Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/28

26 It seems, indeed, to be doing injustice to the sincerity of the dissenting body, and to their sense of the importance of religious education, to suppose that they would not be anxious to found establishments, in which they could educate the youth of their own communion in their peculiar tenets, and celebrate religious worship after their own form. For according to the plan which the Reviewer seems to suppose they would prefer to this, they would lodge in licensed boarding houses in common with members of the established church; and therefore, according to his own admission with reference to a similar state of things in colleges, it would be impossible for any system of religious instruction, or religious worship, to be there enforced. Were the supposed system of the reviewer to be realised, it would, I think, be a great evil; for it would go far to destroy the necessary connexion of religion with education, and would thus sanction a principle which, when carried on elsewhere, has been so strongly denounced. It would not, indeed, altogether amount to this, because the examination for the degree of B. A. would secure the acquisition of a certain portion of religious knowledge; but this is but a miserable substitute for that sound system of religious education which is carried on in a well-ordered college.

But can we suppose that religious Dissenters, having it in their power, instead of committing their sons to this careless discipline and irreligious