.57$ ON h'DE EDUCATION OF YOUTH. government and goodness of the universal and supreme Father of all in heaven, He was informed why punishment was due to an offence against God or his parents, that his fear might become an useful passion to awaken and guard his virtue.; but he was instructed at the same time, that where he heartily,repented of a fault, and returned to his duty with new diligence there was forgiveness to be obtained both of God and man. When at any time a friend interceded for him to his father, after he had been guilty of a fault, ,lie was hereby directed into the doctrine of Jesus the Me- diator between God and man ; and thus he knew him as an inter- cessor, before he could well understand the notion of his sacrce and atonement. In his younger years he passed but twice under the correc- tion of the rod ; once for a fit of obstinacy and persisting in a falsehood ; then he was given up to severe chastisement, and it dispelled and cured the sullen humour for ever ; and once for the contempt of his mother's authority he endured the scourge again, and he wanted it no more. He was enticed sometimes to the love of letters, by making his lesson a reward of some domestic duty; and a permission to' pursue some parts of learning, was the appointed recompence of his diligence and improvement in others. There was nothing re- quired of his memory but what was first (as far as possible) let into his understanding; and by proper images and representations suited to his years, he was taught to form some conception of the things described, before he was bid to learn the words by heart. Thus he was freed from the danger of treasuring up the cant and jargon of mere names, instead of the riches of solid knowledge. Where any abstruse and difficult notions occurred in his course of learning, his preceptor postponed them till he had gone through that subject in a more superficial way ; for this purpose he passed twice through all the sciences ; and to make the doc- trines of christianity easy to him in his childhood, he had two or three chateehisms composed by his tutor, each of them suited to his more early or more improved capacity, till at twelve years old was thought fit to learn that public form, which is more_uni- versally taught and approved. As he was inured to reasoning from his childhood, so he w'aß instructed to prove every thing, according to the nature of the subject, by natural or moral arguments, as far as his years would admit ; and thus he drew much of his early knowledge from reason, or from revelation, by the forge of his judg- ment, and not merely from his teachers by the strength of his memory. His parents 'were persuaded indeed that they oaght to teach
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