394 ON THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF THE 
Bishop Sprat, that when some of those ingenious men who 
afterwards assisted in forming the Royal Society, began, about 
the end of the Civil War, to establish a weekly meeting at 
Oxford for philosophical discussion, they found, that the new 
spirit of “ free inquiry” had already made considerable pro- 
gress among the members of the University *. 
When one’of Bacon’s friends asked him, Whether he thought 
the Churchmen likely to oppose his intended reformation of 
philosophy, his answer was—“ I have no occasion to meet 
“ them in my way, except it be, as they will needs confede- 
“ rate with AristorteE, who, you know, is intemperately 
“ magnified by the School-Divines +.” We are told by Os- 
BORN, a contemporary observer, that the “ School-Divines” did 
endeavour to cry down his philosophical writings, by represent- 
ing them as favouring atheism {. This was their usual mode 
of warfare when the established tenets of the Schools were at- 
tacked by any formidable patent The Aristotelians of all 
descriptions, 
* Sprat’s History of the Royal Society, p. 53 ; also p. 328. This spirit 
} appears to have made still greater progress at Cambridge. Gutanvitt, who 
became a student of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1652, ‘* lamented,” says 
Antnony Woop, ‘ that his friends did not, send him to, Cambridge; because, 
he used to say, that the new philosophy, and the art of philosophizing, were 
more cultivated there, than here at Oxford.”—Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. p. 662. 
—« After the way of free-thinking,” says Baxer, “ had been laid open by 
Lord Bacon, it was soon after greedily followed.” See his Reflections on Learn- 
ing. This work was first published in 1699. The author, who was a Fellow of 
St John’s College, Cambridge, was deeply read in the history of that University. 
His extensive collections upon that subject are deposited in the British Mu- 
seum. 
+ Bacon’s Letters to Sir Tosy Marraew, in his Works, vol. iii, p. 247, 257. 
+ Introduction to Oszorn’s Miscellany of Essays, Paradoxes, and Discourses.” 
