MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. Ancient and modern education contrasted. So weak and unhappy is human nature, that it is ever ready to run into extremes; and when we would recover ourselves from an excess on the right hand, we know not where to stop till we are got to an excess on the left. Instances of this kind are innumerable in all the affairs of human life; but it is hardly more remarkable in any thing, than in the strict and severe education of our fathers a century ago, and in the most profuse and unlimited liberty that is indulged to children in our age. : In those days the sons were bred up to learning by terrible discipline: every Greek and latin author they conversed with, was attended with one or many new scourges, to drive them into acquaintance with him; and not the least misdemeanor in life could escape the lash as though the father would prove his daily love to his son by never sparing his rod, Prov. xiii. 24. Now-a-days young master must be treated with a foolish fondness, till he has grown to the size of man and let his faults be never so heinous, and his obstinacy never so great, yet the preceptor must not let him hear the name of the rod, lest the child should be frighted or hurt; the advice of the wisest of men is utterly forgotten, when he tells us, that due correction shall drive out the folly that is bound up in the heart of a child, Prov. xii. 15. Or else they boldly reverse his divine counsel, Prov. xxiii. 24, as though they would make the rule of their practice a direct contradiction to the words of Solomon, namely that he that spareth the rod loveth his son, but he that hateth him, chastens him betimes. In that day many children were kept in a most servile subjection, and not suffered to sit down, or to speak in the presence of their father, till they were come to the age of one and twenty. The least degree of freedom was esteemed a bold presumption, and incurred a sharp reproof. Now they are made familiar companions to their parents, almost from the very nursery; and therefore they will hardly bear a check or rebuke at their hand. In the beginning of the last century, and so onward to the middle of it, the children were usually obliged to believe what their parents and their masters taught them, whether they were principles of science or articles of faith and practice; they were tied down almost to every punctilio, as though it was necessary to salvation; they were not suffered to examine or enquire whether their teachers were in the right, and scarce knew upon what grounds they were to assent to the things that were taught them; for it was a maxim of all teachers, that the learner must believe: Discentem operte credere. Then an ipse dixit, or Aristotle said so, was a sufficient proof of any proposition in the colleges; and for a man of five and twenty to be a christian and a protestant, a dissenter or a churchman, it was almost reason enough to say that his father was so. But in this century, when the doctrine of a just and reasonable liberty is better known, too many of the present youth break all the bonds of na ture and duty, and run to the wildest degrees of looseness, both in belief and practice. They slight the religion which their parents have taught them, that they may appear to have chosen a religion for themselves: and when they have made a creed or belief of their own, or rather borrowed some scraps of infidelity from their vain companions and equals, they find pretences enough to cast off all other creeds at once as well as the counsels and customs of their religious predecessors. "The practices of our fathers," say they, "were precise and foolish, and shall be no rule for our conduct; the articles of their faith were absurd and mysterious, but we will believe nothing of mystery, lest our faith should be as ridiculous as theirs." In their young years and before their reason is half grown, they pretend to examine the sublimest doctrines of christianity; and a raw and half-witted boy shall commence an infidel because he cannot comprehend some of the glorious truths of the gospel, and laughs at his elders and his ancestors, for believing what they could not comprehend. The child now-a-days forgets that his parents are obliged by all the laws of God and nature, to train him up in his own religion, till he has come to the proper age of discretion to judge for himself; he forgets or he will not know, that the parent is intrusted with the care of the souls of his young offspring by the very laws of nature, as well as by the revealed covenants of innocency and of grace. The son now-a-days forgets the obligations he is under to honor and obey the persons that gave him birth; he pays no regard to the doctrines which led Q4 |