ON ÍNSTROCTi"ON BY CATECIÍÍSMS. tò distinguish how far, and in what sense works are to be ex- chided from our justification. Therefore if any persons imagine some expressions in these catechisms, and especially in the first of them, to be too legal, let them consider it ishardly possible to make the generality of children understand much more of the gos- pel than I have here represented. And indeed if it were possible, 1 can hardly think it proper to enter the spirits of children into nice distinctions and controversies. III. Rule. Seek out and make use of the very plainest words that can convey these necessary things to the minds of children. Endeavour to 'find out such ways of expressing the things of God as are borrowed from the things of men : And as far as the dignity of the subject will permit, use those expres- sions which are familiar, and are known to children in their younger years. It is a needful advice with regard to words; as well as to things, that when we teach children we must take the apostle's example, and provide milk for babes. In this case therefore we are not always to chuse out the most elegant and polite forms of speech, nor even the most sig- nificant and comprehensive words, if they are hard to be under- stood ; but we should rather use easier and plainer and more familiar forms of speech which come something nearer to our ideas of divine things, though they may not fully come up to Our manly conceptions of them ; for it is much better that a child should have some tolerable notion of the things of religion con- veyed to the mind by the plainest words that come near to those sacred ideas, than that he should be taught to pronounce the most polite, the most comprehensive phrases, the most accurate and expressive terms, under which he has no notion at all of the things designed. For this reason the language of scripture is not always necessary to be made the language of our younger catechisms : Indeedwhere the words of scripture areplain and intelligible to children, they should be preferred before other expressions ; but since the scripture was written for men rather than children, since it abounds in metaphorical expressions and in Eastern idioms of speech, since the doctrines and duties of it are not de- livered in a short catechetical or systematical manner, and since they are often expressed with a special reference to some parti- cular time, or place, or persons, and intermingled with long sentences of argument, or particular narratives of fact, I cannot think it best to confine our instruction of children to the rery expressions of scripture, whenwe can find shorter, easier and more familiar forms of speech to convey the saine doctrines and duties to the understanding. It is evident therefore that it can- not be always necessary to use scriptural phrases in younger
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