Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/20

18 on, but, as is very desirable, it is in the continual course of being more generally adopted, and more efficiently performed. I do not mean to assert that there are no colleges in Cambridge, in which instruction of the same kind is given. Whether this be the case or not, I do not know. But I am sure that, if there are such, to them Dissenters cannot be indiscriminately admitted, without being, on the one hand, driven to a hypocritical concealment of their opinions, or, on the other, interfering very injuriously with the general system of religious instruction.

As far then as it is true that Dissenters, differing on important points from the church, are received at Cambridge without interfering with the system of education, that system of education must, in my judgment, be deficient. And were I a member of that university, I should protest equally as at Oxford against the legalized admission of Dissenters of all classes into the colleges, as offering an insuperable barrier to the very desirable improvements which very many members of that university must be anxious to adopt, and towards which, of late years, some progress has been made. For, surely, if it be true that there is any college in Cambridge, of which it can be fairly said that it enforces no religious education "worth the taking into account," the natural conclusion would be, that it was high time that a change should be made in this respect, whereas it seems