264 History of Universities
refused to admit that the baptism of children was unscrip-
tural; but in 1762 the Baptist Association of Philadelphia
decided that it could not longer depend on divine inspiration
as a qualification for ministers. The Liberal Arts college
that they founded was not located at Philadelphia, where
Baptists were a rather poor and socially under-privileged
sect, but at Providence, Rhode Island, which wanted a Lib-
eral Arts college, and where the leaders in business and so-
ciety were Baptists. The College of Rhode Island, or Brown
University, as it was renamed after the Revolution from a
local benefactor, declared the same purposes in her charter
of foundation as the earlier colonial colleges, with a thrifty
note of utility in addition. She proposed to form “the rising
generation to virtue, knowledge and useful literature, thus
preserving in the community a succession of men duly quali-
fied for discharging the offices of life with usefulness and
reputation.” And Baptists from all parts of the colonies gave
her the opportunity; Brown had the most national student
body of any colonial college.
It is not until the establishment of the Philadelphia Acad-
emy, in 1749, that we note a new deal in American education ;
and not a very new deal at that. Pennsylvania and Phila-
delphia had managed to get along without an institution of
higher education for over half a century from their founda-
tion, although since 1689 the Penn Charter School had pro-
vided an excellent secondary education on the traditional
English model. It needed an enterprising Yankee to prod
the smug Philadelphians into action. Benjamin Franklin’s
“Proposals” for the Academy, printed in 1749, are signifi-
cant for his educational philosophy. Excusing his adopted
Province for her backwardness in higher education, he says
that in a new country “Agriculture and Mechanic arts were
of the most immediate importance; the culture of minds by