Academic Exercise on the Abstinence of the Early Christians from Reading Profane Books

for [this], let him be consulted in his own work z). To which you may join, if you please, the Preface of Paulinus Gothus to his Christian Ethics. Around the beginning of the last century, Daniel Hoffmann, a Professor at Helmstedt, contended that philosophy ought to be eliminated from the schools of Christians; against whom there exists a decree of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg.

Th. XI.

a) In Quakerism Refuted § 18. art. xxvi. p. m. 474.

Furthermore, just as for those (these are the words of D. Gerdesius, cited by Schelvig in Quakerism Refuted) who wish to have divine inspirations, all erudition must be cast aside; so the entire crowd of Enthusiasts spurns philosophical studies, urging that books are to be burned, and calling the philosophers of the world Phantasies. In the number of these are the Quakers, whose opinion Schelvig brings forward and refutes a). Of the same flour