that what he thus ordains us to do is not that he may know our will since that cannot be concealed from him but to enflame our desires by the instance of our prayers and to render us capable to receive that which he is ready to grant us For by how much his Presents are great and magnificent by so much our hearts are little and limited to receive them Therefore the Scripture says Open your Hearts Now these so excellent and so sublime Goods which the Eye hath not seen because they are not colours which the Ear hath not heard because they are not sounds and which are not elevated in the heart of man because the heart of man ought on the contrary elevate it self towards them these Goods I say shall be communicated unto us with so much more aboundance by how much we have believed with more Faith hoped with more Confidence desired with more Ardour 'T is therefore by a continual Desire founded upon Faith Hope and Charity that we pray without intermission But if at certain hours and certain times we employ Words in prayer 't is only to animate us by those exteriour signs to conceive these holy affections to make us observe what progress they have made in our heart and to excite us to encrease them For the effect of our prayer is by so much greater by how much the ardour of our desires hath been greater So that when the Apostle says Pray without ceasing he intends only that we should desire without ceasing to obtain that happy life which is no other than the eternal blisse of him who alone can give it us If then we demand this of God incessantly we pray incessantly But because the cares and Incumbrances of the World cool sometimes our desires we recall at certain hours of the day our spirit to prayer and we re-place before our Eyes by the Words which we address to God this last end whether we ought to tend by our desires for fear lest that which begins to fall into Tepidity should pass into a Coldness and proceed in the end to be totally extinguished if it be not re-inkindled by frequent prayers This being so it cannot be bad or unprofitable to employ much time in prayer when our leasure permits it that is when it hinders us not from acquitting our selves of other laudable and necessary things to which our duty obliges us although in these very occupations we ought always to pray by the activity of our desires For it is to be observed that it is not one and the same thing to pray along time or to pray with many words as some imagine but that there is a difference between a long and continual desire since it is written That our Lord passed over the night in Prayer and that he prayed very long And there is reason to believe that he would induce us thereby to imitate his example he who prayed so perfectly to his Father in the time of his mortal life and who hears us so mercifully with his Father in eternity They say that our Brethren the Hermits of Egypt make frequent Prayers but very short and that they only lift up their hearts to God from time to time by lively and ardent prayers without staying too long upon them for fear lest this application and this fervour of spirit so necessary in prayer should relent or be dissipated if this prayer were too continual This also gives us to understand that as we ought not to weary and blunt our spirit by forcing our selves to entertain it in this fervour when it begins to slacken so we ought not to hasten to interrupt it when we feel it continues Because if on the one side one ought to bannish from prayer the superfluity of Words one ought on the other side to sustain it by continual desires and demands so long as the spirit perseveres in its application and in its fervour For to speak too much in prayer is to employ superfluous Words to ask a thing necessary and to pray much is by holy and continual motions of the heart to press him to whom we pray to render himself favourable to our demands But oftentimes this passes more in sighing than in speaking Discourses have not so great a part as tears and then it is that he whose eternal word made all things makes it appear that they are not the temporal Words of men which are pleasing to him but their sighs and tears 'T is then Sister this prayer of the heart and this entertainment with God which is done in silence in recollection in the disengagement from all exteriour things and by the interiour sighs and affections of the soul that Christian Mothers ought to make their Children love and practise 'T is a Yoak which is good for them to bear from their youth and as soon as they begin to make use of their understanding and their reason 'T is a Yoak which replenishes the Soul with comfort and sweetness 'T is a Yoak which sustains and strengthens and renders them who bear it capable to raise up themselves above themselves and above all earthly objects And do not alledge to me S. Chrysost says St. John Chrysostom that Children are not capable of this fervour of this recollection and of this application which Prayer requires since we have in Scripture the examples of several children and of many young people who have by the means of Prayer drawn upon them very great blessings Samuel was but twelve years old when God called him in the Temple Samuel and discovered to him the designes he had upon the house of Heli. Solomon was very young when he made that admirable Prayer which moved God to render him the wisest and the most powerful Prince that ever was Finally Solomon Daniel Daniel was no more than eight or nine years of age when by a feeling of piety he refused to eat the Meats presented to him from the table of King Nabuchodonosor and by the means of Fasting and Prayer he merited those extraordinary gifts which rendred him at the age of twelve years the deliverer of the chaste Susanna and afterwards the Miracle of his age Nor must Mothers alledge their domestick affairs and the cares of their family to dispense themselves from following their Prayers since we see in that little Collection of Pietie now newly printed Recuil de piete that a Princess of our days prescribed to her self a method of praying three times every day Marg. de Portug Dutchess of Parma to wit half an hour in the Morning half an hour at mid day and half an hour in the Evening For if persons of that condition and so much engaged in the world as Princes are have the fidelity to apply themselves to this Exercise and acknowledge the need and the fruit thereof what a lesson should not this Example give to all other persons who have more leasure and liberty and with what ardour should all
reigns in them will be very useful to you for their particular conduct For there are certain Passions which must not be openly set upon but must be battered by removing the objects which excite them and by presenting good ones unto which they may apply themselves And there are others on the contrary which as we may say they must be forced to produce to the end that Parents may make use of the very faults which they cause them to commit how little soever they appear that so they may give them a horrour and an aversion from them which are more animated Besides that you ought particularly to propose to your selves in the conduct of your Children to follow God and to conform your selves as much as in you lies to the dispositions which he shall put into their souls to the end that by making use of the knowledge you have of their dispositions you may apply them to such things as are proper for them and to which you shall judge they will most freely apply themselves 6. Maxims touching the Instruction of Children PRopose unto them little rewards to engage them to remember what you teach them and as says St. St. Jerome in Epist ad Leâ—am Jerome Gain them by small presents and by things they most esteem as by comfitures or poppets Make them acquainted with children of their own age who are well educated that so they may have an emulation for them and that the prayses you give them may excite them to imitate them Do not hastily reprehend them if they are of somewhat a meek temper but encourage them sometimes by prayses and at other times causing them to render an account of what they have learned before them of their own age bring it so about that they may rejoyce to have out-gone them and then ashamed to be behinde them St. Jerom. ibidem Take heed above all that they get not a hatred of Studies lest they having taken an aversion from them in their tender age should retain it in their riper years Endeavour to make them love what they must be constrained one day to learn and practice to the end it may not be then a pain to them but a pleasure and that they may not do it by constraint but by their own choice You must neglect none of these least things when the greatest cannot well subsist without them Encrease and nourish in them the love of labour by keeping them always employed Let the changing of their business be their divertisement and let pious reading succeed their prayers and employs Time seems short when it is divertised by good occupations Remember that there 's no time to be lost in the instruction of children and that as you are to apply your self to form their manners from their most tender years you are also from their most tender Infancy to imprint in them the first disposition to the Sciences True it is that one can hardly during all that time teach them what they will apprehend in one sole year of their riper age But because they must of necessity be employed in something even in that age one can assuredly do nothing better to make them employ their time profitably after they once begin to speak than in making them to study to speak naturally and in good terms and one should never neglect any thing which may conduce in the least to their advantage because they will thereby become capable to learn things of more importance in the age in which they must learn those of less concern if they have not already learned them 'T is thus that advancing by little and little children finde themselves capable in their youth of great matters and that the time well husbanded during their Infancy contributes much to make them employ more profitably the time of their following youth Yet they must not be too much pressed to any thing but one is to accommodate ones self to their strength and to the reach of their spirit Studies have as it were their Infancy as well as man and as the strongest bodies have been nourished with milk and laid in a cradle in the first years of their life so the most eloquent Men have sent forth cries like others and have had at their beginning like them a difficulty to speak and to form their Letters Philip of Macedon had not made choice of Aristotle who was the greatest Philosopher of his age to teach Alexander the beginnings of humane learning nor had that Philosopher undertaken that employ had not both the one and the other been perswaded that the first tinctures of Studies ought to be received from the most able persons Manage therefore my Sister so discreetly the first years of your children that all may serve to render them both more knowing and more pious Cause them to learn to reade in such books where the purity of language and the choice of good matter meet together S. Aug. l. 1. Confess c. 15. n. 2. St. Augustin thanking God for having forgiven him the faults he had committed in his Infancy by taking over-much pleasure in vain things which he learned by reading the Poetical fables and fictions says that although it is true that he had learned many useful words among those follies it was nevertheless more true that he might as well have learned them in more serious Lectures and that to do so is a sure way to instruct Children well 'T is this therefore my Sister which you ought to practise in regard of yours and to take care that the lectures you give them in order to teach them to pronounce distinctly and to observe the Points and Comma's and to discern a perfect sense from an imperfect be more profitable than curious When they shall begin to write permit not the Copies which are given them to be stuffed with bad manners of speaking and with the first fancies which fall into the minde of a Master but provide that there may be proposed unto them such Verses or Sentences as contain some pithy expression or some pious Rule of Christian Morality One may insensibly by this means replenish their memories with the greatest Truths and as they shall have made a strong impression in their tenderest Infancy they will easily present themselves to them when they shall be more advanced in age and capable to make good use of them Your principal care ought to be to cultivate their memory and to make them learn by heart as many things as you can In effect as on the one side the spirit of children is not then capable to produce many things of it self and on the other side they have ordinarily a very good memory there is scarcely any other faculty of their soul which one can profitably exercise When they shall be in an estate to go to the Schools or to have a Master in the house make choice of the best regulated Colledge and of Masters not only the most able but the most pious and
in Persecutions and Sufferings and that the Rich and such as live in the abundance of all things in the Divertisements and applauses of the world are truly unhappy it is no more permitted to seculars than to Religious to fancy or acknowledge any other fountains of happiness then Poverty Tears Contempt and Sufferings and that all Christians ought equally to defy Riches Pleasures Honours as the most probable causes of their perdition Thus adds he this distinction which is put between persons living in the world and them who renounce it is a meer invention of men The holy Scripture knows it not but will have all Christians and even them who are engag'd in Marriage observe the same Rules and the same Institute as do the Religious Hearken to what St. Paul says and when I name St. Paul it is as if I produc'd to you the words of Christ Jesus himself This great Apostle writing to married persons who labour in the Education of their Children doth he not require of them all the exactness and all the perfection of a retired and solitary life For doth he not cut off from them all the pleasures they might take either in the ornaments of cloathes or in the delicateness of drinking and of eating when he says 1 Timothy 2.9 Behold the order I give you as to what concerns the Women I desire that they should be clad modestly and that their manner of cloathing and dressing themselves may breath nothing but decency and chastity that they wear no frizled hayr nor ornaments of Gold or of Jewels nor sumptuous habits but that they be cloathed as may beseem Women who make profession of piety and who ought to make their piety appear by their manners and actions And when he adds in the sequel speaking of widows Chap. 3. v. 5. She who lives in delights is dead according to the spirit although she be living according to the body And in another place speaking of all the faithful in general Having what is needful to live and wherewith to cloath our selves we ought to be content could he exact any thing more of Religious persons After St. Chrysostome hath thus run over all the Rules which St. Paul prescribes to Married people and the conduct which he ordains them to observe whether for their Conversations in which he not only forbids idle babling and the reciting of Fables and human Inventions but moreover pleasant fancies and immoderate gayeties whether for the Meekness and for the Charity which he enjoyns them to have towards one another not suffering them to be transported in words against their Neighbour Ephes 4. and commanding them even to be so far affectioned to procure the good of all the World as to abandon their proper Interests for the conservation of Peace with their Brethren After I say that he had made it appear how St. Paul imposes upon Married persons such Laws as the most solitary Monks have much ado to accomplish he adds the words following What can we finde greater and more excellent than these Rules And since St. Paul commands us to be above choler clamours desires of Riches of good cheer of magnificence in Cloaths of vain-Glory and of other Pomps of the World to have nothing to do with the Earth and to mortify our Bodies is it not evident that he requires no less perfection in all Christians than Christ Jesus required in his Disciples seeing that he even ordains us to be so dead to sin as if we were effectually buried and really dead to the World But to make you see that it is the designe of the Apostle mark that the most powerful Argument he employs to exhort Christians to patience and Humility is the obligation they have to render themselves conformable to Christ Jesus Now if he doth not ordain us to take for the model of our Life the Religious nor even the Apostles but Christ Jesus himself and if he threatens with such horrible punishments them who imitate not this amiable Saviour what reason can any one have to pretend that there are States in Christianism more obliging than others to tend to a greater and higher perfection since it is commanded to all the world to attain to the self same Salvation that is to imitate Christ Jesus Behold that which undoubtedly overthrows the whole Universe People imagine that none but Religious are bound to live well and that others may live negligently they are deceived this is not so but all the World is obliged to follow the same Maxims and to enter into the same Reflections And fancy not says he that it is I who advance this Verity 'T is Christ Jesus himself who teaches it 'T is he who is to judge the whole World and who will judge it according to the same Maxims as sufficiently appears by the rigorous Sentence he pronounced against the wicked Rich man who is not tormented because he being Religious was cruel but who burns in the flames which shall never be quenched because he had overmuch affection for the Pomps of the World and that living in the abundance of Riches and Pleasures and being covered with Purple and sumptuous Garments he despised and neglected to succour Lazarus who was reduced to great misery Surely when our Lord says come to me all you who labour and who are burdened and I will ease you Take my yoak upon you and learn of me that I am meek and humble of Heart and you shall find the rest of your Souls he speaks not only to Religious persons but to all sort of people When he enjoyns to enter into the strait way he lays not this command only upon Religious but equally upon all men Jesus these are the proper tearms of the Gospel said to all If any one will give himself to me let him renounce himself let him dayly bear his Cross and let him follow me And when he said that if any one came to him and that he did not hate his Father and his Mother his Wife his Brethren his Sisters and even his own Life by despising all these things when there is question of the service and of the glory of God he could not be of the number of his Disciples that is to say Christian he did not except any Estate nor any Profession even as he excepted not any Father nor any Mother when he said that he who loved his Son or his Daughter more than him was not worthy to belong to him I conceive then concludes this great Doctor that no one will be so bold nor so contentious as to dare to deny after such convincing proofs that the Divine Laws do not equally oblige him who lives in the World and him who is retired out of it to the same perfection and that in whatever estate Christians live they are to beware of falling into such dangerous opinions as thwart these verities They who are thus perswaded begin my Sister to comprehend how difficult a matter it is to educate
and who will abandon all these Freinds to joyn themselves to lewd persons and to seek out companions of their debauches and dissolution What comfort can he expect when he shall be seized on by the inconveniencies of old age And what help can he hope for in his Infirmities from them who have not obeyed him and who have sleighted him when he was yet in the vigour of his days and could have made himself feared But to make use of such only Reasons as Piety furnishes us withall what advantage can a Father draw from a Life all Innocent and Holy if he be condemned by God for having neglected the Education of his Children think not that I of my self do advance this astonishing proposition It proceeds from Saint Chrysostome who after he had made it most evidently appear That every one is no less obliged to procure to the utmost of his power the salvation of his Neighbour than his own and that the negligence of other mens sins is the greatest of all crimes concludes that they who shall have neglected the good Education of their Children ought with much more reason dread to be rigourously punished for that sole sin notwithstanding that otherwise they lead a virtuous and well regulated life He proves this Verity by a History of the Old Testament which is known to the whole world 't is that of the High Priest Heli who was of himself a very good man and who as it appeared in the Disasters which befell him had a great submission to the will of God and a most ardent zeal for Religion but for having contented himself to reprehend with meekness two very wicked Sons of his and to represent to them the heynousness of their crime without opposing himself with all the care and force as he was bound to do drew down the indignation of God upon himself and his whole Family His two Sons were slain on the same day The Wife of the elder of them lost her life in the pains of Childing before her time The Ark of the Covenant was taken by the Enemies And he himself unable to support such sad News fell backward out of his Chair brake his brain pan and there died So that forty years employed in the government of Gods people with all the justice and all the integrity imaginable could not hinder Heli from perishing in a miserable manner for having not laboured in the Education of his Children with that force and vigour which God demanded of him This Negligence defaced all his Virtucs and obscured all his brave actions And this sin as St. Gregory observes could not be expiated in the sequel of ages either by Oblations or by Sacrifices By this it may be seen that Fathers and Mothers who neglect to chastise their Children and to oblige them to serve God render themselves really their Parricides and Murtherers For although these of this High-Priest even now mentioned were killed by the Enemies yet it may be said that he was himself the prime cause of their Death since his negligence in chastising them diverted the succour of God from them and put them in the power of them who bereft them of their life 'T is thus says St. Chrysostome that we our selves treat our Children with more Inhumanity than Barbarians would do because all their cruelty can extend it self only upon the liberty of their bodies whereas we by our evil conduct reduce their Spirits into the servitude of Vices and suffering them to follow their passions render them bondslaves to the Devil himself Can it then be wondred at that God punishes with such severity the little care Parents have of the Education of their Children and can we be surprized to see so much rigour used towards them who are the cause of the crimes they commit because they did not correct them nor stifled their passions in their birth and furthermore because in the judgement of the same great Doctour although these Children should afterward come to acknowledg themselves and to get out of the way of Vice to walk in that of Virtue and that by a pure effect of Gods Mercy they should renounce the Maxims of the World to follow them of Christ Jesus their parents will not nevertheless escape a most rigorous chastisement if they neglected their Education because they shall be censured to have contributed as much as in them lay to their Childrens ruine and destruction Now if faults which Parents commit in this Education draw upon them such great evils if in the sentiment of all the holy Fathers and of all the Doctours all the Imperfections and all the crimes which Children shall contract by their negligence shall be imputed unto them and if their punishments are augmented proportionably as the same Imperfections and the same crimes shall be multiplied in them who descend from them what Glory think you is prepared to crown the labours of such Parents as had no other ambition than to have Christian Children nor other desires than to imprint deeply in their soul the fear of Gods Justice and the acknowledgement of his Mercy But how much soever Fathers are interested in the Education of their Children whether because of the just apprehension of the Punishments which are prepared for them if they neglect it or because of the comforts both temporal and eternal which they hope from them if they apply themselves with care to their Education yet 't is of greater consequence to Mothers and to say better it is to them of the highest necessity I insist not upon this that their Sex being less proper to command and that finding themselves subject to great Infirmities in old age they ought to have a greater care to instil into their Children even in their tender Infancy an acknowledgement and a respect for themselves I consider here only their spiritual interest and I say that the means which a Mother hath to sanctify her self are reduced in a great measure to the Christian Education of her Children 'T is St. Paul who teaches us this Truth when after he had spoken of the modesty which Christian Women ought to use in their cloaths and of the wariness they should observe in their Words particularly in Assemblies as to what concerns points of Doctrine and the Interpretation of the holy Scriptures he adds 1 Tim. 2.15 They shall be saved by the Children they shall bring into the World by procuring that they remain in Faith in Charity in Sanctity and in a well regulated life As if he should say to Christian Women according to the explication of St. Chrysostome My Sisters do not thrust in your selves to procure the glory of God and the salvation of your Neighbour by publick Instructions A woman medled once only with teaching and she ruined the whole World yet do not you afflict your selves for this mischief and let not your heart sink at this reproach God hath given you a means to repair this injury which you have all received in the
accommodated to their weakness that which the faithfull in a riper age and after the coming of Christ Jesus ought to know and exercise distinctly 'T is thus my Sister that you are to prefer that which regards the spiritual Interests of your children before all that touches their temporal good They must even from their tenderest years be estranged from all company which may carry them on to Vice you are to instil into them a great horrour of sin and an extreme dread to displease God you are to accustome them to bless him and to thank him for all they have making them to understand that 't is he alone who gives them all things by your hands and that he is their true Father you ought finally according to their weak capacity make them know Christ Jesus and you are to apply your self singularly to cause them to imitate his actions by insinuating into them a love of his Maxims Now if you being a Mother would have me propose to you the example of a Mother cast your eyes my Sister upon the Church which is ours Examin her conduct and conform to it yours by so much the more willingly because your Marriage Represents her Union with Christ Jesus and the Image of her alliance with him Consider how careful this holy Mother is to imprint in her children a strong aversion from the Vanities of the World and an ardent love for crosses and sufferings They are yet scarcely Born when she makes them renounce all the Pomps of Satan and engraves the Cross upon the most considerable parts of their Bodies And what doth she teach them after this but Christ Jesus crucified Wherewith doth she entertain them but with humiliations and with his annihilations And what doth she represent to them in her solemnities in her Ceremonies in her Ornaments and in all that which she offers to their eyes but what he hath done to give them the marks of his infinite love She aims at nothing more than to render them worthy of his graces and of his mercies She cannot endure they should do the least action to displease him and the height of her ambition is that all Christians should live and labour only for Christ Jesus 'T is for this cause that although she hath for them all the tenderness that can be desired yet she educates them in a spirit of Penance and exercising them in Fastings and other Mortifications disposes them according to the thought of Tertullian to suffer if it is necessary Martyrdom it self not carrying them on to Joy but in regard of the glory which her Bridegroom possesses and which he hath merited for them Behold the care she takes to strengthen them by Confirmation in the grace and the life which they have received in Baptism to sustain them and to nourish them with the Word of God and with the Sacrament of the Altar and finally with what severity she punishes the least of their faults in Penance If they engage themselves in any Ministery which concern's Religion she confirms upon them the caracter of Holy Orders to introduce them into it that they may worthily acquit themselves therein If they incline to Marriage she disposes their hearts by her Benediction to the graces which are necessary for them In a word she sustains them not she entertains them not she nourishes them not but by Christ Jesus and of Christ Jesus I know my Sister that all children are not capable of these Verities but I also know that there are none of them who may not be educated in this spirit I know that according to the thought of St. Augustin Augustin l 3. de Symb. ad Cathec c. 4. our Lord hath chosen among the holy Innocents children who could not so much as speak to give testimony of his greatnesses and he hath taught us by this conduct that there is no age uncapable of Divine Mysteries since even that was proper for the glory of Martyrdom I know that according to the King-Prophet Psalm 8. v. 3. he establishes his soveraign Power by the mouth of children and even of them who hang yet at their Mothers breasts to confound his Enemies and that when he reprehends his Disciples for hindring these little children to come to him as 't is mentioned in the Gospel Mat. 19.14 these very Infants whom he will have permitted to approach him were in the arms of their Parents and had not strength to support themselves So that there 's no Mother who cannot and who ought not imitate the Church in this ardent desire of consecrating her children to Christ Jesus who may not as doth the Church cause them to suck with their Milk the love of her Commandements and instill into them by the modesty of their dress and by the simplicity she uses in such things as she gives them a generous contempt of all the Vanities of the World and a great esteem of poverty who may not by not educating them with that delicacy which the love of the flesh hath invented prepare them as the Church doth to endure Fasting and other Exercises of Mortification And since the Mothers teach children to speak and make them know the things which are necessary for them they may without doubt as the Church doth teach them as soon the Name of Jesus as that of their Father August l. 6. Cnnfess c. 4. n. 1. and that it is much more to the purpose to fill their memory with Christian Verities though they do not comprehend them than with the follies of the world which they comprehend full as little and which may cause one day the loss of their Souls CHAP. VIII An Introduction to the Maxims which Christians ought to follow in the Education of Children 'T Is not enough for the making a perfect Copy that a Painter hath before him an Original he must moreover know perfectly the Rules of Painture and reduce into Practise in making this Copy all the Maxims of his Art It suffices not then that you propose to your self in the Education of your children these exceilent Idea's which I have represented unto you and which you are obliged to imitate You must furthermore know all the Maxims you are to follow to come to the perfection of these Divine Originals and you ought to know the Rules which the Spirit of God hath prescribed you not only in the sacred Scriptures but particularly in the writings of the Fathers of the Church who are its holy Interpreters For experience alone cannot teach Fathers and Mothers the Education of their Children It oftentimes happens that they themselves remember not in what manner they were educated and that they were too young to observe it in their Brothers and Sisters who followed them Wherfore that you may yet clearlier understand the need you have of these Maxims and to discover unto you by the way upon what grounds they are established by the Fathers of the Church I entreat you to consider that although Children are
Do not laugh nor divertise your self with your Children for fear lest one day you may repent it and that in the end you be not constrained to shew extraordinary signes of sorrow and of confusion which you may receive from them Eccle. 7.25.26 If you have Children instruct them well make them pliable from their tender age If you have Daughters watch over their bodies and never shew them an over-cheerful countenance You pereeive my Sister throughout all these passages which are so many Oracles of the Holy Ghost that Fathers and Mothers are obliged to Educate their Children with a holy severity which hinders them from contracting bad customs and which by the fear of chastisements brings them to an aversion and to a horrour of the vety shadow of the least vice You see that God forbids them to play to divertise themselves and to laugh with them and by consequence he ordains them not to appear in their presence but in a posture which may instill into them a respect and which may entertain them in the Submission and the Obedience which he himself hath commanded them to observe But because these advices are somewhat general and that the multitude of diseases causes a multiplication of the remedies the Doctours of the Church have treated of the Education of Children a little more in particular and have endeavoured to prevent the other evils which proceed from the small care which is taken therein or from the negligences which are therein committed Maxims drawn from St. John Chrysostom ST John Chrysostom after he had made the recital of the misfortune of the high Priest Heli Chrysost Hom. 9. in 1. Epist ad Timoth. ch 3 as I have already related unto you addressing himself to Fathers speaks to them in this sort Listen to this you Fathers and bring up your Children with great care in the Discipline and in the Correction of our Lord. Suffer them not ever to do such actions which as pleasant as they are cease not to be malicious and do not pardon them in any fault upon pretext of their infancy Keep them above all in a great restraint and in a great sobriety Advertise them correct them affright them threaten them and if need requires make them feel the effects of your threats You have in your Children a considerable and very precious pledge keep it with great care and do all things to hinder the ravishing of it away from you Be not so void of reason as to take a greater care of your goods and pofsessions than of them for whom you heap up all those things Exercise their Spirits whilst they are yet tender to Virtue and to Piety and then you may think of procuring for them the other comodities of life Will you leave your Son rich see that he be Virtuous and that he be Charitable for that 's the means whereby he will encrease his Patrimony or at least 't is that which will render him as content with his pittance as if he possessed all the Earth But if he is vicious great riches will only serve to furnish him wherewith to entertain his bad customs and to cause him to abandon himself without controll to all sorts of debauchery Mothers it belongs to you to take care of the Daughters you have and this is not hard for you to do Order it so that they keep continually at home Instruct them principally in piety and devotion teach them a contempt of riches and of all worldly Pomps and Vanities And since if you thus educate them they will not only save their own Souls but moreover them of their Husbands and of their Children perform all that concerns them with a serious application as labouring in one sole person for the glory and for the Salvation of many others For a Daughter should go forth of the house of her Parents to enter into that of her Husband perfectly instructed in every thing that is necessary for the good government of a Family and she ought to be so perfect that like as a little leaven communicates its qualities to all the paste so she should cause her Virtues to pass into all them whom she is to conduct and govern Let the manners of your male-children be so honest and their purity so singular that they may deserve prayse from God and from Men. Let them learn under your Discipline Abstinence and Sobriety not to make superfluous expences but to let alone all magnificence which is commonly sought after in things of shew and lustre to employ their goods lawfully to be submissive to you and to be obedient to the least of your Words How long shall we suffer our selves to be led by the meer feelings of the flesh Hom. 21. super Epist ad Ephes c. 6. and how long shall we bend downwards to the Earth Let us prefer before all other sollicitudes that of correcting and instructing our children in the fear of our Lord. If your son learns from his tender Infancy to live Christianly he will acquire goods much more considerable and a glory far greater than the World can procure him You will not gain so much by instructing him how to heap up exteriour riches as in teaching him how to contemn them do so then if you desire to make him rich since he is truly so who needs nothing Do not strive to settle him in a condition wherein he may acquire great glory by his learning but teach him to put a small value upon all worldly glory Seek not out means to make him live long upon earth but such means as are necessary to procure for him an eternal life in heaven Think not of making him so much an able man as of rendring him a faithful man He stands in need of Modesty and not of Eloquence of good manners and not of crafts and subtilties of good actions and not of fine words endeavour to render his soul pure rather than his tongue polished Not that I forbid the instruction of children but 't is this I cannot endure that one should only strive to teach them human Literature and neglect to inform them what is necessary for their Salvation Let us put our children by our prudent conduct into an estate to endure patiently all sorts of accidents and not to become insolent in prosperity If they who make the Statues and Portraits of Princes receive so much glory why should not we respect great recompences for having adorned the Image of the Soveraign of all Kings and for having restored to him his true lineaments which were defaced by making our children conformable to Christ Jesus by making them meek affable easy to forget injuries inclinable to do good to all the World to converse with all people with gentleness and humanity and finally to despise the Earth with all its alluring Vanities Behold my Sister after what manner St. Chrysostom conceived children should be educated wherein he perfectly agrees with all the other Fathers of the Church who all of
them are of one accord in these principles as I hope to shew you in the sequel in the mean while because I should enlarge my self a little too much and that this work would swell extraordinarily if I would relate unto you the entire passages of the other Fathers where these Maxims couched permit me to propose to you only the substance and to represent them to you in few words according as I have conceived them Maxims concerning the manner how Parents are to love their Children BEar always my Sister a tender love to your Children yet let it be rational and not concerned in their tears in such occasions wherein you must use violence to their Inclinations Now as these Inclinations are all corrupted and not governed in them by reason they will not permit them to take pleasure and divertisement but only in such things as incline them to vice You must not fancy that you can wean them presently from those faulty divertisements without their resistance and complaint Fortify then your heart against their moans and tears and resolve not to listen to the feelings of nature when there is question of making them feel pain or of depriving them of some satisfaction rather than to suffer them to contract bad customs and to become obstinate in their own will Salvian observes that there is nothing that brings greater dammage to Fathers and Mothers and works them greater displeasure than the Children they have too much loved And you are to take so much more care and heed of this irregular affection by how much we see in the sacred Scripture that it hath been the origin of the greatest crimes and of the greatest irregularities of men For the Holy Ghost discovers unto us no other source of Idolatry Wisdom 4.15 than the over-strong passion Fathers have had for their Children And if that which the major part of Fathers and Mothers in our days have for their Children makes them not to erect Altars to them nor to offer them sacrifice yet it but too frequently engages them to make them their Idolls to which they sacrifice all their cares and all the quiet of their life Love then your Children but with a love which is holy and disengaged from the senses a love which stays not on the outside and on that which pleases the World as upon beauty a good grace a gentile garb a pleasing humour and a quick vivacity in conversation and in reparties or returning nimble jests and replies Love them with a love that is strong and full of sweetness a love which patiently suffers their weaknesses and their infirmities their unaptness to do the good things you tell them their lightnesses and even their little disobediences without ever altering or cooling it but on the contrary redoubling its ardour towards them whose infirmities of body or Spirit are the greatest A good Mother says St. Bernard most tenderly cherishes that childe whom she sees to be infirm 4. Maxims concerning the care they ought to take to disintangle children from the World and to instil into them Christian sentiments and feelings PLace frequently before their eyes the vows they have made in Baptism make them comprehend them make them love them make them have a high esteem of them Let them know that the Pomps of the devil which they have renounced are nothing else as St. Augustin explicates them but the allurements of Pleasure Balls Comedies and Shows Tertul. l. 1. explicat Symboli ad Cathe c. 1. and according to Tertullian the complements and honours which the people of the World render to one another and mutually exact the great offices and great employs the days specially dedicated to pastime and to debauchery the popular divertisements the formed compacts and designs of voyages and walkings abroad the flatteries the follies and generally all the other actions wherein the World makes ostentation of so great passion for gold and silver for ambition for pleasures and for the rest of the false Divinities of the earth Mothers are wont to teach their children in such manner that they may conceive a horrour for the devil who can ordinarily have no power over them but by the means of the Vanities of the World whereof he makes use to blinde them and to surprize them Is it not then more rational that they should instill into them an aversion from all that the World values and instruct them to tremble at the sole Name of dangerous divertisements and at the sight of such persons as are not governed but by ambition and vanity Do you thus dexterously manage all the occasions God shall give you to inspire into them a contempt of the World and of the honours of the Earth which are so passionatly sought after In the disgraces which happen to persons of quality and in the death of great ones make them to reflect on the vanity of all humane greatnesses and on the advantage there is to be linked to nothing but God alone If some one of singular piety and of eminent virtue suffers for having undertaken the defence of the Innocent and for the publick Interest extoll before them the glory of these sufferings and strive to make them relish the happiness there is in exposing ones life goods and quiet rather than to do any thing against God against a good conscience and against ones King and Country Make use thus of all things even in their most tender Infancy to instill into them Christian sentiments In the affliction they testify to you for the loss of their Poppets and play-games and such other petty-toys tell them that it is thus that they ought not to set their affection upon any creature because they are all perishable If they complain to you that they have been beaten or abused answer them well my Children you must for the love of God suffer your selves to be ill-treated And then endeavour to make them render some small service or shew some little civility to the persons by whom they pretend to have been misused or at least to make them comprehend that they must in no sort revenge themselves Do not at that time seek to pacify them as Parents do ordinarily by speaking ill of those who offended them or by threatning them your self or by exciting them to testify feelings of revenge and of displeasure against those things although inanimated and insensible which seemed to have contributed to their fall or to the misfortune which hath hapned unto them 5. Maxims concerning the search Parents should make of the predominant Inclinations of their Children STudie the nature of your Children and their Inclinations and having observed that to which they are most biassed apply your self particularly to conquer it if it is bad by making them practise by little and little the contrary actions and if it is good strive to strengthen it day by day by the exercise of that Virtue which it hath for its object The knowledge you shall get of this Inclination which
to comfort them and to cure them strive nevertheless to make them in love with sufferings accustome them to complain as little as may be and by little and little instill into them constancy and stability Repress in them such inconsiderate desires as are ordinary in that age and teach them for example so to regulate their thirst and their hunger according to the laws of temperance that they may inure themselves by little and little not to have so much as a desire to do what they know they may not do honestly St. Augustin for a mark of the discretion and of the prudence of a mayd-servant extremely aged St. August l. 9. Conf. c. 8. n. 1. to whom the Parents of St. Monica had committed the conduct of their Daughters relates that except the hours in which they repasted themselves very soberly at the table of their Father whatever violent thirst they felt she permitted them not so much as to drink water for fear lest they might contract that bad custome The thing which I entreat you most religiously to observe is my Sister to accompany always the refusal which you are constrained to make with so much sweetness and such testifications of good will that it may be to them supportable and by giving them such reasons as they are capable to rellish and which relate only to their own Interest strive to send them away better satisfied with your refusal then they would have been with your overmuch easiness 9. Maxims touching what is particularly to be avoided in conversation before Children NEver suffer in their presence vices to be covered with the name of virtue St. Chrysost Let it not be said that 't is to be of a good humour to frequent Shews Balls and Comedies That 't is to be liberal to make great expences and that 't is to be couragious to have ambitious designs Permit not the name of vice to be given to virtue to call devotion that which is hipocrisy liberality that which is prodigality the love of retreat a savage disposition the fear to offend God a scrupulosity and a weakness Rowse up their courage without raising in them ambition render them bold without egging them on to rash enterprizes teach them to be meek without effeminacy constant without obstinacy grave without severity eivil and obliging without baseness frank and free without folly and fondness prudent without cousenage secret without dissimulation liberal without prodigality good husbanders without avarice devout and religious without superstition Repeat unto them no less frequently then did the Mother of a great King these words my children God knows how well I love you but I had rather an hundred thousand times see you carried to your graves than to see you commit one only grievous sin Perhaps you may be so happy as to engrave deeply in their soul this sentiment and to conserve them as this Princess did this great person in the Innocence of their Baptism 10. Maxims touching the correction of Children YOu must let pass no faults without punishment but you must not equally punish every fault The blemishes which dust makes upon a garment is cleansed by shaking it off and not by casting water upon it or by applying fire to it You are to employ remedies according to the strength and the nature of the constitution and complexion of the diseased person As nothing but love ought to move you to punish them it were to be wished that they could be perswaded that you acted towards them only by that principle and that you should always appear rather their Mother than their Mistress according to these pithy words of the Authour of that letter to Celancia You ought to be have your self says that excellent man towards all them of your house and rule them in such sort as that they may consider you rather as their Mother than as their Mistress and it must be rather the goodness and the sweetness you testify to them than your rigour and your severity which must oblige them to render you all the respect they owe you Above all beware of treating them amiss when you are in choler and take heed of entring into passion against any one in their presence to the end they may not lose the natural fear they have of angring you and that they may always apprehend the effects of an irritated power whereof they never have had the experience Because a childe stands in awe of you do not reprehend him nor threaten him upon all sorts of occasions but only in such things as are absolutely vicious or which conduce to sin Leave them in great liberty as to things indifferent and which will pass away as they encrease in age and in judgement and remember that there 's nothing more dangerous than to accustome children to chastisement because thereby one hardens them rather then corrects them It were to be wished that children had never heard the mention of blows or of rods that the sole desire to please you or the sole dread to anger you regulated all their motions and that following the Counsel of a great Bishop you could bring them to respect you rather by your sweetness and by your goodness than by a harsh and severe carriage For my part I conceive that the rigour which the sacred Scripture in those many passages which I have before-cited ordains to follow in regard of children is exercised much more perfectly and even according to the spirit of God by the refusal of a kiss or of ordinary cherishings than by whippings or other bad treatments of the body and that the greatest dexterity of Fathers and Mothers consists in rendring their children so jealous of the marks of goodness they give them whereby they become much afflicted at the least coldness appearing in their countenance that they fear nothing more than to be deprived of their presence and that nothing is to them more sensible than to see their Father or their Mother prefer the service even of an underling upon occasions when they were disposed themselves to obey them 11. Maxims touching the differences and disagreements which children ordinarily have with the domesticks and the liberties they take with them TAke good heed that you be not transported with anger when it chances that the servants exclaim against your children Inform your self gently of the subject of their plaints and tears and even when you shall finde out that your servants were in fault never reprehend them in the childrens presence for fear they should thereupon grow insolent and should from thence take an occasion to be absolute in all things and to exercise a petty-tyranny over your domesticks upon the assurance of being supported by you in their self wills But if on the contrary your servants have chanced to say or to do something that is bad in the presence of your children although otherwise they may be excusable yet fail not to testify your being displeased and to reprehend them vigorously before
them birth should continue them in a perfect equality Piety permits us not to fancy that Money gives an advantage to a childe since it is that very thing which ruins piety Why then do you still marvel that so many differences arise among Brethren upon the occasion of a piece of land or of a house since one sole garment excited so much envy among the children of Jacob But what adds this holy Doctour shall we blame this Patriark for preferring one of his sons before all the rest Can we take from Fathers and from Mothers the liberty of loving them more whom they believe deserve better their affection and is it just to take from Children the emulation and the desire of pleasing them more who gave them their birth Finally Jacob loved Joseph more than all his brethren because he foresaw that this childe would be one day more virtuous than the others and because he discovered already in him more visible and more illustrious marks of goodness These last words of St. Ambrose contain very important instructions for Fathers and Mothers For although they are obliged to have an equal charity for all their children it is notwithstanding a very hard matter not to resent sometimes in themselves more tenderness for one than for another and there are even some occasions wherein they are obliged to make it more appear All the difficulty then consists in knowing how to regulate and to distribute the testimonies which they give them according to the rules of Christian charity and according to the lights of Faith It consists in not preferring them who are of a more flattering and facetious humour but also more free and inclinable to evil before them who make shew of more coldness but withall of more reservedness and more modestie not to cherish them more whom we design for the world then them whom we will consecrate to Religion to avoid the disorder which a holy man of France hath reprehended with so much zeal in a Letter he addresses to all the Church where he reproaches Fathers and Mothers of high injustice for making greater advantages of such of their children as followed the world than of them who made profession of a holy and religious life What is more just and more reasonable says he than that he will of parents should agree with that of Christ Jesus that they should prefer in the distribution of their goods and of their charges them whom God hath preferred by the choice he hath made of them to link them to his service Happy he who loves his children by the motive of divine love who regulates the charity he bears them by that which he owes to Christ Jesus who in the bonds of nature which tye him to his children looks upon God as their Father who making sacrifices to God of that which his love obliges him to give to his children draws for himself an eternal gain and happiness and who lending to God as we may say that which he distributes to his children procures for himself an everlasting recompence by procuring for them temporal commodities But now adds he Fathers and Mothers follow Maxims far different from these and much deviating from the piety which here appears They never leave less of their goods than to such of their children to whom they should leave the greater share in regard of him to whose service they are engaged and they of their family whom they least esteem are they whom the spirit of Religion should render most considerable Finally if they offer to God some one of their children they prefer their other Brethren before them They judge them unworthy to succeed them in their worldly means who are found worthy to be dedicated to the Altar And one may say that their children did not become contemptible unto them but because they began to be precious before God This disorder is but too common in the age we now live in in which Parents content not themselves to design to the Church or to Religion such of their children who are meanliest qualified but they moreover even neglect their education and use all means imaginable to deprive them of their succession They strive by all manner of ways to have some Benefice fall into their hands and when they have once obtained it they substitute the goods of the Church and the patrimony of Christ Jesus instead of that which was due to them by their birth They make them renounce all the just pretensions they have by the natural and civil Laws because they render them depositaries of such goods as were designed by the piety of the faithful for the subsistance of the poor and they bereave them of what lawfully belonged unto them upon pretext of having procured for them that which they cannot according to the Canons and Rules of the Church apply even to their own uses because it is not obtained by the ways prescribed by the said Canons and the same Rules of the Church As if says Salvian Parents should not rather tye themselves to leave goods to such of their children as they know are capable to make the best use of them and as if they ought not to prefer them who employ their means only in works of a charity before them who will assuredly dissipate them in their vain and superfluous expences There is another disorder crept in among the faithful and which no less destroys the equality which Parents owe to their children which is to think of setling them only who either by the rank of their birth or for some particular qualities best please them They fear lest by parting their goods equally among all their children they cannot raise up as they would the splendour and the glory of their Family The Eldest could not possess nor sustain the Offices and the employs which they strive to procure for him if his Brothers and his Sisters should have the same advantages which he hath they must therefore be put into such an estate as not to be able to dispute this right with him They must be thrust into Cloysters whether they will or not and they must be timely sacrificed to the interests of him whom they designe for the world and for vanity You cannot my Sister take too much care to avoid all these disorders which are contrary to the charity and to the Justice you owe to your children Endeavour therefore to keep among them a perfect equality But if you have some mark of tenderness and of preference to give to any one of them let it be to the most obedient and to them who tend with most ardour to goodness and to virtue to the end that that may excite an emulation in the others and that they encreasing all equally in the fear of God and in the pursuit of virtue may deserve all the like testimonies of goodness and of affection 15. Maxims touching the lodging of Children TAke care not only for your Sons but also for your Daughters that as much
she exclaims I am sometimes seized with an astonishment when I consider the evils which come from bad companies nor could I believe it had not I my self proved it by a sad experience 'T is principally during the time of youth that this evil is most dangerous and this makes me wish that Fathers and Mothers would make their profit by the example of my faults to hinder by their care the like accidents For t is but too true that the familiarity I had with that person did so change me as that it left in my soul no sign of the good nature nor of the virtues which were there before and it seems to me that she and one other who lived in the same way of folly imprinted in my heart their wicked inclinations You see my Sister by the example and by the Words of this holy woman how reserved you ought to be in giving access to persons into your childrens familiarity although their alliance and nearness of blood permits you not to exclude them from your house and how you must never suffer that under this pretext of parentage your children should contract a strict friendship with children who are not brought up in the fear of God which you strive to inspire into yours Above all take care that your Daughters go not forth of the house without you and it were to be wished that they went not abroad but only for things absolutely necessary The sole example of Dina Genes 34. who for having once only gone forth of her Fathers house to take a view of the Daughters of the Town of Sichem was forced away to the excessive grief of her Father Jacob and of all her Brethren may suffice to make you apprehend the gadding abroad of your Daughters and to oppose your self against any design they may have of contracting acquaintance with strangers that is with such as have their spirits filled with vanity and who have not been educated as yours according to the spirit of Christianism 19. Maxims touching the care which is to be taken to induce children to do what they ought to their Fathers TAke great care in particular that your children shew much respect to their Father that they love him that they honour him and that they fear him Never pardon their least disobedience to his orders Suffer them not to speak otherwise to him then with submission and respect He who obeys his Father gives much joy and comfort to his Mother says the Scripture Eccle. 3.7 St. Paul says That women must be submitted to their Husbands in all things Ephes And they ought to be so says St. Chrysostom because when they are in good intelligence their children are well educated their Domesticks are well instructed their Freinds and Neighbours are marvellously edified In fine the quality of head which is proper to the Husband and which he bears in regard of his wife makes it sufficiently appear that 't is for him to watch over his actions to govern by his prudence the whole family and to give out his orders for the conduct of all the members which compose it And this is it which the illustrious Authour of the letter to Celancia endeavoured particularly to insinuate unto her It must be in the first place says this great man Letter to Celancia that the authority remains entirely in your husband and that all your family may learn by your example what honour and respect they owe him you must therefore by your obedience make it known that he is the Master your humility must raise him and your submissions must make him to be respected by all the rest because your self will be so much more honoured by how much you render to him more honour For the man according to the Apostle is the head of the woman and the body can never appear well adorned unless its head be well dressed which moves him to say elsewhere speaking to women that they must be submitted to their husbands for the love of our Lord as they are obliged to be and the Apostle St. Peter 1 Pet. c. 3. Wives be ye submitted to your husbands to the end that if there are any who believe not the preaching of the Word they may be gained without the Word by the good life of their wives considering the purity in which you live and the respectful fear you have for them If then the law of Marriage obliges wives to render honour to their husbands even when they are Infidels it surely obliges them yet more strictly when they are Christians If this is true my Sister as to the least duties of the civil life it is much more as to what concerns the children And by consequence you ought in this point as in all things to act as much as possibly you can jointly with your husband Bless our Lord for having given you a person who will never oblige you to follow the irregularities which are crept into the World but who on the contrary will take care according to the counsel of St. Jerome that the very cloathes of his children may make them know him to whose service they were engaged by the vows of Baptism But if as says the same Author a Lady of very high birth was reprehended with much severity by an Angel St. Jerome Ep. ad Letam for having presumed that she might not displease her Husband to frizzel the hair of her little Niece and to trick her up a la mode if for having caused her to wear Pearls and Diamonds according to her condition but not according to the spirit of Christianism God took away from her by death both her husband and her children and made appear by so suddain and so extraordinary a chastisement how great an aversion he hath against them says this great Doctour who violate his Temples by profane ornaments and that his Divine Majesty so much detests and abhors them have you not cause to tremble and dread the just judgements of God if you bring up your children according to the fashion of the world against the will of him whose sentiments you have espoused by espousing his person and if you surprize his Religion his Freindship to oblige him to condescend to the sentiments of vanity which you desire to follow CHAP. X. Important Advices for the Christian Education of Children 1. Advice Concerning the Excesses and the Ornaments of the World THe love of worldly Ornaments and braveries is in it self a great evil says St. John Chrysostom S. Chrys. Hom. 10. in Epist ad Colos. c. 4. even although it should cause no other disorder than the adhesion to those vanities and although they might be used without scandal and without hurting the conscience 'T is for this reason my Sister that Tertullian S. Cyprian S. Jerome and all the other Fathers of the Church could not hinder themselves from sighing from complaining and from uttering the zeal wherewith they were animated when they beheld how Christian women were loaden
being interiourly attracted to recollection and to a contempt of worldly vanities engage themselves nevertheless in dangerous conversations and assemblies upon pretext of their having children that it is fit they should divertise themselves and that they must yield something say they to an age which is totally addicted to pleasure As if these very considerations ought not to oblige them to break off the intelligence they might have with the world and as if the fear of engaging their children in dangerous companies out of which they shall not perchance escape with so much happiness as themselves have done were not sufficient to make them shun these encounters and to move them to choose a life which is more Christian more modest and more retired than the former This I say my Sister because there are many Fathers and Mothers who fancy they can justify themselves one day before God for having quitted their solitude to lead their children to a Ball for having stifled the feelings they had of a simplicity in their garments to satisfy the vanity and the ambition of their children for not having openly embraced all the other Maxims and all the other counsels of the Gospel for fear of engaging their children to follow them and for causing them to enter into a disgust of the Maxims and vanities of the World As if this unfaithfulness to the motions of a grace which was perchance given them for the sanctification of their children ought not to make them apprehend the just judgments of God and that they were not to answer to him for all the bad thoughts for all the evil desires and for all the libertine actions done by their children in these assemblies and which indeed they perceived not but which the eyes of God observed and which his justice will impute one day to the compliance of them who engaged them in these dangerous occasions Take good heed also of imitating those Mothers who upon pretext of sparing or because they are tired with the vanities and with the follies of the world uncloath themselves to cloath their children and who by a kinde of hypocrisie the most dangerous that can be imagined not daring to follow the fashions which the world it felf permits only to youth will at least satisfy their vanity by making their daughters follow those modes and who being themselves no longer fit for pleasures and divertisements render as says St. Jerome those innocent Souls the most ordinary sacrifices of pleasure I will not insist here to represent to you the obligation you have never to suffer your Daughters to paint and patch themselves to ruddy their lips and to blacken their eye brows to whiten their cheeks and to seek out such other ridiculous vanities which the spirit of the world hath invented upon pretext of repairing the defects of nature but in effect to satisfy the passion which they of their Sex have to please That which I have now spoken of the excesses and magnificent cloathes suffices to make you comprehend how far you ought to estrange them from those follies since there is less evil according to the Fathers in these proud Garments than in tricking up the face with strange colours St. Ambrose among the Latin Fathers in the books he made for the Instruction of Virgins highly condemns in Christian Women curl'd hayr Necklaces of Pearls Pendants at the Ears and other such like ornaments But there 's nothing which he beats down with more zeal and with greater eloquence S. Ambros. l. 1. de Virgin than the care which the women of his time took to paint themselves upon the pretext of pleasing their husbands He pleasantly rails at them for thus betraying themselves by seeking in this manner strange beauties and he reproaches them in that by applying themselves with so much studie to change the lineaments of their face they condemn themselves and render their natural defects much more remarkable St. Chrysostom among the Greek Fathers teaching husbands who have wives which are altogether worldlings S Christost ser 10. in Matth. who love excessive riots and are plunged in delights after what manner they are to labour to withdraw them from these irregularities counsels them not to begin by bereaving them of their magnificent dressings but by taking away the solicitude they have of painting their faces And this holy Doctour produces nothing upon this subject which a Mother ought not to make use of if she perceives any of her Daughters to have the least inclination to these sort of vanities For then it is that she should represent unto her that there is no wise man who condemns not them that disguise thus the visage by pouders and by borrowed colours to force in some sort nature and to give to themselves what they have not and who having been bred in the Faith and in the knowledge of the true God and having Christ Jesus for their head they ought not to seek an artificial beauty by these disguises which the Devil hath invented Consider says in the sequel the said Doctour addressing his speech to all Christian Women that Christ Jesus is your Bridegroom that 't is for him you ought to adorn your selves and then you will avoid with horrour these shameful embellishments For Christ Jesus loves not these false and counterfeit dresses His will is that his spouses should be fair but with a true beauty 'T is that beauty which the Prophet advises you to keep with care when he tells you and the King will love your beauty Let us then no longer seek those studied beauties which are as ugly as they are vain The works of God are compleat He hath put there all that there should be and he hath no need of you to reform them After an excellent Painter hath finished the Kings Picture no one dares presume to adde strange colours and such a boldness would not pass unpunished You have then a respect for the work of a man and dare you alter and corrupt the work of God you do not remember that there is a Hell you tremble not at the consideration of those flames you forget your very soul and you treat her unworthily without taking any care of her because you give all your thoughts and all your affections to your Body But I mistake when I talk to you of your soul since you give to your body no better treatment and that there comes to it the contrary of what you pretend you will appear fair by this Paint and it serves only to make you deformed you will please your husband and nothing more displeases him and not only him but all the world You will pass for young and you become thereby sooner old Finally you will have your beauty admired and every one flouts you you cannot without some shame look either upon your friends and such as are your equals nor upon your own chambermayd and your very looking-glass makes you blush But I will not stay upon these Reasons
There are others yet more strong and much more considerable For you sin against God you lose your shamefac'dness which is the glory of your Sex you enkindle criminal flames in the hearts of men and you render your selves like to those infamous sacrifices of publick unchastity Consider then with attention all these advices I have given you Despise for the future these Diabolical ornaments Renounce these false embellishments or rather these true deformities to embusy your self no longer but only upon that interiour and invisible beauty of the Soul which the Angels desire which God loves and which will be precious and venerable to them to whom you are united by a sacred tye You have my Sister in these words of this great Saint all that is necessary to strengthen your Daughters against the evil inclination which they of your Sex have to make themselves fair and to please You have there all that is necessary to inspire into them the horrour of these painted and counterfeit beauties which they so much affect Finally you there finde the motives which oblige your self to educate them in the modesty and in the reservedness which the Christianism you profess requires 2. Advice Concerning Worldly Songs TAke a very particular care to hinder your children from learning profane songs I cannot my Sister too much recommeud this advice unto you nor express as I ought the evils which these accursed songs produce which nevertheless are the main divertisement and the chief joy of them who follow the Maxims of the World God hath given us eyes St. Chrys ser 2. in Matth. 1. a mouth and ears to the end says St. Chrysostom that we should consecrate them to his service that we should not talk but of him that we should not act but for him that we should sing only his prayses that we should render to him continual thanksgivings and that by these holy exercises we should purify the bottom of our hearts But instead of making this use of them we profane them by words and actions altogether vain and superfluous and would to God they were only superfluous and not wicked and dangerous Who is he among all you who listen unto me adds this Father that can say by heart either one Psalm or any other part of the Scripture if I should demand it of him there would not one be found and which is more to be deplored in this indifference for sacred things you have at the same time an ardour which out-passes that of fire it self for such detestable things as are only worthy of the devils For if any one should entreat you on the contrary to recite some one of these infamous songs and of these shameful and Diabolical Odes there would many be found who have learned them with care and who would relate them with pleasure Think not my Sister that these words are too strong to be applied to such songs as are common in the world and which are taught children when they begin to speak Those songs which pass for the most honest include oftentimes the most subtil poyson And if you examine all them you have ever heard you will observe that there are few which wound not either truth or charity whether it be in giving false prayses to things and persons which deserve them not or whether it be in rending the honour and the reputation of the Neighbour you will mark that there are scarcely any which are not full of bitter backbitings and slanders and which are not bloudy Satyrs sparing neither the sacred persons of Soveraigns nor of Magistrates nor of the most innocent and pious people you will perceive that there are hardly any which serve not either to express irregular passions or to entertain them that there are few or none which flatter not the said passions which represent them not with a colour to disguise their horrour and to make injustice and infamy to be loved and cherished which are not employed to render criminal flames illustrious which are not stuffed with dishonest equivocations and which bring not into the imagination such filthy and shameful Idea's and images that it is impossible they should not totally wound purity Yet notwithstanding how many Fathers and Mothers are there who suffer without any scruple their children to fill their spirits and their memories with these songs which they sing with pleasure in their presence and by their free and frequent repetitions of them accustome themselves insensibly to lose their shamefacedness though they would blush to hear them in a more advanced age if they had not timely inured them to this corrupted language Lactantius in the abridgment he made of his Institutions says That one of the dismal effects of these songs is to leave in the heart a very great disposition to crimes and to liberty insomuch as they who love them and who make them their divertisement suffer themselves to be easily engaged in all manner of disorder and impiety He adds that they instill a disgust of all holy things and above all of the sacred Scriptures because corrupted nature finding nothing there which flatters her becomes distasted and unjustly prefers those wretched verses and songs which foment and entertain its passions before the solid Truths which those holy Books discover unto it and which condemn its irregularities What care then ought not Fathers and Mothers to take to preserve their children from this plague which infects almost the whole world what crime do they not commit not only when they please themselves to hear them sung by their children but even themselves teach them to sing them St. Cyprian speaking of Parents who caused their Children to eat meats offered to Idols makes the children utter these astonishing words Our own Fathers have been our Murderers And St. Augustin explicating this passage says that although these children having no share in this criminal action by their own will did not really dye in their soul yet their Fathers ceased not to be their Murderers because forasmuch as depended on them they caused their souls to dye spiritually How much more culpable are Parents who teach their children songs of detraction or of obscenity then these whom St. Cyprian blames For surely the meats offered to Idols are the creatures of God but these Songs are the productions of the devil who composes them by his ministers Those meats did not really corrupt either the soul or the body of the Children they only passed through them like other victuals without leaving in them any malignant impression whereas these sacrilegious songs corrupt the spirit of such as sing them and sticking close to their memory prove a temptation to them as long as they live Finally as Lactantius excellently observes Lactant. l. 6. Instit c. 21. whatever sweetness there is in the harmonious sounds which flatter the ears one may easily contemn them because they leave no impression in the heart and because they adhere not if we may say so to the substance
of the soul But verses which are animated with the modulation charm the soul with their sweetness they get possession of the spirit of the hearer and push him on with violence whither they please they perswade him to all that which they make him fancy is agreeable and they almost surprize him and entirely master his will whilst they flatter his senses You ought not then concludes this Authour conceive any thing to be sweet to your ears but that which nourishes your soul and renders it better and you should particularly apply your self to avert that Organ from vice which is given us by God to hear his truth and to receive his doctrine If you take delight in singing and in Poetry please your selves in warbling forth the prayses of God There is no true pleasure but that which is evermore accompanied with virtue Behold my Sister what you are timely to instill into your Children never suffer any thing to be done or spoken in their presence which is in the least wise unbeseeming the modesty the prudence and the charity which is due to your Neighbour whereof you make profession in quality of Christian S. Chrystost hom de ann Permit them not to hear effeminate and lascivious songs for fear lest they may prove to be an unhappy charm to mollify their soul and to make them lose all their vigour Endure not that the mouths which are to be one day sanctified by the celestial food of the Body of Christ Jesus be profaned by infamous songs and that the tongues which are to be dipped in the blood of our Saviour be employed in a language which is altogether corrupted Have evermore present to your spirit those excellent words of St. Paul Ephes 5.3 4 17 19. which includes the Rules of the conversation of the Faithful Let not fornication or any other impurity whatsoever be so much as once named among you Neither filthiness nor foolish talk nor jesting all which things are disagreeable to your vocation but rather words of thanksgiving to God Be not indiscreet but know how to discern what is the will of our Lord entertaining your selves with Psalms with Hymns and with spiritual Canticles singing and making melody from the bottom of your hearts to the glory of our Lord. Let all dishonest Words be banished from your mouth Let the word of Christ Jesus dwell in you with fulness and replenish you with Wisdom Instruct and admonish one another with Psalms with Hymns and with Spiritual Canticles Thus you see by these words of the Apostle that Christians are not permitted to speak the least word not only which is dishonest but even which is not serious or which hath in it any thing of jesting so far is he from suffering them to make such things all their joy and divertisement and that if they sing S. Augustin l. 10. confes c. 33. it must be Psalms Hymns and spiritual Canticles that so by the pleasure which touches the ears the spirit yet weak may raise up it self to feelings of piety and that being more ardently moved to devotion by the tunes animated with Divine words it may receive with more respect and sweetness the verities there included and employ it self therein more profitably Parents who will not endeavour to follow these Apostolical Rules in the education of their Children and who have not absolutely forbidden them these corrupted songs will be found by so much the more culpable before God by how much it is more easy for them in this age to hinder them from it since there are many persons of piety who have successfully laboured in putting into Verse the Psalms the Hymns and the Canticles of the Church that there are many who have composed spiritual songs which are very sweet pleasing and that they have set these Psalms these Hymns and these spiritual songs to very harmonious tunes and airs which by recreating the spirit raise it to God and nourish piety in the soul 3. Advice Concerning Romances 'T Is not yet enough my Sister to watch over the tender years of your children to hinder them from learning accursed sonnets you must furthermore when they are more advanced in age and capable to apply themselves to reading keep carefully from them the Romances and other Books of that nature which only serve to instill the spirit of the world into their mindes and to ruine in them the spirit of Christ Jesus I cannot better make you comprehend the importance of this Advice then by relating to you the words of St. Teresa St. Teresa c. 2. of her life wherein you will see how dangerous it is for Mothers to indulge their children in this point and for themselves to take pleasure in these kinde of Lectures which charming the spirit by agreeable dotages corrupt the heart with real irregularities It seems to me says she that what I am going about to relate was to me very prejudiciall I consider sometimes the great evil done by Parents to their children in not endeavouring with all their authority to place continually before their eyes the objects of virtue For although my Mother was as virtuous as I now have declared her yet when I had attained the use of reason I remember very little and almost nothing at all of her good qualities whereas the bad ones which I observed in her did strangely hurt and dammage me She was delighted with the reading of Romances but this divertisement was not to her so dangerous as it was to me because she lost no more time than what she employed in reading them and that perhaps she did it only to untire her self from the wearisome cares of her family and to hinder her children from worse employments but as for me although my Father was so much against it that we were forced to take care he might not perceive it I ceased not to keep on my ordinary custom of reading these Books and how small soever this fault was in my Mother it failed not to cool my good desires and was the cause of my falling insensibly into other defects It seemed to me that it was not evil to lose many hours of the day and of the night in so vain an occupation although I hid my self from my Father and I was so enchanted with the extreame pleasure I took in it that methought I could not be content if I had not some new Romance in my hands I began to imitate the Mode to take delight in being well dressed to take great care of my hands to make use of the most excellent perfumes in a word to affect all the vain trimmings which my condition permitted and which my curiosity invented in a very great number Indeed my intention was not bad for I would not in the immoderate passion which I had to be decent give any occasion to any person of the world to offend God but I now acknowledge how far these things which during several years space appeared to me innocent are
demolishing of that which himself had caused to be erected in Rome made therein an Altar which he dedicated to Venus and called the said building not the Theatre but the Temple of Venus So that says Tertullian by giving this specious title to that work which deserved to be condemned he eluded by that superstition all the regulations which the Censours could make to cause it to be thrown down But supposing that there is nothing in Comedies which can wound the Innocence of young people nor excite in them any dangerous passions supposing that of Thirty Plays there represented there is not one which openly hurts purity and innocence supposing that there is nothing in the dressings in the nakednesses and in the gestures of the Comedians which offends modesty and which corresponds not to the purity and to the piety of the Virgins whom they represent supposing that the persons who assist thereat cannot instill into young people the spirit of the world and of the vanity which shews it self in their manner of trimming in there behaviour and in all their actions supposing all that which passes in those wretched representations induce to no evil that the words the dress the gate the voice the songs the looks the motions of the body the sound of instruments the very subjects and plots of the Comedies finally that all were not full of poyson and should breathe no impurity yet you ought to hinder your Children from frequenting them because St. Chrysost ho. 6 in Matt. says St. Chrysostom it is not for us to pass the time in laughters in merriments and in delights 'T is not proper for the spirit of them who are called to a heavenly life whose names are already written in that celestial City and who make profession of a warfare altogether spiritual but 't is for the spirit of them who fight under the ensigns of the devil Yes my Brethren adds this Saint it is the Devil who hath made an art of these divertisements and of these Plays to draw to himself the Soldiers of Christ Jesus and to slacken all the vigour and as it were the sinews of their Virtue 'T is for this end that he hath caused Theatres to be set up in publick places and that exercising and forming those Bouffons and Jeasters he makes use of them as of a Pestilence wherewith he infects the whole City St. Paul hath forbidden us impertinent words and such as aym only at a vain divertisement but the devil perswades us to love the one and the other That which is yet more dangerous is the subject for which they transport themselves into these immoderate laughters For as soon as the ridiculous Bouffons have produced some blasphemy or some dishonest word one may see the greatest fools ravished with joy and transported into lowd Laughters They applaud them for what they should stone them and they draw thus upon themselves by this detestable pleasure the punishment of an eternal fire For by praysing them for such follies they perswade them to do them and they render themselves yet more then them worthy of the condemnation which they have deserved If all the world would agree not to behold their fopperies they would quickly leave them off but when they see you daily to abandon your employs your labours and what money you can scrape up in a word to renounce all to assist at these shews they redouble their eagerness and apply themselves much more to these fooleries You see my Sister that St. Chrysostom as well as Tertullian doth not only condemn Comedies because of their dissolution and impurity but moreover because it is not permitted to Christians to pass the time in Laughters and divertisements and in such delights as are inseparable from these spectacles that they condemn them because one cannot chuse but give an approbation and an applause to things for which the faithfull should conceive an extreme horrour and because as the same Saint adds they who assist at these shews entertain the licentious life of those who represent them animate them by their admirations by their applauses and by their prayses thus labouring by all means to beautify and exalt this work of the Devil This without doubt moved Salvian to say Salvian l. 6. de guber Dei That it is as a kinde of apostasy from the Faith and a mortal prevarication from the Sacraments thereof to go to a Comedie For what is says he the first profession which Christians make in Baptism Is it not to renounce the devil his Pomps and his shews and all his works The spectacles then and the pomps are according to our own confession the works of the devil And how O Christian canst thou go to Pageants since thy Baptism thou who confessest that they are the work of the devil Thou hast once renounced the devil and his spectacles and by consequence 't is necessary that when thou voluntarily returnest to spectacles thou must confess that thou returnest under the obedience of the devil And it is so true that one cannot go to Comedies without engaging ones self voluntarily under the tyranny of the devil Tertul. c. 16. de Spectaculis that Tertullian relates how a Christian Woman having gone to the Theatre and to a Comedie came back possessed with the devil and the Exorcists demanding of him how he durst assault a Christian he answered that he had done it without any fear because he had found her in a place which appertained to him You must therefore Sister instil into your Children a horrour of Comedies because it is a dangerous divertisement and unworthy of a Christian Yes you must because it is very hard for them to avoid there at the same time the sullying of their eyes their ears and their souls You must because Pageants and spectacles are of the number of the Pomps of the world and of the works of the devil which they have solemnly renounced by their Baptism You must because although there is nothing but feigned stuff in those representations yet one ceases not as St. S. Aug. l. 1. Con. c. 2. Augustin observes to take part in the joy of those Lovers of the Stage when by their cunning they compass their unchast desires and to make themselves criminals by suffering themselves to be touched with a fond compassion for him who afflicts himself at the loss of a pernicious pleasure and of a miserable felicity Finally you must because one takes no pleasure as the same Saint marks in seeing Comedies unless one is moved with those Poetical adventures which are there represented and wherewith nevertheless one is by so much more moved by how much one is less cured of his passions So that by how much your Children shall testify more ardour for Comedies by so much the less you are to permit them to go to them because this their eagerness is an evident signe of the inclination they have to excess to pomp and to sensuality to wantonness to idleness
who engage their Children in the World by procuring for them some establishment by the means of Marriage yet he prefers the conduct of those who marry them not and who make a firm resolution in their hearts to move their Children to renounce the world and those sorts of settlements and to embrace Virginity This great Apostle considered Ib. v. 25. That although he had received no command from our Lord which obliged to Virginity yet it was advantagious to man because of the wretched necessities of this present life not to marry v. 26. He considered v. 29. That what time remains is short and therefore that even they who have wives should be as if they had none they who weep as if they wept not v. 30. they who rejoice as if they did not rejoyce they who buy as possessing nothing and they who use the world as not using it v. 31. He considered v. 32. That he who is not married employs his care upon the concerns of our Lord and of what he ought to do to please him v. 33. whereas he who is married employs his care upon the things of the world and what he is to do to please his wife and so he findes himself thus parted and divided In like manner that a Woman who is unmarried and a Virgin hath her spirit employed upon things of our Lord v. 34. to the end she may be holy in body and in spirit whereas she who is married hath her spirit employed with solicitude upon the things of the world and casts about what she is to do to please her Husband All these Considerations made St. Paul desire Ib. v. 7. That all men were in the state in which himself was and that they were disengaged from cares and disquiets v. 32. having no design as he declares to enthrall them by his words nor to put upon them any necessity but only to induce them to that which is most pure and which affords them a more easy means to tye themselves to God without any distraction v. 35. And it is in this spirit that he prayses the conduct of Fathers and of Mothers who take a firm resolution in their heart to conserve their Children Virgins and not to engage them in Marriage forasmuch as by this means they induce them to that which is most pure and to that which gives them an easier means to adhere to God without distraction 'T is this to which parents are particularly obliged according to the judicious observation of Gaudentius Bishop of Bresse For this great man after he had declared in one of his Sermons that parents cannot force the will of their children in what regards the choice of Marriage or the state of continence adds this prudent reflexion I will not says he that Fathers and Mothers or the other kindred of Virgins whether Boys or Girls should flatter themselves with that which I say that they ought to leave their children in the liberty of this choice and that they cannot domineer over their spirits upon this account For 't is true that they cannot command them a perpetual continence because that 's a thing which ought to be altogether voluntary but they may whilst they are yet young educate elevate and nourish their will in the love of that which is most perfect they ought to induce them by their advertisements and their exhortations to such a love to enkindle it in them to entertain it in them and to shew much more eagerness to engage them in the service of God than in following the world and offering some of their Sons to serve in the Clergy in the Ministery of the Altars and some of their Daughters in the Monasteries of Religious Women to the end they may there consecrate themselves to Chastity 'T is thus that by adorning the Church with the fruits of a holy Education they may attain to the happiness which is promised in the sacred Scripture to him who hath of his posterity in Sion and of his family in Jerusalem Would to God Sister that parents had these sentiments graved so deeply in their heart that one might re-establish them at this day in the possession wherein they were in the ancient Testament and in the first ages of the Church to offer up their children to God and to consecrate them entirely to his service even in their most tender years This power of Fathers and Mothers over their children shone gloriously in the Church at that time in particular when the Monasteries of Saint Benedict flourished most in sanctity Monasteries of S. Benedict For parents placed their children in these holy Schools and in these happy Retraits to learn there the science of Christianism and to be there safely sheltered from the malice and from the corruption of the world and they did it with such a fulness of their will that they seemed to devest themselves in placing them there of all the feelings of flesh and blood and to renounce entirely all the right they could pretend to them From whence it was that they had a custom as it is expressed in the Rule of St. Benedict to enwrap the hands of the childe in the cloath of the Altar as it were to signify that this innocent youth took God who is represented by the Altar for his inheritance And because Riches are one of the strongest temptations of the world and one of the most powerful means the world makes use of to make it self beloved the Children were made poor and were destript of wealth for ever The Fathers could no longer make them partakers of their goods but by giving Alms to the whole Monastery and moreover to the end they might remain happily engaged to the service of Christ Jesus without hope of returning they promised with an Oath that they would never re-place them in possession of the goods they had now quitted by abandoning the world This practise was yet in use in the Eleventh Age where we finde that the childe who was thus offered wore a Crown as if he had been already a Religious man for a mark of the Victory he was going to obtain over the World and as another Isaac he carried in his hands not Wood and Fire but Bread and Wine to signify that he was himself a thing consecrated to God and a living and spiritual Sacrifice As in Baptism Parents promise for their children that they renounce the Devil and his Pomps so here the Fathers promised before witnesses that their children should remain in the regular observance of the Monastery they protested that it was no longer in their power after this Oblation to cast off the Yoak of the Rule to which they were now subjected and they made use of that form which is somewhat near the same which is still used by the Religious of St. Benedicts Order in their Profession I promise before God and his Saints for this my Son a perpetual stability in this Monastery the conversion of his manners and an
they design for the World For it is certain that Virtue hath this advantage to make it self esteemed by its own enemies and that if it hath not sufficient allurements and charms strong enough to gain all mens hearts yet it hath power and strength enough to draw their admiration See we not that sweetness and humility in Artists contents more than their adress and their industry If there is a Judge who will not be corrupted is he not desired by all sorts of persons to be the arbitratour of their life and fortune And they who have the least Ambition and the least love for Offices and Commands are they not says St. Chrysostom most welcom in the Courts of Soverain Kings and Princes Do not fear that the modesty of your Daughters in their dress that their reservedness in company that the little entercourse they have with young Gallants will render them less esteemed or less sought for in Marriage Their simplicity their meekness their affection for such things as concern the good government of a Family and their contempt of worldly ornaments will make them better known than strutting and vanity And if men for their diversion seek such as live according to the Maxims of the world they will not have for wives but such as follow the laws of the Gospel such as love retiredness and such as have no inclination to the Modes and Pomps of the World This fidelity to follow the Maxims of the Holy Fathers in the Education of those Children whom we designe for the World is it not advantagious to purchase them the love and esteem of all people but it is even more necessary for the salvation of their souls than for that of those Children whom they designe for Cloysters and for retrait The sole comparison which St. Chrysostom makes use of is sufficient to prove this Even as S Chry. ho. 21. in Ephes. says this Father he who stays always in the Haven stands not in so much need of a Pilot well experienced of so great a number of Mariners and of a Vessel so well equipped as he who is always at Sea and who must provide to resist the windes and the tempests so he who is designed for the solitude being to leade a quiet life and exempt from troubles and turmoils hath no need of such great strength and so many lights as he who is to sustain the most powerful shocks of the Flesh of the World and of the Devil Now if these irreconcilable enemies of mens salvation raise their strongest batteries against Children in their tenderest age they who introduce them into the World without having taught them in that tender age to contemn pleasures Riches and Honours do they not expose them naked and unarmed to the cruelty of the said Enemies We must therefore train them up to the combat from their Infancy discover to them the crafts and cunning of their enemies teach them the means to surprize and to defeat them make them know that it is almost impossible to conserve perfect health amidst the contagion and that living in the world they must always conquer or always be conquered How can they defend themselves from Ambition seeing all others greedy to make themselves great unless they are strongly perswaded of the small solidity which is found in the establishment proposed by the world Can they keep themselves to an indifference amidst the affected complacencies and the allurements of Women who will strive to gain their freindship in order to get possession of their persons and of their means unless they are perfectly convinced of the obligation they have to adhere to God alone and to prefer him before all things Or rather being not solidly setled in Piety and in the fear of God will they not suffer themselves to be carried a way by Example and by custom and losing by the Vicious habits so contracted their eternal salvation will they not make an unhappy experience of the truth of these words of St. Jerome That it is very easy to become like the wicked S. Jerom. ad Letam and to imitate in a short time the Vices of them to whose Virtue one cannot attain CHAP. XIII The means which facilitate the application of these Maxims and these Advices in the Christian Education of Children ALL these means Sister may be reduced to the care which parents ought to take to instruct their children themselves in their own persons But because we cannot receive Instruction but by the means of Speech Reading and actions and that he who plants and he who waters are nothing but that it is God who gives the encrease which he gives not ordinarily but to an humble Prayer it will be easy for you to bring up your children according to the Maxims of the Fathers of the Church if you entertain them with such things as you ought if you make them reade such Books as will profit them if you your self give them examples which they may imitate and if you take care to engage God by their Prayers and by your own to pour out his benediction upon your instructions upon their lectures and upon your Examples The first Means Speech Words or Discourse IT cannot be sufficiently deplored that Parents now adays study so little to render the Conversations which they have with their children and with their Domesticks truly Christian It seems they dare not discover to them the sentiments they have for God They hide themselves from them to say their Prayers and to acquit themselves of their least Christian duties And as if God had not placed them in their houses to give light to such as enter into it and dwell in it they rob them of their lights and contribute by a conduct so dimply shining to form the darkness which is spread over the whole World This unhappy proceeding is the cause that they ordinarily entertain themselves with nothing but trifles and things altogether unprofitable that to furnish matter for conversation they examine the actions of their neighbour they censure them and they discover their secret and unknown crimes that all their talk is but a concatenation of detraction of falshood of vanity and of pleasure and that that which should be as it were the sensible Communion of Saints in Christ Jesus and the image and expression of the communion and society which we have begun with God and with Christ Jesus by Baptism 1 Joan. 13. becomes a source of malice and is in effect nothing but a sequel of that miserable conversation which our first Parents had with the Devil Ephes 2.3 which caused the ruine of all their posterity and which rendred all their children the children of anger and indignation Shall we then wonder that the major part of the Children of Christians live in so great disorders that they are so perfectly knowing in what is necessary to frequent companies and to render themselves pleasing and that they know so little what is necessary to go to Heaven
an account of what they have learned examine them whether they comprehend what they say and because they are not capable of themselves to make good use of it you are to apply to the little occasions of their souls that which hath best pleased them or that which hath the nearest touched them You are to make preservatives against the vices you see them most inclined to and remedies against the imperfections which they most ordinarily fall into You are with words full of tenderness and sweetness to instill into them the love of the Virtues there praysed the horrour of the Vices there condemned and to leave them always in a sacred hunger of this celestial nourishment I mean in the desire to hear the Word of God which you are to excite by little rewards and by an honest liberty you will give them to recreate themselves when they have well remembred what you told them or what they heard from others Prevent the Solemnities to instruct your children in the Mysteries the memory whereof are then celebrated and accommodate your self to their age to make them enter into the Spirit and into the practise of those Virtues which are honoured in the said Mysteries Entertain them frequently with the life and actions of Christ Jesus and repeat often to them what Tradition and the Gospel teach us of those of his holy Mother And because children are strongly inclined to hear the recital of such things as they can least imitate and of events accompanied with fear and horrour relate unto them the conflicts of the Martyrs the temptations of the Anchorets the miracles of the Confessours And as there is almost no day wherein the Church proposes not to her children a meditation upon the life of some Saint let no Evening pass without proposing to them some action of Virtue and without prescribing to them some little practise of piety for the Morrow The Confessarius of the famous S. Lewis who wrote the Life of that great King says That each Evening he caused his Children to come into his Chamber where he always spoke to them some words of edification before he sent them away As for example in the time of the Birth of our blessed Saviour representing to them the cold which little Jesus endured in the Crib may you not excite them to suffer for his sake the incommodity of the season and the cold they feel in the School or in the Church If they complain that they are denied the things they desire Why may you not say to them Well my children consider how many other things you have Alas our Saviour Christ had not a little bed as you have to lye on nor fine linnen nor a good Coat to cloath him He was almost naked in a manger and upon straw and yet all things belonged to him although he would not make use of them but left them for our use and comfort Is it not then very reasonable we should want some small matter for the love of him Go he can and will reward you in Heaven If they finde it painful to follow you to the Church tell them that they are far from doing as our Lord did Luke 2.41 who stole himself away from his Parents to remain in the Temple and who made every year a long journey to go thither with them If they shew some Impatience in their small sufferings say to them Ah my children how far are you from enduring the torments which so many Saints suffered for Christ Jesus How will you endure Martyrdom when you shall be men if you cannot now endure the pricking of a Pin And if you cannot bear a little blow from your Brother or from your Sister when will you be so perfect and patient as to turn your other Cheek to him who hath struck one of them Instill into them a great love and a great esteem of their own littleness and Infancy Repeat frequently unto them that which is advantagious for Infants in the Gospel Tell them how our Lord reprehended his Apostles Matt. 18.19 for hindring such Infants as they are to come unto him that he took one of them and placed him in the middle of his Disciples and that he said several times that one must become like them to enter into Heaven And thus at the same time they grow according to the Body make them conserve in their Soul a great love for the qualities and the dispositions of Infancy Bring them up in a great respect and in a great confidence for their Guardian Angels Let them know principally the life of that Saint whose name they bear and the obligation they have to imitate him or her And as it is said of Christ Jesus Matt. 2. that he grew in the house and under the conduct of his holy Mother in Wisdome in Age and in Grace before God and before Men let your children advance by your care by little and little in the knowledge of the sacred Mysteries and in your colloquies and your instructions let all things serve you as St. Paul says to make them encrease in Christ Jesus Ephes 4.15 Above all teach them to prefer God and his Commandements before all other things Tell them often that they ought to have for him much more tenderness and more respect than they have for your self Imitate that excellent Mother of whom mention is made in the Book of Maccabees who to encourage her children to endure constantly their torments for the defence of the Jewish Religion excited them to look upon God as their Father and to esteem themselves happy in sacrificing their lives for the glory of him of whom they received them and who had prepared lives much more glorious for them in Heaven Imitate the admirable art she made use of to strengthen the youngest of her seven children whom the Tyrant endeavoured to withdraw from the resolution of dying and do you as she did make use of the consideration of such things as you have done for your children thereby to engage them to persevere in Virtue Take compassion my Son says she to him 2 Maccab. 7.17 upon a Mother who hath born you in her bosom who hath nourished you whole years with the Milk of her Breasts and who hath educated you with tenderness even till this time I demand of you my Son by all these considerations that you will lift your heart and your eyes towards Heaven and that in imitation of your Brothers you will receive death with joy that I may have the satisfaction to see you partaker of their glory 'T is thus that you should make use of the power which the gratitude and the love your children have for you gives you over their spirit to engage them to raise up themselves to God and to honour him to whom alone they are indebted for the care you employed in their Education And because there are occasions in this life where the tenderness and the respect which children have for their Parents may prove
a scandal to them and may hinder them from loving and following truth make them to know that there is none but God alone to whom we owe an entire submission and without any condition that there are no persons no estates no dignity no profession in this life which we ought not to love with limitation and that thus they owe you neither Obedience nor Complacency in such things as would be contrary to the Law of God Repeat often and explicate unto them these words of our Lord If any one comes to me and hates not his Father and his Mother and his Wife and his Brothers and his Sisters and moreover even his own life he cannot be my Disciple Luk. 14.20 Whereupon St. S. Hilary upon the words of the 118. Psal Iniquos odio habui Hilary says these admirable words This discourse of Christ Jesus appears harsh and it seems to be a rude and insupportable precept to force and engage one to a kinde of impiety towards Fathers and Mothers as to the highest degree of Christian perfection yet God commands in this nothing that is harsh nothing that is not well beseeming his goodness nothing that is contrary to his other Commandements And Fathers and Mothers cannot be offended that he thus ordains us to hate them although we owe to them in that quality much tenderness and affection since it is also enjoyned us to hate our selves Christ Jesus knew that there are many Fathers and many Mothers who have such an inconsiderate love for their children that when they see them persevere in the glory of Martyrdom they conjure them to yeild to the times they entreat them to change their opinions and they employ to weaken them the motives of a Piety which is altogether irregular Thus the Hatred says this great Saint which Children then conceive against their Fathers and Mothers is honourable and it is just and advantagious to hate them who strive to divert us from the love of Christ Jesus Avoid therefore my Sister the fault which this Saint reprehends in Parents and from which they finde much difficulty to defend themselves unless they have a zeal altogether sincere and disinteressed for their Children Imitate those Parents of the first ages of the Church who never made shew of greater joy than when they saw their children ready to be sacrificed for the defence of Truth and for the cause of Christ Jesus Reade I pray you the Lives of Saints and the History of the Church and you will see a great number of these Examples of Constancy You shall there meet with a holy Mother nam'd Theodora who after she had encouraged her eldest Son to suffer constantly such miseries as they forced him to undergo for the Faith and had exhorted him with much ardour to consider that he should purchase by these soon-passing torments an eternal happiness she her self was thrown into the Fire with this her dear Son and two other of her Children You shall there see a holy Mother who having a son called Meliton among the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste Meliton one of the 40. Mart. who had been exposed stark-naked in a frozen Pond in the greatest rigour of Winter and in a Country where cold was in extremity and who beholding that although they had broken his Legs as they had done them of his companions who expired in that last torment he was nevertheless yet alive contented not her self to exhort him to perseverance but having observed how they hurried away upon Carts the Bodies of the other Martyrs to bring them to a prepared Wood-Pile where they were to be burnt to ashes and that they left her son behinde in hopes to induce him to adore the Idols and to make him renounce Christ Jesus she took him upon her shoulders to carry him her self all alive as he was to his companions But this blessed childe dying in his dear Mothers arms in the way thither she nevertheless marched on with her now dead burden till she came to the burning pile of wood into which she cast the Body of this Blessed Martyr that he might have the glory to be consumed by the fire for the interests of Christ Jesus as were the Bodies of the other Martyrs which had been before thrown into it You shall there see a Dame of qualitie named Dionysia whose example according to the relation of an Affrican Bishop called Victor who writ the History of the Martyrs of the Church of Affrick Victor Affric l. 3. c. 1. persecuted by the Wandales was the cause of the salvation of almost all her Countrey You shall there see that this generous Woman perceiving that her only Son by name Majoricus who was very delicate and very young began to tremble at the apprehension of the torments which she endured darted upon him such piercing looks and employed so forcibly her maternal authority to reprehend him that she rendred him even more valiant than her self insomuch as this young Champion fought Faiths battel with joy and remaining victorious over his torments and over death gathered the Palm of Martyrdom After he had breathed forth his blessed Soul the noble Mother having embraced him as a holy Sacrifice which she had offered to God and to which she ardently wished to be for evermore united carried him home caused him to be buried in her house and poured forth her Prayers almost continually over his Sepulchre How heroick Sister are these Actions and how pure and disinteressed was the charity which produced them What zeal courage and constancy appeared therein And how well did these Mothers know what love they should bestow on their children since they used not the authority they had over them but only to encourage them to confess Christ Jesus and not to be ashamed of the Gospel But because according to the observation of a holy Father the Discourses one makes use of to excite to Virtue S. Chry. ho. 20. super Ephes carry with them I know not what kinde of repulse for them to whom they are addressed and with whatever sweetness one seasons them they still cause a sadness and a dejection in their spirits therefore Sister you may make use of another means than that of Words to instruct them and you may handsomely gain that of them by Lecture which the fear of tiring them caused you to smother in silence and not to inculate unto them by Discourse The Second Means Lecture or Reading CAuse your children to reade the History of the holy Scripture the New Testament the Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles St. Gregory of Nisse Brother of St. Basil the Great in a letter wherein he describes the Life of St. Macrina his Sister speaking of the manner how her Mother educated her says That she took extreme care to have her instructed not adds he as they ordinarily instruct them of that age by explicating unto them the Fables of Poets For she conceived that that was to act against the shamefacedness
and civility of Virgins and the means to empoison those well-born and yet tender souls by shewing to them in Tragedies of Women transported by love and in Comedies such shameful filthinesses as are unfit to be heard by persons of their Sex who are obliged not so much as to think of them But in lieu of these she caused her to learn such passages of the sacred Scripture as were most easy to be understood and most proper for her age Thus she began by the Wisdom of Solomon out of which she selected the sentences which were most convenient to regulate her life and all the motions of her spirit She was also very skilful in the Psalms and divided them into certain hours St. Jerome in the Letter he wrote to a certain holy Widow whereof I have already made frequent mention to teach her in what manner she was to train up her Daughter will have this little girl to apply her self timely to the reading of the holy Scripture to learn in the Proverbs of Solomon the Rules and the Maxims of good life to accustom her self by the Lecture of Ecclesiastes to despise the World and to trample under her feet all its grandures and all its vanities to furnish her self with examples of courage and of patience by reading the Book of Job that afterwards she should reade the Gospels and have them always in her hands that she should reade with fervour the Acts of the Apostles and their Epistles and after she shall have filled her self with the riches she hath heaped up by these precious Lectures let her moreover reade the rest of the Books of sacred Scripture He will also have her reade the works of the holy Fathers take delight therein and seek there the nourishment and the establishment of her Faith St. Chrysostom acknowledges no other source of all the evils which are committed in the World S. Chry. ho. 9. Ep. ad Coloss but the ignorance of the holy Scriptures Listen says this Father all you who are engaged in the World and who have a Family and children to govern S. Chry. ho. 21. in ep ad Eph. c. 5. how St. Paul recommends particularly unto you the reading of the holy Scripture with great diligence Think not that the Lecture of holy Books is unprofitable to your son One of the first things he will there finde will be the obligation he hath to honour you and without doubt God hath so permitted it that you might not say 't is only for solitary and Religious persons to reade it Say not that you have no designe that your Son should be Religious and that therefore he needs not this reading since you ought at least to make him a good Christian and that those children who are designed to live in the World are they to whom the science of the sacred Scripture is principally necessary There is says the same Saint much weakness and a strong inclination to wickedness in children the weakness and this dangerous inclination encreases dayly by the impression they receive from such things as they learn What bad effects then may it not have in a young man to know that those Hero's of antiquity whom they admire were lovers of Wine and good cheer that they were slaves to their passions and that the motives they had in all their enterprises were Pride and Ambition Let them therefore seek for a Counter-poyson in the sacred Scripture and apply them from their tenderest Infancy to this holy reading I well see that I shall seem to dallie adds this Saint because I always say over the same thing yet I will never cease to do what is in me to render your children perfect Christians To this end teach them to sing the Psalms of David S. Chry. ho. 9. in ep ad Colos c. 3. those Spiritual Canticles being full of that Divine Phylosophy which Christ Jesus came to teach men instructing them by recreating them Psal 1. v. 1. and 14. They will learn there in the beginning to fly the company of the wicked and to seek that of the good And as there is scarcely any Mysteries and Verities in Christianism which are not contained in that sacred Poesie they will there see the small solidity that can be found in all creatures the sweetness and the advantage that is found in the practise of Virtues and finally they will there finde the knowledge of their duties towards God and towards their Neighbour 'T is thus that by accustoming them betimes to taste these things you will render them easily capable of higher truths And like as Fruits of Trees retain much of the quality of the earth where they are planted and of the waters which moysten them so the actions which your children shall do during their whole life time and which will be properly the fruits of their souls will always retain something of the sweetness and of the purity of those wholesome waters which they drew in their Infancy from the holy Scriptures I believe Sister that nothing needs to be added to these Words issuing out of so holy and so eloquent a mouth upon an occasion wherein the Holy Ghost communicated to him not only the lights which he bestows on all them who preach the Gospel but wherein according to the common opinion of Divines he assisted him more particularly than he did the other Doctours to give him entrance into the sentiments and feelings which he had inspired into St Paul and which this great Patriark explicated to his people Now if you desire to know more fully the importance of this second means I have proposed to you S. Aug. Conf. l. 1. take the pains to reade in that excellent Translation which is published of the Confessions of St. Augustin four or five of the last Chapters of the first Book You shall see how that great Saint examining there all the actions of his life by the help of the lights of that Grace which he had received in Baptism and which ever after he had strengthned makes it appear that the study of Poets and profane Authours is in regard of children who are engaged therein as a Sea full of Monsters and of rocks where the best provided suffer shipwrack and that the choicest and most eloquent Words of the Courtiers of Augustus are but Golden Vessells full of Poyson which are presented to us by drunken Doctours and by men who have lost their right reason and their good sense You will see how he there brands with Idolatry this manner of instructing children and that addressing himself to God as it were to complain to his Divine goodness of the Tyranny which is exercised upon their spirits by instilling Vice into them by these studies he exclaims and utters these admirable Words What then Lord was there no other means to exercise my spirit and my tongue Without doubt O Lord had I discovered your praises in your sacred Scriptures and had they made me reade them they had
setled my heart and had tyed it to your service whereas it having wandred among the Fables and the unprofitable inventions of the ancient it is become the unhappy and unfortunate Prey of those bloody Birds whereof you speak in your Gospel and I have but too much experienced that there are many manners of sacrificing to the Rebell-Angels And do not think that St Jerome St Chrysostom and St Augustin were the first who reproved this disorder and who recommended to children above all things to learn the holy Scriptures and to make them the subject of their principal Lecture and of their most serious occupations St. 2 Epist to Tim. v. 5. chap. 2. Paul himself prayses the care which Lois the Grandmother of Timothy and his Mother Eunice took to instruct him from his Infancy in the sacred learning and after he had put Timothy in remembrance with great comfort of the sincere Faith of these two holy Women he excites him to remain constant in what he had learned Considering says he Ib. 3.15 that you have been nourished from your Infancy in the knowledge of the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise unto Salvation through Faith which it in Christ Jesus The sacred Scripture attributes to the care which the Parents of Susanna took in educating her in the Law of Moses and in instilling into her the fear of God from her Infancy all the Glory of that Virtue which she made appear in resisting the strongest temptation wherewith a person of her quality could be assaulted chusing rather to expose her self to death and to confusion wherewith she was threatned than to offend God Susanna says the Scripture Dan. 13.2 was very beautiful and one who feared God for her Parents being just had brought her up according to the Law of Moses Josephus attributes the eminent Virtue of the Mother of the Machabees to the excellent Instructions which her Father gave her in her youth Tract de Machabeis who frequently entertained his children with the examples of Virtue which are found in the sacred Scripture And Eusebius observes that the Father of Origin did not only teach him humane learning but also the holy Scripture some passages whereof he caused him every day to learn and recite Yet my Sister notwithstanding all the care you can take to teach your children the obligations of Christianism and to forbid them the songs and the verses which express the beauties of Women and the passion which men have for them although you permit them not to reade Romances and to take no other Books into their hands but the Holy Scripture and the Works of the Fathers of the Church all this Prudence nevertheless will be vain if you instruct them not your self by your own good examples and if what you do sets not incessantly before their eyes those Truths which you have had care to cause them to learn in Books The Third Means Example ACtions S. Chrys ho. 5. super 2. ad Thess c. 2. says St. Chrysostom have altogether another force than Words over the spirits of men to correct them This moved St. Paul to recommend Virtue so earnestly to servants because it hath so much power that it makes it self esteemed in persons of meanest degree and makes them by its means to become very useful in Families And as to what concerns children in particular it is to them so natural to become like their Parents in their manners that our Saviour in the Gospel John 8.39 makes use of no other argument to convince the Jews that they were not the children of Abraham but because they performed not his actions and that on the contrary they were the children of the Devil because like to him they loved murder and lying And St. Chrysostom proposes as an infallible Rule to such as will marry to consider the Life of the Father and of the Mother of the person to whom they desire to joyn themselves thereby to judge certainly of their good or of their bad qualities The foundation of this truth is that children having received from their Parents the beginning and the bud of their own passions if the Fathers and the Mothers suffer themselves to be transported in their childrens presence this bud sprouts up and strengthens it self and the passions take new and more deep roots in their hearts Besides that the respect they are bound to have for their Father and for their Mother permits them not to condemn their actions And as they are not capable to chuse in them what they ought to honour the inclination which Nature hath given them to love them and to esteem them induces them to love and to esteem their very Vices and easily to embrace their most dangerous conceptions and opinions which gave St. S Greg. in Pastorali c. 2. Gregory occasion to say That a fault extends it self prodigiously by the means of example when he who commits it is honoured by reason of the eminence of his rank and of his estate And to St. Augustin that all a childe can do in so weak and tender an age S. Aug. in Psal 136. is to consider his Parents and blindely to perform what he sees them practise Let not your Daughter says St. Jerome to a Lady of quality S. Jerem. in Ep. ad lotam ever see any thing in you or in her Father which may engage her in any fault by imitating you and remember that you must rather conduct and govern her by good Example than by Words The very Pagans have acknowledged that all disorders in the World come from the bad Example which Fathers and Mothers give to their children Would to God says Quintilian Quintil. l. 1. Instit c. 3. that we were not our selves the cause of the corruption which appears in the manners of our children We bring them up in delights from their tenderest Infancy and this soft education which we call indulgence ruines insensibly the forces of their Spirit and of their Body What will not a childe desire in his more advanced age who when he is yet scarcely able to go is wrapped in Purple and knowing not yet how to pronounce a plain word knows scarlet and can gape after the most precious Stuffs They are taught to taste the most exquisite Dainties before they can express their desires They grow up in Coaches and in Litters and if they must put their foot to the ground there are servants on each side to lean upon and to support them We take pleasure to hear them speak unseemly words and oftentimes they are cherished and applauded for uttering such profane and infamous things as one would be ashamed to hear and endure in the most debauched persons Nor do I wonder at it We our selves teach them They hear us speak all these things and they see what liberties their Fathers take with Women and their Mothers with Men Almost all our Feasts resound with unchaste Songs and most shamefull things pass in the