of both Penn and Barclay, provided he possess also the “light.” His statements may be summarized as follows: