Throw by all the libraries in the world

      "As was true of most Methodist leaders of the time, including Bishop Asbury, Cartwright was opposed not to higher education but, rather, to the use of theological schools for the designing of 'man-made' ministers.  Nevertheless, the Methodists were in no hurry to found colleges.  Between 1780 and 1829, forty colleges and universities were successfully founded in the United States.  Of these, 13 were Presbyterian, 1 was Catholic, 1 was German Reformed, 1 was a joint effort by the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, and 11 were public (W. W. Sweet, 1964b).  None was Methodist.  Indeed, just prior to the founding of Indiana Asbury University in 1837, a committee of the Indiana Conference gave reassurance that it would never be a 'manufactory in which preachers are to be made.'  Thus the founders kept faith with the bishop’s memory as well as with the spirit of American Methodism as expressed in the Discipline of 1784, which advised preachers never to let study interfere with soul-saving:  'If you can do but one, let your studies alone.  We would throw by all the libraries in the world rather than be guilty of the loss of one soul.'"

     Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The churching of America, 1776-2005:  winners and losers in our religious economy, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 77.  As that last contextualizing link shows, this is John Wesley at least as far back as 1766, if not further (and was very widely reprinted; follow up on this sometime).