2112 ON INSTRUCTION BY CArecnisMS. there is no need to enlarge upon them. Experience has taught this inconvenience to every family who path tried it. Let the only point at the cause how it carne to pass thatthis catechism is so long and so difficult. It is well known that the Assembly's Larger Catechism was not composed for children, -but for men, to give them a large and full view of all the parts of our holy religion. 'There -are therefore many deep and diffi- cult points of doctrine contained in it, and that in those phrases and forms of speech which are chosen with much learned accu- racy by divines skilful in theological controversies ; and it must be confessed, that in such a complete and accur,:te scheme many ideas and many phrases will be far above the reach of any young child in the world. Now the shorter catechism is but an abridg- ment of the larger, and was madepartly with the same design of fulness and accuracy ; and it must be acknowledged it is a very judicious abridgment. It is said to be collected or drawn tip by a committee of divines, and approved by the assembly at West- minster; and it is expressed in many of the same phrases as the larger. The composition of it doth not seem to condescend quite enough to the weak understandings of children, either in the choice of the plainest sentiments, which are most needful for children, or the most easy and familiar language ; a multitude of the same latinized and theological terms are used in it as in the larger : the chief advantage of it for learners is this, that it is more easy for the memory, because it is shorter than the other. If this be well considered, the name or character of that venerable assembly who composed the larger catechism for men, and appointed the shorter as an excellent abridgment of it for the use ofthe more ignorant, cannever suffer any affront by hav- ing still an easier form of words drawn up for the instructionof young children in the principles of christianity, to prepare them for the better understandingandmore profitable use of both their catechisms. II. While I make an attempt of this kind, I do no more than twentyothers, have done before me, who had a most high esteem for the assembly's catechism, and a great and just vene- ration for it. Has not Dr. Owen, Mr. Edward Bowles, Mr. Thomas Gouge, Mr. A. Palmer, Mr. Matthew Henry, Mr. J. Noble; and other worthy men in England ; Mc. Cotton in New- England, Mr. Willison in Scotland, &c. composed shorter - catechisms for the use of children ? And has not this been the very reason which has set most or -all of -them to work, viz. that even the shorter catechism of the assembly of divines has been thought by many to be too long for young children to retain in their memory, and that all of them have supposed it too hard for children to understand ? What means the multitude of explications of this catechism
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