which by their Sureties they made at their Baptism Train up a Child in the way he should go that is in the course of Life that he ought to lead instruct him carefully in the knowledge and practice of his whole duty to God and Men which he ought to observe and perform all the days of his Life Secondly Here is the consequent fruit and benefit of good Education And when he is old he will not depart from it This we are to understand according to the moral probability of things Not as if this happy effect did always and infallibly follow upon the good Education of a Child but that this very frequently is and may probably be presumed and hoped to be the fruit and effect of a pious and prudent Education Solomon means that from the very nature of the thing this is the most hopeful and likely way to train up a Child to be a good Man For as Aristotle truly observes Moral Sayings and Proverbial Speeches are to be understood only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to be usually and for the most part true And though there may be several exceptions made and instances given to the contrary yet this doth not infringe the general truth of them But if in frequent and common experience they be found true this is all the truth that is expected in them because it is all that was intended by them And of this nature is this Aphorism or Proverb of Solomon in the Text and so likewise are most of the wise Sayings of this Book of the Proverbs as also of Eccleasistes And we do greatly mistake the design and meaning of them when ever we go about to exact them to a more strict and rigorous truth and shall upon due consideration find it impossible to bring them to it So that the true meaning of the Text may be fully comprised in the following Proposition That the careful and prudent and religious Education of Children hath for the most part a very good influence upon the whole course of their lives In the handling of this Argument I design by God's assistance to reduce my Discourse to these Five Heads I. I shall shew more generally wherein the good Education of Children doth consist and severally consider the principal parts of it II. I shall give some more particular Directions for the management of this work in such a way as may be most effectual for its end III. I shall take notice of some of the common and more remarkable miscarriages in the performance of this Duty IV. I shall endeavour to make out the truth of this Proposition by shewing how the good Education of Children comes to be of so great advantage and to have so powerful and lasting an influence upon their whole Lives V. and Lastly I shall by the most powerful Arguments I can offer endeavour to stir up and persuade those whose Duty this is to discharge it with great care and conscience I. I shall shew more generally wherein the good Education of Children doth consist and severally consider the principal Parts of it And under this Head I shall comprehend promiscuously the Duty of Parents and in case of their death of Guardians and of God-fathers and God-mothers though this for the most part signifies very little more than a pious and charitable care and concernment for them because the Children for whom they are Sureties are seldom under their power And the Duty likewise of those who are the Teachers and Instructers of them And the Duty also of Masters of Families towards Servants in their childhood and younger years And lastly the Duty of Ministers under whose Parochial care and inspection Children are as members of the Families committed to their charge I say under this Head I shall comprehend the Duties of all these respectively according to the several obligations which lie upon each of them in their several relations to them And I shall reduce them to these eight particulars as the principal parts wherein the Education of Children doth consist First In the tender and careful nursing of them Secondly In bringing them to be baptised and admitted Members of Christ's Church at the times appointed or accustomed in the National Church of which the Parents are Members Thirdly In a due care to inform and instruct them in the whole compass of their Duty to God and to their Neighbour Fourthly And more especially in a prudent and diligent care to form their Lives and Manners to Religion and Virtue Fifthly In giving them good Example Sixthly In wise restraints from that which is Evil by seasonable Reproof and Correction Seventhly In bringing them to be publickly Catechised by the Minister in order to Confirmation Eighthly In bringing them to the Bishop to be solemnly Confirmed by their taking upon themselves the Vow which by their Sureties they enter'd into at their Baptism I. In the tender and careful nursing of Children I mention this first because it is the first and most natural Duty incumbent upon Parents towards their Children And this is particularly the Duty of Mothers This affection and tenderness Nature which is our surest guide and director hath implanted in all living Creatures towards their young ones And there cannot be a greater reproach to Creatures that are endued with Reason than to neglect a Duty to which Nature directs even the Brute Creatures by a blind and unthinking Instinct So that it is such a Duty as cannot be neglected without a downright affront to Nature and from which nothing can excuse but disability or sickness or the evident danger of the Mother or the interposition of the Father's Authority or some very extraordinary and publick necessity This I foresee will seem a very hard Saying to nice and delicate Mothers who prefer their own ease and pleasure to the fruit of their own Bodies But whether they will hear or whether they will forbear I think my self obliged to deal plainly in this matter and to be so faithful as to tell them that this is a natural Duty and because it is so of a more necessary and indispensable obligation than any positive Precept of reveal'd Religion and that the general neglect of it is one of the great and crying Sins of this Age and Nation and which as much as any Sin whatsoever is evidently a punishment to it self in the palpable ill effects and consequences of it Which I shall as briefly as I can endeavour to represent that if it be possible we may in this first Point of Education so fundamental and necessary to the happiness both of Parents and Children and consequently to the Publick Good of Human Society be brought to comply with the unerâ—ing Instinct of Nature and with the plain Dictate of the common Reason of Mankind and the general practice of all Ages and Nations First The neglect of this Duty is a â—ort of exposing of Children especially when it is not done as very often it is not with more than ordinary
care and choice It always exposeth them to manifest inconvenience and sometimes to great danger even to that degree as in the consequence of it is but little better than the laying a Child in the Streets and leaving it to the care and compassion of a Parish There are two very visible inconveniencies which â—o commonly attend it 1 st Strange Milk which is often very disagreeable to the Child and with which â—he Child to be sure sucks in the natural inâ—irmities of the Nurse together with a great deal of her natural inclinations and irregular passions which many times stick by the Child for a long time after And which is worse than all this it sometimes happens that some secret Disease of the Nurse is conveyed to the Child 2 dly A shameful and dangerous neglect of the Child especially by such Nurses as make a Trade of it of whom there are great numbers in and about this great City Who after they have made their first and main advantage of the Child by the excessive not to say extravagant vailes which usually here in England above all places in the Woâ—ld are given at Christeningsâ— And then by the strait allowances which are commonly made afterwards for the nursing and keeping of the Child are often tempted not to say worse to a great neglect of the Child which if it happen to dye for want of due care â—ets the Nurse at liberty to make a new advantage by taking another Child Nor can it well be otherwise expected than that a Nurse who by this course is first made to be unnatural to her own Child should have no great care and tenderness for a Child which is not her own I have heard a very sad Observation made by those who have had the opportunity to know it that in several of the Towns and Villages about London where this Trade of nursing Children is chiefly driven hardly one in five of these Children lives out the year And this surely is a danger which natural affection as well as duty does oblige Parents to take all possible care to prevent Secondly This course doth most certainly tend very much to the estranging and weakning of natural affection on both sides I mean both on the part of the Mother and of the Child The pains of nursing as well as of bearing Children doth insensibly create a strange tenderness of affection and care in the Mother Can a woman says God forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb Isa 49. 15. Can a Woman that is a Mother not a Nurse for the sucking child is said to be the son of her womb God speaks of this as a thing next to impossible And this likewise is a great endearment of the Mother to the Child Which endearment when the Child is put out is transferr'd from the Mother to the Nurse and many times continues to be so for a great many years after yea and often to that degree as if the Nurse were the true Mother and the true Mother a meer stranger So that by this means natural affection must be extremely weaken'd which is great pity because when it is kept up in its full strength it often proves one of the best securities of the Duty of a Child But because this severe Doctrine will go down but very hardly with a great many I must take the more care to guard it against the Objections which will be made to it Those from natural disability or sickness from evident and apparent danger of the Mother or from the interposition of the Father's Authority or from plain necessity or if there be any other that have an equal Reason with these I have prevented already by allowing them to be just and reasonable exceptions from the general Rule when they are real and not made Pretences to shake off our Duty But there are besides these two Objections which indeed are real but yet seem to have too great a weight with those who would fain decline this Duty and are by no means sufficient to excuse Mothers no not those of the highest Rank and Quality from the natural obligation of it And they are these The manifest trouble and the manifold restraint which the careful discharge of this Duty does unavoidably bring upon those who submit themselves to it 1 st For the trouble of it I have only this to say and I think that no more need to be said about it that no body is discharged from any Duty by reason of the trouble which necessarily attends it and is inseparable from it since God who made it a Duty foresaw the trouble of it when he made it so 2 dly As to the manifold restraint which it lays upon Mothers this will best be answer'd by considering of what nature these restraints are And they are chiefly in these and the like instances This Duty restrains Mothers from spending their Morning and their Money in curious and costly Dressing from misspending the rest of the Day in formal and for the most part impertinent Visits and in seeing and hearing Plays many of which are neither fit to be seen or heard by modest Persons and those who pretend to Religion and Virtue as I hope all Christians do especially Persons of higher Rank and Quality And it restrains them likewise from trifling away a great part of the Night in Gaming and in Revelling till past Midnight I am loth to say how much These are those terrible restraints which this natural Duty of Mothers nursing their Children lays upon them Now I cannot but think all these to be very happy restraints Happy surely for the Child and in many respects happy for the Father and for the whole Family which by this means will be kept in much better order But happiest of all for the Mother who does herein not only discharge a great and necessary Duty but is hereby also hinder'd from running into many great Faults which before they will be forgiven must cost her a deep Contrition and a very bitter Repentance Perhaps I may have gone further in this unusual Argument than will please the present Age But I hope Posterity will be so wise as to consider it and lay it to heart For I am greatly afraid that the World will never be much better till this great Fault be mended I proceed to the next Particular wherein the good Education of Children doth consist namely II. In bringing them to be Baptized and admitted Members of Christ's Church at the times appointed or accustomed in the National Church of which the Parents are Members I mean to bring them to the Church to be there publickly initiated and solemnly admitted by Baptism And this the Rules of the Church of England do strictly enjoyn unless the Child be in danger of death and in that case only it is allow'd to administer Baptism privately and in a summary way without performing the whole Office But then if the Child live it
certainly are great Mistakes and many times have very pernicious effects thus to confound things which are of so wide and vast a difference as good and evil lawful and unlawful indifferent and necessary For when Children come to be Men and to have a freer and larger view of the World and shall find by the contrary practice of very wise and serious Persons that they have quite different apprehensions of these matters and do not think that to be a Sin which their Parents have so strictly forbidden them under that notion and many times punished them more severely for the doing of it than if they had told a Lye this may make them apt to question whether any thing be a Sin And the violence which they offer to their Consciences and the strein that they give them upon such an occasion by complying wiâ—h the general practice of others contrary to the Principles of their Education doth many times open a gap for great and real Sins Besides that Children which are bred up in high Prejudices for or against indifferent Opinions or Practices in Religion do usually when they are grown up prove to be Men of narrow and contracted Spirits peevish and froward and uncharitable and many times great Bigots and Zealots either in the way of Superstition or Faction according to the Principles which have been instill'd into them to byass them either way And very hardly do they ever quit themselves so clearly of their Prejudices as to become wise and peaceable and substantial Christians In short if we carefully observe it we shall find that when Children have been thus indiscreetly educated their Religion differs as much from that of sober and judicious Christians as the Civil behaviour and conversation of those who have been unskilfully and conceitedly taught how to carry themselves does from the behaviour of those who have had a more free and generous Education II. In matter of Example There are many Parents whose Lives are Exemplary in the main who yet seem to use too great a freedom before their Children It is an old Rule and I think â— very good one Maxima debetur pueris reverentia There is a very great reverence due to Children There are many things which are not Sins and therefore may lawfully be â—one which yet it may not be prudent and expedient to do before all persons There are some words and actions so trivial and light that they are not fit to be said or done before those for whom we have a reverence There is a certain freedom of Conversation which is only proper among Equals in Age and Quality which if we use before our Superiors and Betters we seem to contemn them if before our Inferiors they will go nigh to contemn us It ought to be consider'd that Children do not understand the exact limits of good and evil so that if in our words or actions we go to the utmost bounds of that which is lawful we shall be in danger of shewing them the way to that which is unlawful Children are not wont to be careful of their steps and therefore we will not venture them to play about a Precipice or near a dangerous Place where yet Men that will take care may go safely enough And therefore Parents should be very careful to keep their Children from the Confines of Evil and at as great a distance from it as they can And to this end their words and actions should ever be temper'd with gravity and circumspection that Children may not see or hear any thing which may acquaint them with the approaches to Sin or carry them to the Borders of Vice lest they should not stop just there but take a step further than you intended they should go III. In matter of Reproof and Câ—rrection many Religious and careful Parents are guilty of two great Miscarriages in this Part of Education First Of too much rigor and severity which especially with some sort of Temâ—ers hath very ill success The first experiment that should be made upon Children should be to allure them to their Duty and by reasonable inducements to gain them to the love of Goodness by Praise and Rewâ—rd and sometimes by Shame and Disgnace And if this will do there will be no occasion to proceed to Severity especially not to great Severities which are very unsuitable to Human Nature A mixâ—ure of prudent and seasonable Reproof oâ— Correction when there is occasion for it may do very well but Whips are not hâ— Cords of a Man Human Nature may be driven by them but it must be led by sweeter and gentler ways Speusippus caused the Pictures of Joy and Gladness to be set round about his School to signify that the business of Education ought to be rendred as pleasant as may be And indeed Children stand in need of all the enticements and encouragements to Learning and Goodness Metus haud diuturni Magister officij says Tully Fear alone will not teach a man his Duty and hold him to it for any long time For when that is removed Nature will break loose and do like it self Besides that frequent Corrections make Punishments to lose their Awe and force and are apt to spoil the Disposition of Children and to harden them against Shame and after a while they will despise Correction when they find they can endure it Great Severities do often work an effect quite contrary to that which was intended And many times those who were bred up in a very severe School hate Learning ever after for the sake of the cruelty that was used to force it upon them And so likewise an endeavour to bring Children to Piety and Goodness by unreasonable strictness and rigor does often beget in them a lasting disgust and Prejudice against Religion and teacheth them as Erasmus says virtutem simul odisse nôsse to bate Virtue at the same time that they teach them to know it For by this means Virtue is represented to the minds of Children under a great disadvantage and good and â—vil are brought too near together So that whenever they think of Religion and Virtue they remember the Severity which was wont to accompany the Instructions about it and the natural hatred which men have for Punishment is by this means derived upon Religion it self And indeed how can it be expected that Children should love their Duty when they never hear of it but with a handful of Rods shak'd over them I insist upon this the more because I do not remember to have observed more notorious Instances of great miscarriage than in the Children of very strict and severe Parents Of which I can give no other account but this that Nature when it is thus overcharged recoils the more terribly It hath something in it like the Spring of an Engine which being forcibly press'd does upon the first liberty return back with so much the greater violence In like manner the vicious dispositions of Children when restrain'd merely
the Paps that gave me suck 'T is to You that I must in a great measure owe my everlasting undoing Would it not strike any of us with horror to be thus challenged and reproached by our Children in that great and terrible Day of the Lord I am not able to make so dreadful a representation of this matter as it deserves But I would by all this if it be possible awaken Parents to a sense of their Duty and terrify them out of this gross and shameful neglect which so many are guilty of For when I seriously consider how supinely remiss and unconcerned many Parents are as to the Religious Education of their Children I cannot but think of that Saying of Augustus concerning Herod Better be his Dog than his Child I think it was spoken to another purpose but is true likewise to the purpose I am speaking of Better to be some Mens Dogs or Hawks or Horses than their Children For they take a greater care to breed and train up these to their several ends and uses than to breed up their Children for eternal Happiness Upon all these accounts Train up a Child in the way he should go that when â—e is old he may not depart from it That neither your Children may be miserable by your Fault nor you by the neglect of so natural and necessary a Duâ—y towards them God grant that all â—hat are concerned may lay these things seriously to heart For his mercies sake in Jesus Christ To Whom with Thâ—e O Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour and Glory both now and ever Amen OF THE Advantages of an early Piety A SERMON Preached in the Church of St. Lawrence Jâ—ry In the Year 1662. ECCLES XII 1. Remember now thy Creator in the dâ—ys of thy Youth while the evil days come not nor the years draw â—igh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them IN the former Discourses concerning the Education of Children I have carried the Argument through the state of Childhood to the beginning of the next step of their Age which we call Youth when they come to exercise their Reason and to be â—it to take upon themselves the performance of that Solemn Vow which was made for them by their Sureties in Baptism To encourage them to set seriously and in good earnest about this Work I shall now add another Discourse concerning the Advantages of an Early Piâ—ty And to this purpose I have chosen for the foundation of it these Words of Sâ—lomon in his Book called Ecclesiastes or the Preacher Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth while the â—vil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them It will not be necessary to give an account of the Context any further than to tell you that this Book of the Royâ—l Preacher is a lively description of the Vanity of the World in general and particularly of the Life of Man This is the main Body of his Sermon in which there are here and there scattered many serious Reflections upon our selves and very weighty Considerations to quicken our preparations for our latter End and to put us in mind of the days of darkness which will be many as the Preacher tells us in the Chapter before the Text. Among these is the Admonition and advice in the words of the Text Which do indeed concern those that are young but yet will afford useful matter of Meditation to persons of all Ages and Conditions whatsoever Of great thankfulness to Almighty God from those who by the Grace of God and his Blessing upon a pious Education have entred upon a Religious course betimes And of a deep sorrow and Repentance to those who have neglected and let slip this best Opportunity of their Lives and of taking up a firm Resolution of redeeming that loss as much as is possible by their future care and diligence And to them more especially who are grown old and have not yet begun this great and necessary Work it will minister occasion to resolve upon a speedy retreat and without any further delay to return to God and their Duty leâ—t the Opportunity of doing it which is now almost quite spent be lost for ever The Text contains a Duty which is to remember our Creator and a Limitâ—tion of it more especially to one particular Age and Time of our Life in the days of our Youth Not to exclude any other Age but to lay a particular Emphasis and weight upon this Remember thy Creator in the days of thy Youth that is more especially in this Age of thy Life To intimate to us both that this is the fittest Season and that we cannot begin this Work too soon And this is further illustrated by the opposition of it to Old Age When the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh of which thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them This is a Description of Old Age the evils whereof are continually growing and which in respect of the cares and griefs the distempers and infirmities which usually attend it is rather a burthen than a pleasure In the handling of these Words I shall do these three things First I shall consider the nature of the Act or Duty here enjoin'd and that is to remember God Secondly I shall consider what there is in the Notion of God as Creator which is more particularly apt to awaken and oblige us to the remembrance of Him Thirdly I shall consider the Limitation of this Duty more especially to this particular Age of our Lives the days of our youth Why we should begin this Work then and not put it off to the Time of Old Age. I. I shall consider the nature of the Act or Duty here enjoin'd which is to remember our Creator For the understanding of which Expression and others of the like nature in Scripture it is to be consider'd that it is very usual in Scripture to express Religion and the whole Duty of Man by some eminent Act or Principle or Part of Religion Sometimes by the Knowledge of God and by Faith in Him and very frequently by the Fear and by the Love of God because these are the great Principles and Parts of Religion And so likewise though not so frequently Religion is express'd by the Remembrance of God Now Remembrance is the actual thought of what we do habitually know To remember God is to have him actually in our minds and upon all proper occasions to revive the thoughts of Him and as David expresseth it to set him always before us I set the Lord says he always before me that is God was continually present to his mind and thoughts And in opposition to this we find wicked men in Scripture described by the contrary quality forgetfulness of Godâ— So they are described in Job Job 8. 13. Such are the paths of them that forget God that is of the wicked And the same description David gives