By officiating in petty chaplainships, and performing now and
then certain offices of religion for small gratuities, they received the
means of maintaining themselves until they were able to complete their
education. Through such difficulties and discouragements, many of them
have arrived at a very considerable proficiency, so as to be marked and
distinguished abroad. These persons afterwards, by being sunk in the
most abject poverty, despised and ill-treated by the higher orders among
Protestants, and not much better esteemed or treated even by the few
persons of fortune of their own persuasion, and contracting the habits
and ways of thinking of the poor and uneducated, among whom they were
obliged to live, in a few years retained little or no traces of the
talents and acquirements which distinguished them in the early periods
of their lives. Can we with justice cut them off from the use of places
of education founded for the greater part from the economy of poverty
and exile, without providing something that is equivalent at home?
Whilst this restraint of foreign and domestic education was part of an
horrible and impious system of servitude, the members were well fitted
to the body.
Pages:
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327