Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FIRST BOOK OF DISCIPLINE. 13 superintendents (Erskine of Dun) was only a layman when appointed, being a well-educated and devout country gentleman. (3) They were liable to be called to account by the. General Assembly, which was composed only of ordinary ministers and elders. In point of fact, the superintendents were not very useful or successful, but the plan was one that seemed very reasonable for setting the new ecclesiastical machinery in motion.1 Schools and Universities. -- Probably the ablest division of the Book of Discipline is chap, vii., entitled " Of Schools and Universities," a section which is of special value at the present time for its sound theory of middle or grammar schools : " Of necessitie, therefore, we judge it that every several kirk have one schoolmaster appointed, such a one at least that is able to teach grammar and the Latin tongue, if the town be of any reputation. If it be upland where the people convene to the doctrine but once in theweek, then must either the reader or the minister there appointed take care of the children and youth of the parish, to instruct them in the first rudiments, especially in the Catechisme, as we have it now translated in the Booke of the Common Order, called the Order of Geneva. And furder, we think it expedient that in every notable town, and especially in the town of the superintendent, there be erected a colledge in which the arts, at least logick and rhetorick, together with the tongues, be read by sufficient masters, for whom honest stipends must be appointed: as also that provision be made for those that be poore and not able by themselves nor by their friends to be sustained at letters, and in speciall these that come from landward." Further on it specifies 24 bursars for every college -- i. e., St And... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.