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Mr. SAMUEL HARTLIB.

Written about the Year 1650.

Mr. Hartlib,

I

Am long fince perfuaded, that to say, or do ought worth Memory and Imitation, no pur

pose or respect should sooner move us, than simply the love of God, and of Mankind. Nevertheless to write now the reforming of Education, tho' it be one of the greatest and nobleit Designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this Nation perishes, I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest Entreaties and ferious Conjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of fome other Assertions, the Knowledge and the Ufe of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of Truth, and honeft living, with much more Peace. Nor should the Laws of any private Friendship have prevail'd with me to dis vide thus, or transpose my former Thoughts, but

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that I fee those Aims, those Actions which have won you with me the Esteem of a Person sent hither by fome good Providence from a far Country, to be the occasion and the incitement of great good to this Island. And, as I hear, you have obtain'd the fame Repute with Men of most approved Wisdom, and fome of highest Authority among us. Not to mention the learned Correspondence which you hold in foreign Parts, and the extraordinary Pains and Diligence which you have us'd in this Matter both here, and beyond the Seas; either by the definite Will of God so ruling, or the peculiar sway of Nature, which also is God's working. Neither can I think that so reputed, and so valu'd as you are, you would to the forfeit of your own difcerning Ability, impose upon me an unfit and over-ponderous Argument, but that the Satisfaction which you profess to have receiv'd from those incidental Difcourses which we have wander'd into, hath prest and almost constrain'd you into a Perfuafion, that what you require from me in this Point, I neither ought, nor can in Conscience defer beyond this Time both of fo much need at once, and so much Opportunity to try what God hath determin'd. I will not refift therefore, whatever it is either of Divine, or human Obligation that you lay upon me; but will forthwith set down in Writing, as you request me, that voluntary Idea, which hath long in filence presented it felf to me, of a better Education, in Extent and Comprehenfion far more large, and yet of Time far shorter, and of Attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in Practice. Brief I shall endeavour to be;

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be; for that which I have to say, assuredly this Nation hath extream need should be done sooner than spoken. To tell you therefore what I have benefited herein among old renowned Authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern Janua's and Didactics, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my Inclination leads me not. But if you can accept of these few Observations which have flower'd off, and are, as it were, the burmishing of many studious and contemplative Years, altogether spent in the fearch of religious and civil Knowledge, and such as pleas'd you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dispose

of.

The end then of Learning is to repair the Ruins of our first Parents, by regaining to know God aright, and out of that Knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our Souls of true Virtue, which being united to the heavenly Grace of Faith makes up the highest Perfection. But because our Understanding cannot in this Body found it self but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the Knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior Creature, the same Method is necessarily to be follow'd in all difcreet teaching. And feeing every Nation affords not Experience and Tradition enough for all kind of Learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the Languages of those People who have at any time been most industrious after Wisdom; so that Language is but the Instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And tho'a Linguist should pride himself to have all the Tongues