do it because their labour shall receive infinit blessings from God himself But above all they ought to do it because thereby they will cut off as much as in them lies the source of all the evils which are done in the World which is bad Education and they will thereby re-establish the source of all good and of all Virtues which is good Education Finally is it not this good Education which prepares the Spirits to receive the clearest lights and which plants in the Soul the first dispositions to all the Virtues Is not that it which spreads in the hearts the seed of the most heroick actions and which lays the Foundations of all that which must appear best to the eyes of the whole World in the succession of ages It fills the Courts of Princes wih faithful generous and disinteressed Subjects the Parliaments with firm and unbiassed Magistrates and Judges Colledges with Religious Persons and Secular families with prudent and charitable Masters and with respectful and submissive servants In fine it is the good Education which augments the mystical Body of Christ Jesus and which compleats the number of the Elect and of the Blessed There 's nothing but it which can banish all the Vices reigning now in the World because there 's but it alone which can imprint in it dread and horrour 'T is it only which can make the spirit of Poverty flourish again by exciting in the Hearts which it informs a contempt of all creatures 'T is by it alone that the love of sufferings may be re-established among Christians by banishing from the yet-tender Bodies the eases and delicacies of the World and accustoming them timely to suffer 'T is it alone which can conserve Order and retain Inferiours in respect and submission to their temporal and spiritual Superiours in using them to the practice of an exact Obedience 'T is it alone which can revive charity and zeal towards our Neighbour by insinuating into them an esteem and a tenderness to all the World Lastly there 's nothing but it that is capable to change the whole face of Christianisme to produce a happy Reformation in all the Church to preserve Children in their Innocence and in the grace of Baptism and to trace in the Life of Men a lively Image of the all-holy and all-divine Life of Christ Jesus CHAP. VI. With what Dispositions Parents are to labour in the Christian Education of their Children I Cannot better in my judgement express to you my Sister the Dispositions and sentiments in which you are obliged to labour in the Education of your Children than to conjure you to consider them as goods which God deposes in your hands and which belong not at all to you You will finde no difficulty to enter upon these thoughts if you well examine that you have no share of that which is in them most considerable that is to say of their souls that what you communicate to them in regard of the Body is nothing but what you received from your Ancestors and that even to speak justly they hold nothing from you but sin which by an unfortunate necessity derived from the crime of our first parents you could not hinder your self from communicating unto them 'T is for this cause that your first care after you brought them into the World was to send them to the Church to the end that they being there divested of the Old-man wherewith they had been cloathed in your bosom they might take a new Nativity in Christ Jesus in the bosome of the Church and that the criminal Life which you communicated unto them being as it were buried and drowned in the Waters of Baptism they might there receive a new life by becomming the Members of Christ Jesus and be enrolled in the number of the Adoptive Children of the eternal Father to come to be one day in Heaven associates of the Glory of his only Son and the coheyrs of his Kingdom 'T is not therefore enough to have said that you ought to look on them as the goods of God which he deposes in your hands since they are really his Children whom he hath committed to your care that 't is the price of his Blood which he consigns to you and that he offers to you in them many favourable occasions to make appear the zeal and the fidelity you have for his interests What a glory is it my Sister to be admitted to the same Ministery with the Angels to be chosen to be the visible Guardian and Governess of Souls which Christ Jesus hath redeemed with his Blood and which he hath destinated in quality of his Spouses to reign with him eternally You are then to receive your Children at their return from the Church with great sentiments of Humility and Reverence And if in the thought of St. In his Homelie oâ— the manner how Anna educated Samuel Chrysostome the Mother of little Samuel respected that Childe because he was vow'd to the service of the Temple if she considered him as a Golden Vessel designed to a sacred use which is not to be touched but with a holy apprehension of profaning it and if according to the relation of the most ancient of our Historians Euseb l. 6. c 2. the Father of Origen frequently discovered the bosom of his Son when he slept and was yet an Infant to kiss him with much respect and reverence looking on him as the dwelling and tabernacle of the Holy Ghost there inhabiting are you to have less respect for your Children who have in like manner been replenished with the grace of Jesus Christ and consecrated to the worship of God by Baptism Wherefore watch carefully for their conservation Fear to suffer profane hands to touch them cherish them nourish them as the Members of Christ Jesus and perswade your self that your House should be all Holy since it encloses those Children whom he hath sanctified and rendred so dear to his Church to which they belong as being purchased by the blood of her Bridegroom and who puts them not into your hands but because he expects you should have a more tender and a more perfect care of them than strangers The conformity with Christ Jesus which they have received in being re-born in the bosom of the Church is only gross and imperfect and according to the terms of the Apostle St. James they become thereby but only as a beginning of the new creature James 1.18 and therefore it is that she consigns them to your care to the end you may make them the perfect Imitators of Christ Jesus that you may draw in them his Image and that as the Apostle says of himself Gal. 4.19 you may not fear to suffer the pains and pangs of a second bringing forth Children till such time as Christ Jesus is formed in their actions their inclinations their affections and their cogitations The Church hath rendred them by the consecration she hath made of them the living Temples of the Holy
of the Virtues which you perhaps have neglected If Christ Jesus hath lost in you some of his rights and dues let him finde them in them If you cannot have the glory of Virginity have at least the advantage of being Mother to a Virgin If you have not loved your God with all your heart procure that he be loved by all them who depend on you Let the innocence and the Sanctity of your children be opposed to the errours of your life and let their fidelity and their Submission to his Commandements extenuate your Unfaithfulnesse and Disobedience St. Ambrose puts all these sentiments into the mouth of a Christian Mother whom he introduces thus exhorting her Daughters to Virginity You may says this Holy Mother to her children justifie your Father and discharge your Mother before God by making appear in your conduct those graces which we have perchance neglected or whereof we have made bad use The only thing which may hinder us from repenting our selves of our Marriage is to see you draw some profit from the labours we have endured and I shall esteem my self almost as happy to be a Mother of Virgins as if I my self had preserved Virginity Consider my Daughters who she was whom the Son of God coming into the World to redeem it chose for his Mother She was a Virgin Thus it is my Daughters that I wish the purity of your life may repair the defects of mine And in the first Book which this Holy Doctor made for the Instruction of Virgins addressing his speech to Fathers and Mothers You have understood says he to them what are the Virtues which you ought to teach your Daughters to practise and what Rules you are to follow in their Education A Virgin is a gift the most pleasing one we can offer to God and the richest Present which Parents can make to his Divine Majesty 't is a sacred Hostie the Sacrifice whereof being dayly renewed renders God propitious towards the Mother who presents it Do not therefore propose to your self my Sister any thing that is mean or indifferent in the Education of your Children since you your self are so much interessed therein and that even the cries and tears of your children in the cradle intercede for you with God and pray for you as St. Jerome avers writing to a Roman Dame concerning her Daughter You have already seen the strict Obligation which all Christians have to tend to the highest perfection let therefore your principal care be to bring your children to it and let it be your only ambition to make them great Saints They are as so many living and precious stones wherewith God designes to build the celestial Jerusalem and according as they shall be found more fair better polished and fitlier wrought and prepared they shall be put in a place more eminent and you from them shall derive greater glory They are in your house as statues of Gold which you ought to form and embellish every day if you desire they should represent perfectly their true Modell which is Christ Jesus and that they should be his true Images They are the Dwelling houses and the Tabernacles chosen by God for his habitation and therefore take heed as St. John Chrysostom advises lest by your fault the Temple of God be turned into a retreat of Thieves and that Christ Jesus should give to you the same reproach which he gave to the Jews Know proceeds this Father that the hearts of your children become the retreats of thieves when you permit base and servile desires to possess them and irregular concupiscences to master them For 't is these sorts of affections which more cruel and more dangerous than theives ravish from them the liberty which grace gave them and which after they have pierced them through on all sides and covered them with most dangerous wounds reduce them into the slavery of Passions and vices Wherefore I conjure you my Sister to form a resolution without delay to proceed in such sort as that your children fall not into this accursed servitude Propose to your self to do all you possibly can to conserve them in the Innocence and in the grace they received in Baptism And since by your offering them to the Church you tacitly obliged your self to make them keep the pact and bargain they made with God in that Sacrament have alway that engagement before your eyes and seek incessantly in Prayer in reading and particularly in leading a good life such graces as are necessary for you in order to acquit your self faithfully of this your Duty which is the greatest and holiest of the World CHAP. VII What Idea's or Forms they ought to propose to themselves for their Imitation in the Christian Education of Children I Cannot better assist you my Sister in this enterprise than by proposing to you some Model which you may follow and upon which you may fix your eyes to conduct you securely in a design wherein 't is so hard a matter to succeed well This Model is no other than God himself For if Fathers and Mothers in production of their children express an Image of his fruitfulness is it not just that they should propose to themselves for the prime Idea of the Education of these same Children the conduct which this Celestial Father holds in regard of all men I stay not upon this that the cares of his Providence respect only the interests of our Souls nor upon that that God proposes for the end of all his works to put us in possession of eternal happiness I entreat you only to observe what hath been his conduct in regard of the Jewish people whom all the Fathers after St. Paul look upon as in an estate of Infancy and Puerility in respect of Christians whom Grace according to St. St. Chrysost upon Galat. ch 4. Chrysostome hath rendred ripe in years Behold the care God takes to retire that people out of Egypt to separate them from Idolaters and to interdict them from all commerce with strangers lest their Example or their Doctrine should corrupt and pervert them He gives them his Law and his Commandements He inspires them with a holy horrour if we may say so of his greatnesses and of his Majesty to the and they should fear to offend him He rigorously chastises their least Infidelities and their sinallest Disobediences And out of the care he hath to make them acknowledge that 't is he alone who supplies all their necessities who protects them against all their enemies and who affords them all the goods they possess he endeavours to make them enter into the feelings of love and gratitude for his bounty and into an humble submission to the orders of his Divine Wisdom and Will He instructs them in the most hidden truths and in all the Mysteries of Christ Jesus But he instructs them as Children that is by presenting only shadows unto them and Figures and by making them to practice after a gross manner and
which he would have with the Church by rendring her his Body Must we not then aver after this great Apostle Ephes 3.32 That surely Marriage is a holy Institution in Christ Jesus and in his Church and that it is honourable in all Heb. 1.4 that is to say as the holy Fathers explicate it in all its parts Yes my Sister you ought to have a high esteem of the state to which God hath called you because in like manner as it was he who having drawn Eve from the side of Adam our first Father gave her to him for his Spouse 't is also he who by his invisible hand hath tyed the knot of the sacred cord of your Marriage and who gave you to your Husband You ought to do it because God intending to multiply Souls which may bless and praise him to all Eternity hath done you the favour to make choice of you to cooperate by the production of your Children and by their Education to so great a work You ought to do it because Christ Jesus by his presence at the Marriage of Cana in Galilee has sanctified all them which are to be celebrated among Christians You ought finally to do it not only because there are so many holy persons in the Old and New Testament who have lived most faintlike in Marriage but also because the Mother of Christ Jesus the most pure and most innocent of all creatures was engaged in the bonds of that indissoluble alliance which you have contracted In such sort that if by the Vow of Virginity which she made before the Angelical Salutation she was as S. Augustine relates the model of all the Virgins who were to come after her S. August lib de Virginitate c 4. Lib. 5. contra Julianum c. 22. she was no less in the opinion of the same holy Father the example of Married persons by espousing St. Joseph and by powerfully insinuating unto them by her prudent conduct that Marriage ceases not truly to subsist although by mutual consent they should propose to themselves to live in a holy Continence But above all my Sisters you ought to esteem your self happy in that your Marriage is the Sacrament and the image of that of Christ Jesus with his Church in that he hath permitted you and even ordained you to consider your Husband as the Church doth Christ Jesus to have for him all the tenderness and all the Submission you are capable of as the Church hath for Christ Jesus to leave your self to be conducted by his Spirit as the Church leaves her self to be conducted by the Spirit of Christ Jesus to enter into all his affections into all his sentiments to partake with him of all his pains all his afflictions as the Church doth them of Christ Jesus and not to wear outward Ornaments nor make use of affected dresses but as far forth as he permits you as the Church hath no more splendour and glory than what Christ Jesus communicates unto her Now if the Patriarks and the Israelites esteemed themselves very much honoured in having Children because the people of God were thereby much augmented that they hoped the Messias might be born of their blood and that they might perhaps have the advantage of affording him a Father or a Mother what Glory may not you expect by furnishing to Jesus Christ subjects of his Mercies and by putting into the World Children who may become the Members and the Brothers of the Son of God However you will merit this Glory my Sister and at the same time will acquit your self of the principal Duties of the state wherein you are ingaged if you apply your self seriously to give your Children a truly Christian and Holy Education having first laid aside the false Lights and pernicious Errours which are the cause why the major part of Fathers and Mothers neglect the Education of their Children and that they have no other Idea's than such as are altogether Carnal and as remote from the excellency of the estate to which they are called as Heaven is from Earth CHAP. II. That the Education of Children is one of the most considerable employs of Christianism And of the first Errour which makes it to be neglected which is the mean Idea Parents have of the Christian Life THat which makes Parents conceive ordinarily a low Idea of the Education of their Children is that they themselves have a very mean Idea of the Christian Life And thus as the Life they propose to lead hath nothing of hard and painful because it is all low and carnal they do not also apprehend any great difficulties in the conduct of children because they have not for them any more noble more heroick aims than they have for themselves It is therefore necessary in order to know what it is to Educate Children Christianly that it be understood in the first place what it is to live Christianly and above all it is necessary to be rid of an Illusion which deceives the greatest part of the World perswading it self that none but Religious Persons are called to Sanctity and that the common Life of Christians hath nothing that is labourious or painful To convince you of the contrary it sufficeth my Sister to make you observe that the state of Christianism is a state of Sanctity and of Innocency that all they who make profession thereof ought according to the express words of the Gospel to be perfect as their Heavenly Father is perfect Mat. 3.48 and as * Chrysost cont vit vitae Mon. l. 3. St. Chrysostome well observes that there ought to be no other difference between the Religious and them who live in the World but only that these engage themselves in the bonds of Marriage whereas the Religious conserve all their Liberty and have great advantages above Married persons for the more easy accomplishment of the promises of Baptism And that no doubt may remain in your spirit concerning this point and that you may entirely banish from thence this first Errour which causes all the irregularities that slide into the manners of Christians I will here simply translate what this great Doctor of the Greek Church hath written in one of his Works which he adresses to a faithful Father of Children This great Saint after he had made appear that persons engag'd in the world are no less obliged than the Religious to observe exactly the Commandements of Christ Jesus which he hath given us in the Gospel because there is no distinction in the Words and that for example he hath absolutely forbidden to Swear or to behold the Wife of ones Neighbour with criminal desires concludes that all the other Precepts of the Gospel which are not addressed to one particular estate which is there expressed extend themselves commonly to all the world and that by consequence our Saviour having declared in general that true Happiness consists in Poverty of Spirit and in Tears in the Hunger and Thirst after Justice
changed if we may say it into its substance This made one of the most clear-sighted among the Pagans to say That one of the things we should chiefly take care of in the Education of children whom we intend to leave a long time Quintilian in their Nurses hands is concerning the chusing of these Nurses For says he they must be very wise and we ought as far forth as may be to take such as have the best qualities and whose manners are best regulated But although we ought principally to have regard to their good conduct we must not omit to examine their way of speaking For they are the persons whom the children first hear and whose language they strive to imitate and naturally we retain much more firmly what we learn in our tenderest years just as a Vessel new-made conserves almost ever after the odour of the first liquor powred into it It happens that even the bad qualities adhere much more strongly and that Evil makes a deeper impression than good yea the good it self easily changes into evil whereas it is very seldom that vicious habits and customs turn into good ones This also made Plato ordain that we should not only endeavour with much care and watchfulness to educate children well when they are three years old but moreover he extremely recommends to Mothers that during the time of their being with childe they should keep themselves free from all sort of alterations and generally he exhorts Fathers and Mothers to exempt themselves as much as may be from all passions for fear lest communicating to the bodies of their children such affections as reign in them they should pass even to their souls and lest their bodies being formed of a blood burning with choler or inflamed with an unchaste Fire or that being conceived in a bosom filled with Pride and Vanity their Souls should contract inclinations of Fevenge Impurity and Ambition We also see Sister that God hath bestowed very particular Benedictions upon such Children as were consecrated to him in their Mothers womb Sampson Samuel and St. John Baptist in the Old Testament St. Augustin St. Bernard in the New are authentick proofs of the advantages which are derived from this holy practise And it is most certain S. Chry. l. 1. cont vitupera vitae Mâ—nast that God despises not so rational a devotion and a so well regulated piety but that on the contrary he lends his all-powerful hand to assist Fathers and Mothers who make such use of it to make their children perfect Images of his own Son and that he causes all things to contribute to their sanctity But to speak ingeniously of things as I conceive and apprehend them and God grant it may not be as it is commonly done there are many Fathers and Mothers who would be loath their children should receive so signal a Grace and the most rational of them would willingly yeild to follow these important Maxims in regard of those children whom they design to the Church or to Religion but not in regard of those whom they look upon as the prop of their Family and the Heyrs of their Honours Offices and Riches Wherefore one cannot too much endeavour to undeceive the World of an illusion which is so criminal in its Principles and so detestable in its effects and consequences CHAP. XII That these Maxims and these Advices are principally to be followed in the Education of such children as are designed for the World IF all Christians are obliged as undoubtedly they are to tend to the same perfection it is also an undoubted truth that there ought to be no difference in their Education and I say not only that there ought to be an equality among them who are designed to leade a common life and them who are consecrated to a more particular profession of piety but there is no doubt that one ought to apply a greater care in the Education of the first than of the second and that if Parents are concerned fot the publick interest for the glory of their children and for the salvation of their souls they are not to neglect any of the Maxims nor any of the Advices which we have drawn from the Scripture and from the Fathers in the Education of them whom they designe for the World To make you comprehend how much the interest of Common-wealths and Kingdoms is ingaged in the perfect Education of such as are to fill up the Dignities and to possess the most eminent Employments I need only conjure you St. Chry. l. 3. cont vituper vitae Monas after a Father of the Church to cast a view upon them who have introduced into the World all the Disorders which now reign therein and to consider who they are that follow them Whether they are such as have learned to live in a repose and in a retrait or such as invent new pleasures and new divertisements They who subsist honestly of their own patrimony and are satisfied with the conveniences which God hath given them or they who only study to enrich themselves with the goods of the poor They who are content with a mean train and a moderate table and with what serves only for necessity or they who will have a magnificent train and a sumptuous table open to all commers And to speak more Christianly whether they who live with great meekness and great modesty who think only of submitting themselves and of suffering themselves to be directed who esteem themselves the last of men and seek the least honourable places who have always before their eyes the Vanity of the world and the nothing of creatures or they who look to be respected and who render themselves terrible by their injustices and by their violences who will command every one and omit nothing to usurp the Magistracies scarcely remembring any longer that they are men so strangely are they puffed up with pride and so full are they of self-esteem and vanity Now if they are these later who overturn estates who trouble families who cause the murders the slaveries and all the miseries which we see and lament and if they arrived not at this extremity of injustice but because their parents neglected their Education is it not evident that it is the interest of Kingdoms that every Father of a Family should follow the Rules we have proposed that so by faithfully practising them they may bring their children to embrace the documents of the Fathers of the Church and of the Doctours of the world and as Saint Chrysostom says That they may by their care render them sparkling lights to shine amidst the darkness which Vices have spread abroad in the World and to shew the way of Heaven to so many unhappy wretches who go astray And this Sister is the second motive upon which the truth I have advanced is established and upon which is grounded the obligation of Parents to educate according to the Maxims of the Church Fathers those Children whom
THE Christian Education OF CHILDREN According To the Maxims of the Sacred Scripture and the Instructions of the Fathers of the Church Written and several times Printed in French and now Translated into English At Paris By John Baptist Coignard at the Golden Bible in S. James's-street 1678. With Approbation THE Authours Address TO HIS SISTER My Dearest Sister SInce God would so have it that I should partake with you of the goods of Nature and that our common Birth permits us not to have any thing of Particular in the advantages of the World I hope he will please to accept the desire I have to extend this right to the Goods of Grace and that he will approve-of my making you partaker of what I could gather in the Books of the Church whereby I have reserved nothing from a person whom he hath rendred so dear unto me Nor can I believe that the World it self notwithstanding that it is accustomed to disapprove the doings of them who have abandoned it can condemn this For if people take it not amiss that such as love one another by motives of Interest and for the Goods of this life should make use of these Goods to give pledges of their love to one another why should it be any wonder that they who are linked together by a friendship which is totally disengaged from the Senses should employ Spiritual things to testify reciprocally to each other their true affection Imagine not therefore my Sister that this Book is the effect barely of a natural Love which gives me entrance into all your Interests I am excited to write unto you by more holy and more powerful motives it is no longer lawful for me to act meerly by them of Nature And having drained all that this Work includes from the Well of the Sacred Scripture and from the Writings of the Fathers of the Church I may assure you that I have the least share therein You therefore are not to make any Reflection upon him who presents it unto you but apply it to your self singly for the enriching of your Soul with the Virtues which are here discovered unto you and which God demands of a Christian Mother Consider that you can give him no greater proofs of your Love and of your Fidelity than to bring up your Children according to the Laws of the Gospel and the Counsels of the Fathers of the Church and that you cannot offer to him a sacrifice which will better please him than to consecrate them to him by a holy Education since they are the better part of your self nor is there any thing which can more move him to pour forth upon you and upon them his blessings than the care you shall take to instruct them in his Fear and in his Love and to let all the World see by engaging them to imitate their Heavenly Father that you look upon them as his Children 'T is to help you in this laudable designe that I have begged of our Lord Jesus Christ so much light as was necessary for me to observe in the sacred Scriptures and in the Volumes of the Fathers of the Church those Maxims which ought to be followed in the Education of children that I have instantly besought him to inspire me with such choice Advices as he would have me draw from thence to propose them to you if he would please to make use of me altogether unworthy as I am to give you the knowledge of what your children stand in need of and of his designs upon you and upon them Consider then if you please this little Work as a Collection of what is most holy and most pure in the Doctrine of the Church touching the Subject it treats on I have done no more than joyn the passages to one another And if there are some Propositions the Authours whereof are not cited it is because they were included in the Principles which I have established upon the authorities of these great Saints Nothing now remains but to send up to God my Prayers that what I have done to discharge my Conscience may not make yours criminal but rather that he will effect by his Grace that by putting in practise these wholsome Maxims and Advices which I offer you you may happily experience that which St. Jerome avers That the health and happiness of Children turns to the Glory and to the Advantage of their Fathers and Mothers THE Authours Advice TO THE READER THis Treatise of the Christian Education of Children was Composed Eight or Nine Years since by a Church-man for one of his Sisters who was engaged in Marriage He only proposed to himself in composing it to assist that person in particular and to instruct her how she should worthily acquit her self in one of the principal Obligations of the estate to which God had called her which was to bring up her Children in the Fear and love of God But in process of time this Treatise having been seen by several of his Freinds who judged it very proper to be made publick the Respect and Submission he had to their Opinion obliged him to apply himself to render it fit for all Parents Hereupon he added several Advices and many Maxims which he conceived might be to them profitable and in general he endeavoured to accomodate to all sorts of conditions and to all manner of persons whatever is herein contained He hath moreover studied to present to all Fathers and to all Mothers certain Rules which they may observe in the several ages of their Children and it may be said That if they apply themselves as they ought to the Truths proposed to them in this Book they shall finde all that can contribute to render their Childrens Education conformable to the Rules of the Gospel They who are not yet engaged in Marriage may here also learn with what spirit they ought to undertake that State of life and how great difficult and sublime are the Obligations thereof They who have renounced the State of Marriage to embrace that of Religion may here finde great subjects to praise God in that he hath not permitted them to enter into a condition wherein it is so hard to acquit themselves of their duty Finally all they who are encharged with the Education of Children and who consequently do hold the Places of Fathers and of Mothers over them shall here sinde the lights and succours which are necessary to acquit themselves as they ought Some perhaps will judge that we have too much descended into particulars in some places but the Authour conceived that his designe being to prescribe Rules not of Speculation but of Practise he could not enter too far into the particulars and that he himself ought to make some application of the Maxims he proposes to the end they might more easily be reduced into Practise by such as have a minde to follow them in the conduct of their Family It is to be hoped that God will bestow his blessing upon this
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
Children Christianly For this Christian Education consisting in establishing them in a Christian Life it must destroy in them all that is opposite to this Life as the love of Honours of Pleasures and even of all unprofitable things In such sort that as in effect the Christian Life of the common people of the World ought not to be different from that of Religious persons in the Interiour Virtues which make the Essence of Christian Perfection it is also clear that in what concerns the ground of Virtue the Education of Children ought not to be different from the Institutions of Religious people since in truth we are all Religious of the General Religion of Christ Jesus CHAP. III. Of the second Errour which causes the Neglect of the Education of Children which is the little care Parents have to preserve them in Innocency IF the mean Idea which Parents form to themselves of the Christian Life and the small feeling they have in their hearts of the great Purity to which this life obliges us is cause of the little care they take in the Education of Children surely the false Imagination they have that it is a small matter to lose ones Innocency and that it is easily recovered contributes also extreamly to make Fathers and Mothers slide into this dreadful negligence And yet can there be a more horrible Infidelity than to violate one of the most holy and most inviolable alliances which God hath made with men which is that of Baptism by which we are initiated into Christ Jesus And what outrage commit we not against God says Tertullian Tertulian de Paeniten c. 5. when after having renounced the Devil who is his Enemy and have put him under God we raise him up afterwards and returning to to the Devil we render our selves his Trophee and his joy to the end that his spirit of malice having recovered the Prey which he had lost may triumph in some sort over God himself This moved an ancient Father of the Church to say that if one falls after Baptism Pacianus in Catech. he will be in worse estate than he was before he was Baptized because the Devil will keep him faster bound in his fetters as a fugitive slave whom he hath overtaken in his flight and Christ Jesus can no more henceforth suffer death for him since he who is resuscitated from the dead cannot any more dye This moved St. Paul to say in his Epistle to the Hebrews Heb. 6.4 That 't is impossible for them who have once been illuminated who have tasted the guift of Heaven who have been rendred partakers of the Holy Ghost who have been nourished with the sacred word of God and with the hope of the happinesse of the world to come and who after this have fallen away should be renewed again unto Repentance because as much as in them lies they crucify the Son of God afresh and expose him to open shame This means not my sister that there remains no hope of pardon for them who having been once delivered by Christ Jesus re-ingage themselves by their sins in the servitude of the Devil for it is most true that Christians sinning voluntarily after the knowledge of the truth finde a Sacrifice of Propitiation for their sins But it means that to obtain this pardon and deserve to be again once more purified by the Blood of this innocent Victime the sinner must according to the language of the Fathers pour forth not only natural Tears but Tears of heart which flow from a sincere Repentance and perform actions of strong Mortification and Pennance above the Idea which people are wont to form of it So that one may say 't is much more easy to conserve the Innocency of Baptism than to recover it by this means when one hath once lost it Besides that even when one hath recovered it there is still as great a difference between sinners converted and them who have conserved the Innocence of their Baptism as there is between a Subject pardoned by a King after his Treason and another who hath been always faithful to him between a broken Member which is cured and a Member which hath remained always sound entire What then should not Fathers and Mothers do to hinder their Children from falling into this dreadful misery And since there is nothing but a Christian Education which can preserve them with how great zeal ought they to apply themselves unto it And how high an esteem ought they to conceive of a Vocation which engages them not only to inspire into their Children all the sentiments of Christian Piety and of the sublimest perfection of the Gospel but moreover to use all sorts of precautions and to seek out all means possible to conserve them in their Innocence and to estrange from them all such things as may give the least occasion to alter or diminish in them the charity andgrace of Christ Jesus CHAP. IV. How far forth Fathers and Mothers are interested in the Christian Education of their Children and in particular of what Importance it is to Mothers WHat Interest Fathers and Mothers have in the Christian Education of their Children See Eccles 22.3 That a Childe who is wise and well instructed is all the joy of his Father whereas a Childe who is stubborn and bred up in the follies of the World despises his Mother and causes to her much sadness And again Pro. 29.15 Instruct your Son and no will be a comfort to you in all your calamities and will afford you great content whereas you will receive much confusion if he is ill educated And in Ecclesiasticus Eccle. 30.3 He who well instructs his Son shall be praised in his person and that he shall be the subject of his glory in the midst of his Domesticks and of his Friends If he comes to dye adds he it will scarcely appear because he leaves behinde him a Successour who resembles him He hath had the happiness and the comfort to see him himself in his life time and at his death he hath no affliction or confusion before his Enemies because he leaves a Son who can protect his family against their insults and acknowledge the favours of his friends And surely if reasoning even according to the Maxims of the World all the glory of a Father and of a Mother of a Family consists in the settlement and good government of their House what is there more advantagious to Fathers and to Mothers than to have Children well educated Since according to the Wise man the prudence and the good conduct of Fathers shining in the manners of their Children nothing can more cause their memory to be honoured than the good Education they have given them What avails it to a Father that he hath heaped up a vast quantity of Riches that he hath made many Freinds and acquired much Wealth if he leaves Children who for want of good Education will dissipate all his goods in superfluous and criminal expenses
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
the most prudent If you choose a Coachman a groom of the Stable St. Chrysost Ser. 19. upon Matth. you take care said St. Chrysostom speaking to Parents that he be not subject to wine that he be not a thief and that he be skilful in drenching and dressing Horses But if you will provide a Master for your children to form and fashion them you trouble not your selves in the choice of him the first who presents himself is good enough and yet there is no employ either greater or of more difficulty than that is For what is of higher importance then to form the spirit and the heart and to regulate all the conduct of a young man Great is the esteem of a skilful Painter and an Engraver but what is their art in comparison of his excellency who works not on a cloath or on a Marble-stone but upon the spirits Yet we neglect all these things We trouble not our selves to render our children Christians but eloquent and this very desire is for our own interest For the end we propose to our selves is not simply that they be eloquent but that they may grow rich by their eloquence Now if they could become rich without being eloquent we would sleight as well the eloquence as all the rest 7. Maxims touching the Motives whereby to engage Children to labour and to do what one desires of them NEver propose to them for a recompence the vain Ornaments of the World neither make use of such things as have no value but among worldly people to bring them to do what you desire It would prove a means to inspire into them a love for such things and to make them esteem them as true goods whereas you ought to study how to make them despise them For notwithstanding that all the goods of the earth are things in themselves indifferent yet you ought to propose them to children as dangerous yea even as evil by discovering unto them only the disorders they cause in such as possess them And you should says St. S. Jerom. epist ad Gaudent Jerome carry your self in such sort towards them as that they may think the World hath been always in the miserable estate it now is that they may remain ignorant of what pleasing things passed in the ages foregone and spent that they may shun the Maxims and the customs which are in use at this present and that they may aspire after the goods which are promised to us in Heaven Now if you had rather follow the sentiment of them who as the same Saint relates fancy that it is more to the purpose to satiate in childrens infancy the thirst which Men but particularly Women have after these sorts of vanity to entertain it and cause it to encrease in them by refusing to afford them such Ornaments as they see others use take care at least as this great Doctour advises Gaudentius that your children may perceive how they of their own age are praysed for not using such sorts of Ornaments Make much of them your self in their presence speak with prayse of their modesty and of their comportment and insensibly strive to instill into yours a disgust of all exteriour trickings and trimmings which the World admires Strive to make them comprehend that you do not allow them such things but only because they are yet little ones and tell them that if they were indued with perfect reason you would not give them such things as are fit only for children If we must drive out of our hearts one desire by another you may perchance cure that which they have for these things of shew and lustre by awaking the natural desire which all children have of putting themselves in the rank of such persons as are more advanced in age and in judgement Avoyd nevertheless that unhappy conduct which St. Chrysostom reprehends in the Parents of his time and which is but too common in this of ours according to which Fathers and Mothers excite not their children to virtue to studie and to other laudable exercises but only by humane and temporal considerations and which are all founded upon ambition and upon interest See how this great Saint expresses the sentiments of one of those Fathers tyed to the World by making him speak in these terms to one of his children Behold my Son behold this man he was very meanly born and had many other inconsiderable qualities and yet because he was eloquent he passed through the greatest Offices and employs he hath heaped up vast riches married a wealthy wife built proud Pallaces finally he hath made himself dreaded and respected by all the World This other O my Son proceeds this worldly Father got not the reputation he hath at Court but because he was perfectly skilled in the Latine Tongue And thus it is exclaims this great Doctour that we enchant the ears of your children to introduce into their hearts the two most violent passions which are in the world to wit the desire of riches and that of vain-glory which corrupt and stifle in their souls all the seeds of virtue which cause to spring up there such a quantity of thorns and bryars and which spread about so much sand and dust that their spirit remains barren and uncapable to produce any fruit 'T is of this disorder that St. Augustin complains to God S. August l. 1. Confess c. 9. n. 1. when making reflexion upon the conduct they had used towards himself in the time of his youth and raising himself towards God he says to him Have I not just cause O my God to deplore the miseries and the deceits which I experienced in that age since they proposed to me no other rule of living well but to follow the conduct and the advertisements of them who laboured only to inspire into me the desire and the ambition of appearing one day with renown in the world and to excell in this art of Eloquence which gains honour among men and gets false and deceitful riches Whereby it plainly appears that if it is good as we have observed to give praises to children it is not to make them love the praise nor to make them labour for vanity but only to make them love Virtue which alone deserves to be praised 8. Maxims touching the care Parents ought to take for their Childrens health and for what concerns their bodies BE not over-sollicitous to procure for them all the commodities of life When they shall prefs you to grant them something which is not absolutely necessary for them endeavour to make them understand that Christians ought to let alone superfluous things that they may supply the necessities of their neighbour Say to them my Children this is not ours God gave it not unto us but only that we might with it do works of charity and we should rob the poor if we should waste it in things unprofitable But if they have some infirmity or any disease however you spare nothing secretly
them The childe will become wiser says Solomon by the chastisement of the culpable and of him who gives him evil example Prov. 21.11 Leave them not alone but as little as may be with the domesticks and especially with Lacquais and Foot-boys These kinde of persons to insinuate themselves and to get the favour of the children please them ordinarily with nothing but sottish follies and instill nothing into them but the love of play of divertisement and of vanity and are only capable to corrupt the best natures and such as are most inclinable to goodness St. Jerome after he had recommended to a Lady of quality to use great circumspection in the choice of such Maids as she was to take to accompany her Daughter and to ferve her counsels her not to suffer them to make any particular friendship with them but to hinder them from talking together in private and from making between themselves certain petty-mysteries of I know not how many things This great man knew the danger there is in leaving children to take too much liberty with all sorts of domesticks and how much it is to be dreaded that this familiarity should come at last to make them lose their Innocence 12. Maxims touching the freedom which is to be given to children to express their thoughts and their opinions THis advice of St. Paul ought to be well weighed Ephes 6.4 Fathers do not irritate your children by an over harsh carriage towards them and by using them with overmuch rigour but take care to educate them in the discipline and in the fear of our Lord lest as he adds in another place Coloss 3.2 they should fall into a discouragement of spirit and of heart Which is as if the Apostle had said Take heed of reprehending continually your children and of treating them with too much severity in small matters Do not your self oblige them by your rigour to wound the respect which they owe to you and by commanding them things of too great difficulty do not constrain them to disobey you They must be permitted when they are a little advanced in age to have the liberty to present unto you their reasons and their complaints nor ought you to treat them harshly when they fancy they are in some sort wronged by your way of proceeding with them Imitate the prudence of that charitable Father of whom it is said in the Gospel that seeing his eldest son highly offended at the manner of his receiving his younger son into his favour and having understood that for this cause he would not enter into the house went forth himself to entreat him to come in And that son having reproached him Luk. 15.29 That he had now served him many years without ever disobeying him in any thing he commanded and that nevertheless he had never bestowed on him a kid for the entertainment of his friends but that as soon as this his other son who had wasted his means among harlots was arrived he had slaughterd for him the fat calf This good Father far from being offended with his discourse strives on the contrary to sweeten his spirit with words full of tenderness and goodness Ib. v. 31.32 My son says he you are always with me and all that I have is yours but it was fit to make a feast and to rejoyce because your brother was dead and he is revived he was lost and he is found again See how this wise Father disdains not to justify his proceedings before his son and how he endeavours by the testimonies of charity and of the preference which he gives him to diminish the resentment and the indignation he had conceived against him and against his younger brother Behold what manner of proceeding you are to propose to your self since 't is that of God himself in regard of his children which Christ Jesus hath laid open to you under this parable Think not my Sister that it is from the authority which God hath given to Fathers and to Mothers over their Children not to make them to do what they desire of them but by the way of power and command nor that Children act always against the respect they owe to their Fathers and Mothers when they finde difficulty to approve all that they do or all that they say Children ought in many occasions to submit their lights to them of their Parents and to prefer their judgement before their own but 't is also the duty of Parents to communicate to their children those very lights to which they pretend they ought to subject themselves They ought to conduct them by truth and not by humour and fancy and they ought to gain their hearts by the love of that good which they desire to instill into them and not by captivating their will under the yoak of a command full of threats and of terrour St. Jerome speaking of the manner to educate children says that one must use severity with much prudence because the persons whom one treats over-severely seek with more eagerness than they do who are left to more liberty to divert and comfort themselves with the trifles of the world from the harsh usage to which they are enslaved 13. Maxims touching the patience wherewith Parents are to support their children and to moderate their resentments of injuries received from others 'T Is not enough for a Christian Father and a Christian Mother not to irritate their children by holding over them a too severe hand in things indifferent or which are not absolutely criminal they are moreover to be disposed to support patiently their greater disobediences and to suffer their greater outrages without suffering themselves to be transported to such resentments as would be no less dismal to themselves then to their children We have a proof convincing this truth in a dreadful history related by St. S. Aug. Serm. 31. de diversis l. 22. de civit chap. 8. Augustin in several of his works and which cannot be too often presented to Fathers and Mothers amidst the displeasures they receive from their Children There was in the Town of Caesarea in Cappadocia a widow of quality who had ten children to wit seven sons and three Daughters the eldest of all these children so far lost the respect he ought to his Mother that after he had loaded her with many injurious words he was so rash as to strike her His Brothers and his Sisters were witnesses of this outrage not only without opposing themselves but even without speaking one sole word in defence of their Mother This poor Woman having her heart pearced with sorrow for so great an injury and suffering her self to proceed in the resentment of the affront she had received took a resolution to lay her curse upon her wretched son who had so highly offended her Hereupon she goes forth of her at day-break to pronounce this imprecation against him upon the sacred Font of Baptism The Devil presented himself to her in her way under the form
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
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
may be all the defects of their faces they employ all imaginable addresses and artifices to cheat the eyes of their beholders All the world enters there with this disposition which is so vain but so precious to corrupted nature to love and to make ones self loved Nor is one content to have this disposition they explicate it by all manner of means and oftentimes the looks the gestures and the very dressings explicate what the tongue dares not express Who can represent all the snares which the devil then lays for young people What indiscreet compliances What passionate respects What dangerous adhesions What feigned and dissembling protestations What vain impertinent and Idolatrous discourses It seems as if all they who compose these assemblies had forgotten not only that they are Christians but even that they are Men so much they make appear in their gestures in their postures in the motions of their bodies of effeminacy of wantonness of irregularity You would imagine it were a troop vowed to pleasure and which had undertaken by common consent to place the creature in the place of God I dare not here paint forth unto you what passes in the heart of all such persons whose passion to please and to be beloved rules all their motions There it is that the gross and impure vapours which arise from the dirt and mudd of the flesh St. Aug. l. 2. Conf. c. 2. and from the boilings of youth obscure the hearts and overclowd them in such sort that they cannot discern the pure and resplendent serenity of a lawful affection from the darksom images of an infamous love 'T is there that they swim in this unhappy joy and the dismal pleasure whereby the children of the world tye themselves to base things by the irregularity of their corrupted will and being animated by their passions which as fumie wine dim by their imperceptible vapours the highest part of their souls forget God to adhere to the creature What desires What dreads What impatiences What envies What jealousies What suspicions What displeasures What irregular Motions toss their spirit and their heart One cannot my Sister explicate all the interiour evils which these Assemblies ordinarily cause and produce and without taking notice of the quarrels flights and murders which there take their birth our tongue is too chaste to express the other unhappy effects and the rest of the dangerous sequels of these meetings where the most innocent souls learn to lose their shamefac'dness and become in the end the sacrifices of an infamous pleasure What shall I say of the laws and of the rules which are observed so inviolably in these Assembles and which the spirit of licentiousness hath there established of that indispensable obligation which the persons where such meetings are made have to open their door indifferently to all the world of the liberty which all young people have to enter in to examine all the persons who compose it to adhere to such as best please them to entertain them to leade them out to dance and to use with them such freedoms as the Parents would be ashamed to permit in their particular houses Insomuch as properly speaking the places where these sorts of Assemblies are held are as it were the infamous and publick houses where Parents expose their own Daughters to the most licentious Gallants and where these Daughters by the little modesty and reservation which appears in their dress in their looks in their garb and in all their comportment prostitute themselves to the eyes and to the desires of all them who there enter and even instill into the more moderate motions contrary to their duty and who too frequently degenerate into most shameful practices Shall any one wonder after this S. Charls Bor. tract against Dances if St. Charls Boromeus in an excellent Treatise he made against Dances and in which he shews that they are condemned by the Holy Scripture by the Councils and by the Fathers relates that when he was yet a Student having constrained with his companions a Philosopher of a very solid judgment to go to a Ball this Philosopher after he had well observed all the circumstances of that assembly and the actions which were there done was struck with astonishment and presently told them that surely it was an invention of the Devil to destroy souls and to corrupt the manners of the faithful And think not Sister that the Dances which are done in private and with less pomp are less dangerous St. Ambrose in the Books he made for the instruction of Virgins S. Amb. l. 3. de Virg. and which he addressed to Marcellina his Sister after he had set down that all Christians are obliged according to the precept of St. Paul Coloss 3. to refer to Christ Jesus all their words and all their actions compares divertisements to remedies and says that as remedies profit not the body but when they are used according to the advice of the Physitian and that on the contrary they serve oftentimes to entertain the disease when they are taken contrary to his advice So all that we do according to the rules which Christ Jesus who is the Physitian of our Souls hath prescribed unto us contributes to their health and serves them for a remedie whereas that which is not conformable to his spirit and to his rules insensibly weakens and destroys her strength It follows then concludes this holy Doctour that a Christian should place all his joy in a good conscience and not in Feastings in Dancings and in worldly Meetings For the chastity is not in security and the pleasure which allures us ought to be suspected when the Dance is the companion or the end of the divertisement we seek for There is no one said an Ancient who dances being sober unless he has lost his wit If according to the very Pagan-wisdom drunkenness or folly is the cause of Dancing what can we think the sacred Scripture would insinuate unto us when it represents unto us the Fore-runner of Christ Jesus condemned to death at the desire of a Dancer but that the pleasure which Herod took to see the Daughter of Herodias dance before him was more unfortunate unto him than the sacrilegious resentment he had of the freedom wherewith that Saint had presumed to reprehend him Then after he had made reflexion upon the greatness of the crime wherein this Prince was engaged having been as it were enchanted by this unhappy dance and by the boldness of this Girl in daring to dance before him he adds these words What could this Daughter learn of an incestuous Mother but to lose all Modesty In effect is there any thing more proper to excite shamefull passions than to discover as they do in dancing those parts of the body which nature and civility oblige to hide then to conduct the eyes with a certain artifice and cause the looks to agree with the undecent postures of the body and then to mark
with the head and all the rest of the body the motions of a dissolute cadency Shall one wonder after this if people are so easily engaged amidst the dance to commit the greatest crimes And what stayedness or what remainder of modesty can there be among the tintamars and the confused noyses they make in singing capering and abandoning themselves to a dissolution which dishonours Christianity What say you Christian Mothers at the sight of so tragical a history See you not in this example what you should teach your daughters to avoid and that it is for unchaste and adulterous Parents to permit their daughters to dance and not for them who are chaste and faithful to their Bridegroom who should teach their daughters to love virtue and not to affect dancing St. Chrysostom confirms this truth Chrysost hom 48. in Matth. when making reflexion upon this History he says That this daughter of Herodias was doubly criminal first in that she danced secondly in that she pleased Herod and so pleased him as that she received a Murder for the price of her dance And then after he had observed that the dance was the snare by which the devil caused this unhappy Prince to fall into so horrid a crime he says That it was also the devil who made this Girl dance with such a grace that Herod was charmed and blindely abandoned himself to his passion For adds he the devil is ever found where-ever is dancing God hath not given us feet for so shamefull a use but to march with modesty He hath not given them to us that we should caper like those brute beasts which skip up and down and which it seems women desire to imitate in their dancing but to have place in the quire of Angels Now if the Body is dishonoured by these undecent gestures how much more is the soul thereby defiled Dances are the sports of devils His ministers and his vassals make them their divertisement and their pleasure And that no one may fancy that those words cannot be applied to such dances as are common among worldlings because they have not always to our eyes such dismal consequences as these yet as this holy Doctour observes There are at this day many such Feasts and Balls and such murdering dances They kill not there the blessed Precursour but the very Members of Christ Jesus and in a manner which is yet more cruel they present not there a head in a platter for the price of a dance but they render the major part of such as are there present the slaves of brutish pleasures and by engaging them in criminal passions they kill them not by cutting off the head of their Body but by separating their Soul from Christ Jesus Avoid therefore my Sister absolutely these Balls these Dances and these miserable Meetings Fly them as a Plague the poyson whereof is more mortal to souls than that contagion is to bodies Let no consideration oblige you to frequent them Consider before God their inevitable danger and practise in favour of your Children that which St. Chrysostom notes we daily do for the conservation of worldly goods Surely says this Father when we see a servant bearing about an alighted Torch we seriously forbid him to carry it into places where there is straw hay or such combustible matter for fear lest when they least dream of it a spark should fall into it and fire the whole house Let 's use the same precaution towards our Children and let 's not carry their eyes to such places where are found licentious Damosells pratling Girls and shameless persons But if there are such people at home with us or dwelling in our neighbourhood or where-ever they be let us expresly forbid our Children to look upon them or to have with them any commerce or conversation for fear lest some small spark falling into the Soul of these young people should cause a general conflagration and an irreparable dammage 5. Advice Concerning Comedies and Stage-Plays IF the fear of causing dangerous passions to spring up in the heart of your Children obliges you to keep them from the Meetings and Assemblies whereof we have now spoken surely this same fear indispensably engages you never to permit them to frequent Comedies There is no disorder which the Fathers of the Church have beaten down oftner and with more zeal than the love of shews and spectacles We finde in infinite places of their Writings the marks of their extreme care against this pernicious inclination which began in their time to corrupt the Innocence and the Chastity of the faithfull They consider them as an invention of the Devil who hath caused Theatres to be erected in the Towns to effeminate the hearts of the Soldiers of Christ Jesus and to make them lose their strength and their generosity They deplore the blindness of such as believe there 's no harm in assisting with pleasure at representations from which they can bring back nothing but shameful imaginations and criminal designes They lay open the indispensable obligation one hath to quit the near occasions of incontinence They call these Assemblies the Schools and the publick sources of impurity and they decry them as the Feasts of the Devil they oblige them who have assisted thereat to purify themselves by repentance before they enter into the Church Finally they make descriptions so sad and so horrible of the state wherein the spectatours are found at their going forth from these divertisements that one cannot reade them without trembling and without being astonished at the dreadful blindness of men who abhor not the greatest crimes but when they are not common and who not only cease to contradict them but which oft times they even make to pass for innocent actions For surely notwithstanding the endeavours of these great Saints and of them who have followed them to stifle this disorder it is so much encreased in these last ages by a general corruption which is crept in among the faithful that it passes now for an honest divertisement and that Comedies which are the shame and the confusion of Christianism are become the serious occupation of the major part of Christians That which more afflicts me said elsewhere S. Chrysostom St. Christ ser 8. in Matth. speaing of this disorder is that this evil being so great is not esteemed an evil And this is it which obliges you my Sister to take more care to hinder your Children from setting their affection upon these wretched spectacles I well know that it is pretended that there is much difference between the Comedies of these times and those which the holy Fathers thus highly condemned in theirs and that if those against which they shewed so great zeal deserved the blame they laid upon them these which are now adays represented upon the stages cannot be sufficiently praysed because they contain for the most part nothing but examples of Innocence of virtue and of Piety But with however specious a pretext the
towars them whilst they rob from their necessity the money which they play away is alone an evil great enough to perswade Christians to an aversion from Gaming But the love of Play stays not here It makes the persons who abandon themselves unto it to violate other Duties which are to them as we may say much more essentiall and much more indispensable The Women leave their houses and leave the care of their family to such domesticks who have oft-times only an appearing piety and fidelity and which dissipate under hand all their substance They neglect the Education of their children and commit them to the care of servants or of Women who corrupt their spirit and who frequently engage them in such disorders as stay with them all the rest of their life time The men on their side expose themselves oftentimes to lose the means without which they cannot make their Family to subsist as they are obliged nor acquit themselves of their Debts They render themselves useless to the publick there being neither Prince nor even particular person who will entrust his goods or his affairs in the hands of a man who loves Play and Gaming They expose their honours their offices and their dignities and there are but too many illustrious Families which have been ruined by Play or which yet resent the losses of their Parents Finally it is Gaming which causes Children so frequently to violate the respect they owe to their Parents which troubles the major part of Families which separates Husbands from their Wives and which dividing them whom God hath united by an indissoluble tye causes them oftentimes to fail in the fidelity which they owe to each other How many Wives are there who having not wherewithall to satisfy the love they bear to Play or because they have a Husband who leaves not to them the disposition of his money or because they have in effect already lost all and much incommodated all their family finde themselves easily disposed to satisfy the criminal passions of such as can furnish them wherewithall to Play Of what disorders is not a Woman capable who hath had a considerable loss at Play and who sees her self ready to incur the indignation and the fury of a Husband whom her Play hath already driven several times almost into despair And how many men are there who suffer themselves to be expresly overcome by the women with whom they play upon design to corrupt them and who thus make a shameful and infamous traffick of that divertisement And here it is my Sister that I entreat you to make reflexion upon the blindness of the major part of Fathers and of Mothers who suffer their Daughters to game with young men and to receive from them considerable presents yea some of them are so devoid of reason as to rejoice at their Daughters winnings in these occasions and to take therein a vain and sottish complacency not perceiving that the jmaginary victory they get in their play flattering their fancy renders them sensible of the liberality of those young Gallants and induces them to give them some signes of their acknowledgement which turns in the end to the shame and to the confusion of a whole Family In effect Gaming is one of the most dangerous snares which the Devil lays to entrap young people and which he ordinarily makes use of to make them fall into criminal freindships They play sometimes one to one or if they are many they combine one with another They take the game from her whom they will oblige they charge themselves with her loss and thus they insinuate themselves by little and little into her heart As they make profession in this age to play only for divertisement they affect in Play a certain frolickness and a kinde of liberty to speak any thing which although it passes not absolutely the bounds of honesty and exteriour seemliness yet fails not to leave malignant impressions They turn all the events of play into idle chatterings and they take occasion of all that presents it self and of the good humour into which gain puts her with whom they play to make declarations which would be worse received at another time when they are more serious They proceed with this disposition to walkings abroad and to collations where are made excessive expences There are not wanting indiscreet freinds knowing the intention which induces these young people to these foolish charges and knowing them for whose sake they are made engage the Mothers to come with their Daughters Play mixes it self again in this divertisement and begets a new engagement to a new match and to another treat And thus there is as it were a concatenation of gaming of walkings abroad of collations and of divertisements which do so link together the hearts of these young lovers that the Parents finde themselves obliged at last against their wills to cover with the veil of Marriage the engagements they have made to each other and to which Play which appeared at first innocent gave the entrance Behold Sister how the love of Play insensibly destroys youthfull persons and how this passion is no less prejudicial to Children then to their Parents making them fall into these horrible strayings which I have represented unto you You ought therefore to employ all your care to prevent your Children against so dangerous a passion and to apply your self timely to instill into them such Christian Maxims as may beat it down and destroy it You are to make them conceive what use they ought to make of their time and of their means when it is permitted them to take their divertisements and with what Plays they may laudably divert themselves You ought frequently to inclucate unto them that one of the most dangerous arts of the devil is to perswade people that the loss of time is innocent or at least not criminal that nevertheless time is lent us by God to make good use of it and to employ it faithfully in his service and for his glory to conquer our passions to expiate our sins to establish us in good customs to sanctify us and so to husband all the hours and all the moments thereof that we may acquire a happy Eternity and consequently that one cannot Rom. 2.4 without sleighting the riches of Gods bounty without contemning his tollerance and his long patience and without heaping up as St. Paul says a treasure of anger for the day in which God will render to every one according to his works employ the time which ought to be to us so precious in vain amusements and in barren and vicious occupations You ought to declare unto them that the Holy Fathers agree in this that men are only the Depositairs and Guardians of the goods which they enjoy that after they have taken what is needful for their subsistance the overplus appertains not to them but to the poor to whom they ought to distribute it and that when they know their necessity they
this matter that they may know how to use it as Christianly as they do all other solaces which necessity forces us to seek for Who would not blame a person who because he hath need of meat and drink to repair the ruines of his body and to sustain his life would sit at table day and night and make that his whole occupation they who consume almost all their life in play are no less faulty although there were nothing vicious in play considered in it self nor in the circumstances which accompany it and that they sought nothing therein but a simple divertisement For Christians are not permitted to do that for divertisement which they ought not to do but only for necessity and they are no less obliged to fight against the pleasure they meet with in such exercises as serve to refresh the minde and body for fear of being transported beyond the bounds of necessity than against that which is mixed with the most necessary actions of life From whence it comes that the Holy Fathers compare divertisements to remedies because in effect we are no otherwise to seek and make use of them than as we desire and use Remedies If so it is Sister as no one can doubt of it who hath never so little knowledge of the Evangelical Maxims and if St. Paul said speaking of Widows 1 Tim. 6.5 That she who lives in delights is dead however she seems living What are we to think of so many persons who pass all their life in Play and in Pleasures and who imitate those young Widows of whom the same Apostle speaks That the wantonness of their life inducing them to shake off the yoak of Christ Jesus they will not only by marrying again engage themselves in condemnation by violating the faith they had formerly given him but moreover they learn to be idle and use to wander about from house to house nor are they only idle but tatlers also and curious discoursing of things which they ought not For doth it not seem that the Apostle in these words hath made a Portrait of the major part of the Women of these days who fancy that because they are nobly born or have wit or beauty they have a dispensation from governing their family and from employing themselves profitably in working with their domesticks and that they may pass all their life in an idleness which the honester sort of Pagans would have been ashamed of since Cicero Cicero l. 1. Offic. as very a Pagan as he was acknowledged that Nature did not cause us to be born into the world for Play and Divertisement but to leade a serious life and to employ our time in grave and solid accupations Resolve therefore Sister to beat down this disorder in your children and particularly in your Daughters whose Sex is more inclined to this soft and delicate life Represent forcibly unto them that there is nothing more contrary to the spirit of Christianism than continual divertisements That Christ Jesus did not descend from heaven to earth to teach us to pass our life in plays and pleasures That we finde in the sacred Scripture that he wept and that his life was a continual chain of labours and pains but that we reade not that he ever divertised himself or that he took any joy or pleasure That we profess to represent his life by ours and that accordingly if we will divert our selves it must be in taking pleasure to be like him every day more and more in humiliy in Modesty and in Patience which are the Virtues he practised That it is not by the way of Play and divertisements that the Saints came to eternal delights That the Gospel places the happiness of this life in weeping and in tears and on the contrary its unhappiness in joy and laughter That this present life is not lent us but to labour for Eternity and consequently that the least Moments thereof are too dear and too precious to lose in profane and trifling amusements Finally St. Chrys Ser. 6. in Matt. inculcate frequently unto them with Saint Chrysostom that we were not called into the Church as into an Assembly where nothing is thought on but mirth and laughter but on the contrary that we are come into it to sigh and lament and to get a Kingdom by our sobs and tears 7. Advice That in the Education of Children Parents should particularly propose to themselves to induce them to consecrate themselves to God and to serve him YOu will finde little difficulty to withdraw your children from all these Precipices which I have noted into which the world strives to thrust them headlong if you remember that you ought not to love them but only in God and for God You cannot Salvian l. 1. Epist ad totam Eccles says Salvian better love those precious gages of Gods bounty which you have in your hands than in loving them in himself from whom you have received them And how hath God commanded Fathers and Mothers to love their children I my self will not tell you says this great man the sacred Scripture must teach it them which addressing it self to all parents ordains them to instruct their children to place all their hope in God Psal 77. and never to forget the effects of his power and of his mercy and to seek always with care the knowledge of his holy will Behold what riches God loves and which he will have parents leave to their children to wit Faith the fear of God Modesty and Sanctity and not earthly and perishable treasures Employ not therefore the love you owe to your children in heaping up for them temporal riches You can procure for them nothing greater or more precious than the eternal good which they can never lose Nothing will make them more rich than if you make them become the treasure of God himself This is the most important Advice which one can give to parents since upon it rowls all the rest and since the principal end you are to propose to your self in the Education of your children is to render them Saints and to induce them as much as in you lies to consecrate themselves entirely to God and to renounce the World The Apostle St. Paul says 1 Cor. 7.36 That if a Father thinks it is a shame to him to let his Daughter pass over the time of her youth without Marrying her and that he judges that he ought to do it he sins not if acting according to his thought he gives her in Marriage But he adds this Apostle v. 37. who being not engaged by any necessity and who finding himself in a full power to do what he pleases takes a firm resolution in his heart and judges himself that he ought to conserve his Daughter a Virgin does a good work Thus concludes he v. 38. he who marries his Daughter does well but he who marries her not does yet better Where you see Sister that although St. Paul blames not parents
entire Obedience I promise by him who lives eternally that I will give him no share in my goods but that I wholly disinherit him for ever The Church believed these vows of Fathers and Mothers so advantagious to children that she obliged the said children to observe them all their life There was no difference put between the destroying of ones self and the going forth of a Monastery after they had made this manner of engagement and the children had scarcely need of any other Profession than this solemn promise by which they were consecrated to God Whence it is The 4. Council of Toledo that in the 4th Council of Toledo it is said that whether a person is engaged in a Monastery by the devotion of his Parents or by his own choice he is always obliged to stay there nor is it permitted him to return to the world And that according to St. Isidore he who is placed in a Monastery by his Father and his Mother is to know that he is bound to remain there the rest of his life There was nothing unjust nor over-rigorous in this proceeding but on the contrary it was full of justice and highly advantagious to the children For if according to the rules of law a Father may in case of extreme necessity sell his son and make him for ever a slave to men in order to preserve a temporal life why shall it not be permitted by the rules of the Gospel to the same Father to offer his children to God and to procure for them a true liberty by engaging them to his service upon the design of procuring for themselves as well as for them an eternal life and happiness What is there in this action on the Fathers side which is not holy and conformable to his duty This Sacrifice being made with a most sincere intention and with a piety altogether disinteressed was it not a convincing proof that he had changed the natural love which Parents have for their children into a Charity totally Divine that he had surmounted that so common a desire which men have to conserve their Name and their Family particularly when they have but one only Child and that they possess much Wealth Finally that he had renounced those so sweet comforts which Parents feel in the conversation of their own children On the childrens side is this engagement to Religion to be dreaded Is not the yoak of Christ Jesus easy and his burden light especially to children who have not yet been sullied with any vice who have not yet been corrupted by any evil customes who from their cradle have been formed to Virtue who have been trained up in Piety who have had nothing but good examples before their eyes who have sucked as one may say together with the Milk the Rules of Christian Sanctity and who not knowing the world have had no share in its delights and vanities But however holy and laudable this practice was we must nevertheless grant my Sister that the Church hath with great wisdom limited the devotion of Parents She hath considered that what was formerly the effect of a great and sincere devotion was somtimes scarcely any more than an effect of avarice and cupidity that Parents oftentimes in these days sought not so much in placing their children in Monasteries to give them to God as to discharge themselves of those children to render the others richer and better provided for in the world And so she hath stopped by her laws their authority and set bounds to their power because they on the one side made it serve their ambition and on the other side oppressed the liberty of their own Children Yet she hath not bereaved them of the power to place them in their tender age in Monasteries to have them there educated and to put them in a state by this happy retrait to march on both more couragiously and more swiftly and also with less danger towards Heaven supposing they have no other end in this action than his glory and the salvation of their children and that they offer them to Monastries in an indifference of their being Religious or returning to the world as it shall please God to dispose of them But in this last practise there are two principal things to be observed in order to follow therein the spirit of the Church The first is the choice of the Monastery For Parents would be so far from procuring their childrens salvation that they would endanger their destruction if they took no care in placing them in Religious Houses to see whether those Houses are indeed Religious and whether they there will not engage their children to embrace their institute by perswasions which are altogether humane and by a spirit which is totally opposite to that of God Wherein it is so much more important that Parents suffer not themselves to be deceived by how much the least negligence would be very criminal before God in a matter of so great consequence The Second thing which Parents ought to observe is That when their children are in a house truly Religious and of a solid and disinteressed piety they draw them not forth of it to return to the World lest by taking them for a time from Christ Jesus who demands them to sanctify them they should give them to the world which demands them to corrupt them I know they want not specious pretexts for this they say that a true vocation must be tried that grace will triumph amidst the conflicts that a Resolution which is from God cannot be shaken either by the life of the world or by the lustre of Riches and that the prudence of the Holy Ghost when it is in a soul cannot be deceived by the cunnings of the spirit of darkness But I also know Sister that it is said in holy Scripture That he who seeks and loves danger shall perish in it and that consequently one cannot without a very great blindness bring back into the middle of the world such children as have been holily separated from it and fancy that they cannot be sanctified in a Cloyster unless the world could not have force enough to corrupt them God will have us try our selves but not put our selves into the hands of the World and of the Devil to try our selves He on the contrary commands us to fly from the mortal Enemies of our salvation for fear of falling into their snares to save our selves in the solitude for fear to perish with Babylon and to hide the treasure which we have found for fear lest in shewing it the Devil who seeks incessantly to take his advantages should take it away from us The Prudence of Gods holy spirit cannot be deceived but it leaves us and abandons us when we quit his house and the place where he cleared and enlightned us to enter into a place of darkness and of crimes And if the Charity which is in us could not be extinguished the Apostle would not advertise us not
from their Infancy and then they will never need our threats or our severity We carry our selves towards them in such sort as if a Physitian having said nothing to a sick person whom he saw fallen into a languishing condition and having prescribed him no remedies for his cure whilst they were capable to have their effect ordains him a great number after the noble parts were corrupted by the disease and that he was become incurable All the evill we see says he in another place Chrys ho. 46. in 1. epist ad Tim. proceeds from our own laziness and from our negligence and because we strive not to inform our children in piety in their most tender years We take much care and pains to have them instructed in the profane Arts and Sciences we procure for them with all our power advantagious employments in the Court and in the Camp We hourd up Wealth for them We get them Freinds In brief we do all we can to render them considerable in the world but we take no care to acquire them the favour and love of the King of Angels nor to make them obtain one day an honourable rank in the Court of Heaven And surely did parents timely accustom their children to the yoak of a holy discipline whilst they are yet young did they take pains to bring them by little and little to their duty when they first begin to be froward and hard to be ruled if they strove to cure the diseases of their soul when they have not yet taken root and to pull up their passions before they are grown strong we should have nothing to do with laws nor with judgements nor with punishments and chastisements For the Law as St. Paul says is not made for the Just but because we neglect their Education we enwrap them in a world of miseries and oftentimes we our selves deliver them up to the Executioners and throw them headlong into hell In Christianism it is the Maxim of a wise and discreet conduct to do all and to omit nothing which may strengthen us against the assault of vices But the means Sister to succeed in so holy an enterprise is in the lowest age of your children to seize upon all the avenues of their spirit and of their heart and to render virtue the absolute Mistress there by a prompt banishment of every thing which may make there the least vicious impression True it is that children are not capable to distinguish virtue and vice having not yet the use of reason But yet as a famous Divine observes they may contract according to the Idea's and the Fancies which they receive by their parents education a certain inclination which will much help them or much hurt them when coming to the use of their liberty they must apply themselves to vice or to virtue in making a good or bad choice and as St. Basil says that at the same time when reason shall dictate unto them the good they ought to do S. Basil in his great R. Rule 10. the habit and the custom will facilitate the execution And think not Sister that this is little considerable For if in the judgement of St. Thomas and several other Divines Man is bound by a natural precept and upon pain of Mortal sin to convert himself to God as soon as he hath the perfect use of reason it cannot be but that which serves for a disposition to so important an action must be of highest consequence What Father is there who knowing his son to be in danger of loosing his life or to fall into the hands of Enemies if he passes such a way endeavours not to put him in safety and to secure him from the dangers which threaten him And what Mother is there whose Daughter being loaden with precious Jewells watches not with much care for fear lest Robbers should bereave her of them We cannot doubt but that the devil employs all his industry to make a childe lose the grace of his Baptism and that he endeavours to determine him at first to make choice of Vice And since he hath no stronger Weapons to conquer us than our own inclinations can it be doubted but that he will easily bring about his designe if he findes those of a childe totally inclined to vanity and to the love of Worldly pomps and pleasures This made St. Gregory the Great say S. Greg. l. 4. Dial. c. 18. That although we are piously to believe that the baptized children who dye in their Infancy enter into the Heavenly Kingdom yet we ought not to imagine that all they who can speak are saved because there are some of them against whom Parents shut Heaven gates by the bad Education they give them The same Saint after he had related the dreadful chastisement which God laid upon a Father in the City of Rome for having suffered his Son of five years old to blaspheme the name of God thunders out these astonishing words 'T is thus that God would make known to this unhappy Father how highly he was culpable and that he would make him understand how by neglecting the Soul of this little Infant he nourished a great sinner for Hells eternal flames These are his own expressions And this undoubtedly made Sara whom the Apostle St. Peter 1 Pet. 3.2 proposes to all Christian Women for their pattern resolve to urge Abraham to drive Agar and her son out of his house because she feared lest Isaac should be corrupted by him and lest they should contract bad customes together And the resolution of this prudent Woman was so just Gen. 11.12 that God approved it having made known to Abraham that he ought not to oppose a designe which was so discreet and so advantagious to Isaac And surely even as a small straying which was not perceived in the beginning of a journey carries one extremely astray from the place one intended to go and as a little breach in a Damm being neglected causes in the sequel great spoils and havocks even so a small evil becomes mortal if one applies not a prompt remedy and that which in Infancy was only a simple affection for things indifferent becomes in a more advanced age a violent love for things prohibited The fair Language of Graccus's mother contributed much to his Eloquence says S. Jerome Hortensius learned to speak well in his own house St. Jerom. in epist ad Latam and Alexander the Great could not quit the Vices of a Governour who had taught him in his Infancy notwithstanding that he was otherwise very powerful and had conquered the major part of the World which shews how hard it is to blot out of the spirit of a young man the tinctures it hath taken in his Infancy that it conserves almost always the first impressions it hath received and that as St. Ireneus says what one learns in that age becomes as it were the same thing with our Soul St. Ireneus in ep ad Florin and is
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
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
God have all of them received displeasure in some of their Children Adam had the grief to see his younger Son murdered by his elder Brother Adam and to see that elder Son by a just judgement of God to be a Vagabond and Fugitive upon the earth for the punishment of his crime Of the three Sons of Noah Noah one of them discovered to his Brethren with contempt the undecent posture wherein he had found his Father in his drunkenness instead of hiding it from himself through respect as did his Brethren which drew upon his other posterity the malediction of his Father and that of God What displeasure had Isaac for the dissention which was between Jacob and Esau Isaac and which obliged him to banish Jacob many years from him and to send him into Mesopotamia till such time as Esau's anger was appeased Did not Esau marry strange Women against his will against which he had so great an aversion that he expresly recommended to Jacob not to imitate therein his Brother and never to take a Wife among the children of Canaan Jacob had the affliction to see four of his Children fall into a great crime Jacob. of which Joseph who was his youngest accused them before him He had the displeasure to hear that Reuben who was hiâ—â—â—â—est Son had abused Bala one of his Wives The indiscretion of Dina his only Daughter was the cause that she was carried away and ravished by Sichem who was a young Lord of his Neighbourhood Simeon and Levi two of his Children entred into a confederacy without his leave and against his will to revenge this fact and killing all the subjects of that Prince exposed their Father as he himself complained to the hatred of all his Neighbourhood All the world knows the affliction which the jealousy of his Children against Joseph caused him to undergo and the sorrow he had for the captivity of Benjamin whom he so tenderly loved Aaron saw two of his Sons who were consecrated to the service of the Altar Aaron punished with death for having committed a fault in the exercise of their ministery and he was so lively touched therewith that he could not eat that day of the meats which had been offered in Sacrifice nor apply himself as he ought to the functions of his Priesthood because as himself says he had his heart and his spirit overwhelmed with sorrow for this loss The great Priest Heli Heli. who was a very holy man had two very wicked Sons who after they had caused him much displeasure by the disorder of their life made him dye with grief when he was informed in what manner they were slain and the dreadful chastisement they had drawn down from Heaven by their crimes upon the whole people of Israel Samuel had but two Sons whom he had established Judges of the people Samuel But they were no sooner raised to that dignity but they suffered themselves to be corrupted with presents and appeared so self-interessed and so unjust that all the people rejected them and demanded a King of Samuel to place in their stead What displeasures did not David receive from his children David Ammon his eldest Son committed an Incest with his Sister Thamar Absalon his second Son slew Ammon at a banquet to revenge the injury done to his Sister and this Wretch having recovered the friendship of his Father studied secretly to raise the people against him then openly declaring himself and taking arms forced him to fly from Jerusalem abused his Wives in the sight of all the people and had the insolence to pursue him with his weapons in his hand and to give him battle Now if you desire to know why God permitted that these great men for whom he had done so many wonders and to whom he had testified so great love received notwithstanding such sensible displeasures from their children and that these children did so strangely degenerate from the Virtue and the piety of their parents it is easy to answer you that it is to teach Fathers and Mothers who have not the merit of these so illustrious men First that they are indebted only to Gods grace that their children cause not to them the same displeasures and that it would little avail them to have applied themselves with much care to the education of their children if he did not bless their endeavours Secondly that the greatest tryall which can befall a Christian Father and which God makes use of to prove his fidelity and his submission to the orders of his providence is to permit his children to fail in their duties and in what they are bound to render to God and that thus Fathers and Mothers ought to dispose themselves to support these sorts of afflictions and tryalls how hard soever they be with Christian dispositions when he shall please to send them Thirdly that as it is a matter of great difficulty not to commit some fault either in the manner of educating their children or in overmuch indulging them or finally in being too much tyed to them in a humane way God according to the immutable order of his Wisedom who punishes us by the same things whereby we have offended him makes use of children to chastise Fathers and Mothers for the faults they have committed upon their consideration Thus God punished the incontinence of David by taking out of the world the Son he had by Bathsheba and revenged afterwards the Adultery committed by him in secret with this Woman by the abuse which Absalon made of his wives in the open sight of all his people Finally God permits that parents should receive displeasure from their children not only to humble them and to try their fidelity and to punish the faults they may have committed in their Education but furthermore to purify the rational affection they have for them and to teach them to love them not because of the sweetness they finde in the submission and the respect they render them but because they belong to God For God will have them accustom themselves to look upon him alone in all they do for their children and to surmount all the difficulties which occur in the designe they have to bring them to his service even to suffer patiently the contempt they make of their advertisements and to pursue them by the example of St. Monioa St. Monica in spight of all their resistance till God hath touched their heart and till they have obtained their conversion by their tears and by their perseverance as that Saint obtained it for St. Augustin You will perchance tell me that I exact great things of you that I demand you should do all your actions in a spirit of Piety and Zeal for the interests of God that you should be perpetually employed to procure his glory in the children he shall please to give you and that by consequence I engage you to a continual Prayer since I propose unto you a conduct and Maxims which you cannot keep without being powerfully supported by him whose help we obtain by humble prayer All this is true Sister and I aver that to acquit your self worthily of the obligation you have to give your Children an entirely Christian Education you are to follow in this Education the Maxims of the sacred Scripture and the Advices of the Fathers of the Church to apply them from their tender Infancy to them particularly whom you de sign to live in the World to embrace the means which may enable you in this generous enterprise to overcome the oppositions which you shall meet therein and to imitate perfectly the excellent Idea's of the holy Education I have here traced to you in the conduct of God and that of his Church I avouch I say that to acquit your self worthily of all these Duties you stand in need of very powerful Graces and you ought to live in a continual search and in a profound adoration of the designes of God upon your Children You are very instantly to crave of him the use of his Lights to enter into the knowledge of their necessities you are to abandon your self to his spirit for the choice of such sentiments and feelings as you ought to instill into them and of the times when your chastisements and your instructions will be profitable unto them and you must pray unto him that since he who plants and he who waters is nothing he himself will give virtue to your Words that he will engrave in their hearts his Fear and his Love and that as he would make use of you to give them the Life of Body and to employ your cares to procure that of their Soul by Baptism he will also make use of you to conserve and strengthen in them his Spirit and his grace To conclude you are to propose to your self the attaining of a very high perfection and the faithfull practise of all the most Christian Virtues and to make it appear to the whole world by the Christian Education of your Children that you engaged not your self in Marriage upon humane considerations or upon any other score unworthy of Christianism but to make use of the terms of St. lib. of the good of Marriage c. 25. Augustin That you were not a Wife nor desire to be a Mother but for the love of Christ Jesus and for the interests of his Church FINIS