The rejection of “an illiterate ministry” was an intentional counterpoint to the view held by radical spiritualists and other dissenters, who contended that inspiration, rather than education, was the way to prepare leaders of God's flock. The love of learning and the desire for God were believed by many to be antithetical. Cotton Mather reported that when his famous grandfather, John Cotton, was a student at Cambridge in England, he worried that “if he became a godly man, t'would spoil him in being a learned one.”
The founders of Harvard, however, refused to accept this dichotomy.
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