ABSTRACT
Modern education in the eighteenth century was the result of a combination of three independent motives: religious, intellectual and utilitarian. The Reformation provided the religious reason for the study of nature and ‘things’ instead of ‘words’. God created the world and the best way to understand the working of the divine law was to study his creation. Nature was a supplementary source to the revelation of the Bible for the attainment of the same end. Thus the idea of ‘propagatio fidei per scientias’ was the basis of the pansophic schemes of Comenius and his followers. All the pioneers of education in the seventeenth century were believing Christians and their declared purpose in reforming schools was the desire to vindicate the revelation of the Bible by scientific research. These ideas were closely connected with the missionary zeal of spreading Christianity among the natives of the newly discovered America. In all the schemes of the seventeenth century these two purposes of the propagation of Christianity among non-Christians and of the vindication of faith by science were intimately connected. In this respect the Hon. Robert Boyle 1 may be taken as a representative of his time. His constant concern both with missionary work in America and with the introduction of the experimental study of nature is clearly seen in all his correspondence and schemes. His bequest of a fund for the establishment of Boyle Lectures for the defence of Christianity against unbelievers by a scientific interpretation of the world was a practical measure for that end and resulted in many publications in the eighteenth century. Comenius himself was not only the leader of educational reformers but also a Bishop of the Moravian Church.
