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 Authors 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 rendered so dear unto me.  
Nor can I believe that the World itself, notwithstanding that it is accustomed to disapprove the do 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 merely 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 yourself 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 yourself: 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.  
'Tis to help you in this laudable design, 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 join the passages to one another, And if there are some Propositions the Authors 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 practice these wholesome 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 Authors Advice TO THE READER.  
THis Treatise of the Christian Education of Children, was Composed Eight or Nine Years since by a Churchman 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 herself 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 Friends, who judged it very proper to be made public; 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 accommodate 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 find all that can contribute to render their children's 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 find 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 finde 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 Author conceived, that his design being to prescribe Rules, not of Speculation but of Practice, 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 Practice by such as have a mind to follow them in the conduct of their Family.  
It is to be hoped that God will bestow his blessing upon this Book, because a very special care hath been taken that it should contain nothing which is not drawn from the two most pure Fountains of Truth, which are; The Sacred Scripture, and the Works of the Church-Father.   

THE Approbation of the Doctors.  
THe Education of Children, is one of the things of greatest importance in the World. The Pagans looked upon it as the only good of the Commonwealth; they applied thereto all their cares, and they composed Books upon this subject which are not the least considerable of Antiquity. Which notwithstanding, one may say, that all their Solicitude, and all their diligence proved unprofitable: They sought a good which was impossible for them to discover: The darkness of Paganism hindered them to acknowledge Virtue: and in instructing others, they could never frame to themselves any other than a gross Idea thereof, and a shadow far distant from the Verity. But the School of Christianism ought to be replenished with Masters much more clearsighted, and illustrated by the Lights which shine from the Fire enkindled in the Souls of the Faithful by the Grace of Christ Jesus. The sacred Scriptures and the works of the Fathers furnish the Matter and Form to make people truly good: and there may be found all the precepts which are necessary to instruct Fathers and Mothers in what they ought to teach their Children. The Author of this Treatise is assuredly of the number of these excellent Masters: His Piety and his Learning sparkle out (without Ostentation) in all the passages of his Book. We have read it with all possible exactness, and we judge it very profitable and very necessary to be published, etc. Given at Paris, the 24 of February, 1666.  
T. Fortin. Roileau.   

THE CONTENTS.  

The Preface. Page 1.  
Chap. I. Of the Excellency of Christian Marriage. pag. 6.  
Chap. II. That the Education of Children is one of the most considerable employs of Christianism: And of the first error which causes it to be neglected; which is the mean Idea men have of the Christian Life. p. 14.  
Chap. III. Of the Second Error which causes a neglect of the Education of Children; which is, the little care Parents take to preserve them in Innocence. p. 25.  
Chap. IU. How highly Fathers and Mothers are interessed in the Christian Education of their Children: and in particular of what importance it is to Mothers. p. 30.  
Chap. V Wherein particularly consists the Obligation which Fathers and Mothers have to endeavour the Christian Education of their Children. p. 42.  
Chap. VI With what Dispositions they are to labour in the Christian Education of their Children. p. 50.  
Chap. VII. What Ideas or Forms they ought to propose to themselves for their imitation in the Christian Education of Children. p. 68  
Chap. VIII. An Introduction to the Maxims, which Christians ought to follow in the Education of Children. p. 77.  
Chap. IX. The Maxims which ought to be observed to render the Education of Children Christian. p. 84. 

I. Maxim. Drawn from the sacred Scripture. p. 85.  
II. Maxim. Drawn from S. John Chrysostom. p. 88  
III. Maxim. Concerning the manner how Parents are to love their Children. p. 95.  
IV. Maxim. Concerning the care they ought to take to disentangle Children from the World, and to inspire into them Christian Sentiments and Feelings. p. 98.  
V Maxim. Concerning the search they ought to make of the predominant inclinations of their Children. p. 102.  
VI Maxim. Touching the Instruction of Children. p. 104.  
VII. Maxim. Touching the Motives whereby to engage Children to labour, and to do what one desires of them. p. 112.  
VIII. Maxim. Touching the care Parents ought to take for their children's health, and of what concerns their Bodies. p. 117.  
IX. Maxim. Touching what is particularly to be avoided in conversation before Children. p. 120.  
X. Maxim. Touching the Corrections of Children. p. 122.  
XI. Maxim. Touching the differences and disagreements which Children ordinarily have with the Domestics, and the liberties they take with them. p. 125.  
XII. Maxim. Touching the freedom which is to be given to Children to express their thoughts and opinions. p. 128.  
XIII. Maxim. Touching the Patience wherewith Parents are to support their Children, and to moderate their resentments of injuries received from others. p 132.  
XIV. Maxim. Touching the Equality, which Parents are to keep among their Children. p. 140.  
XV. Maxim. Touching the Lodging of Children. p. 150.  
XVI. Maxim. Touching the Complacency which Parents have in their Children. p. 151.  
XVII. Maxim. Touching the Plays and Recreations of Children. p. 152.  
XVIII. Maxim. Touching what Company ought to be permitted to children. p. 155.  
XIX. Maxim. Touching the care which is to be taken to induce children to do what they ought to their Fathers. p. 160.    
Chap. X. Important Advices for the Christian Education of Children. p. 165. 

I. Advice. Concerning the Exercises, and ornaments of the world. p. 165.  
II. Advice. Touching worldly Songs. p. 183.  
III. Advice. Touching Romances. p. 194.  
iv Advice. Touching Balls, Dance, and public Meetings. p. 203.  
V Advice. Touching Stage-Plays. p. 218.  
VI Advice. Touching Gaming, and against the Wantonness and Idleness of Worldlings. p. 246.  
VII. 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. p. 280.    
Chap. XI. At what Age these Maxims and these Advices ought to be applied. p. 303.  
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. p. 317.  
Chap. XIII. The means which facilitate the application of these Maxims and Advices in the Christian Education of Children. p. 326. 

The I. Means. Speech, Words, or Discourse. p. 327.  
The II. Means. Lecture or Reading. p. 352.  
The III. Means. Example. p. 364.  
The iv Means. Prayer. p. 371.    
Chap. XIV. What is most opposite to the application of these Maxims and these Advices in the Christian Education of Children. p. 394.    

OF The Christian Education Of CHILDREN.  

The Preface.  
NOthing is more common among men than Marriage, and nothing is more unknown than the Duties of this so common a condition: The major part of them who engage themselves therein look only on its outside, and on that which it hath of carnal and terrestrial, and they do not at all inform themselves either of the obligations which it includes, or of the extreme difficulties there are to acquit one's self Christianly therein. They embark themselves and enter upon this voyage of their whole lives, without knowing whether they go, or what course they are to steer: and contracting an undissolvable alliance with a strange person, they scarcely known him, who must be not only the Companion of their happiness or unhappiness in this life, but who must be one of the principal causes thereof, both in this life, and for all Eternity.  
To embrace solemnly a Regular life under the Obedience of a Superior chosen among many for his Virtues and for his good qualities, there must be at least a year of trial according to the Ordinance of the Church: but to have a Maid rank herself under the Obedience of a Husband, and take upon her the charge of a Family, (which requires almost the submission of a Religious person, and the prudence of a Superior), they fancy that no time is too short; they conclude these kind of affairs in the space of a Month or Fifteen days, without making reflection upon the dispositions and upon the qualities the persons have to acquit themselves of these Duties.  
Yet when they are once engaged, there is no more means left to give back. They must keep on to the end of their earthly pilgrimage, and satisfy the duties of their condition, or renounce their salvation. They may well repent themselves of the rashness of their engagement, but they are no longer free to change it. Wherefore they who find themselves thus tied up, seeing that God forbids them to disengage themselves, aught to believe that 'tis his will they should remain in that State, in whatever manner they entered into it; and that they should sincerely apply themselves to know and to practise that which he demands and expects of them.  
The knowledge of these Obligations which the light of God gives to some Souls, which are thus engaged without having maturely considered of it, is for them in some sort the beginning of their Vocation. For if one cannot say that they were called to the State of Marriage, yet one cannot doubt but that at least they were called in Marriage; and that suffices to move them to remain therein in peace and repose, according to the advice of St. Paul: Let every one remain in the Vocation and in the State to which God hath called him, 1 Cor. 7.20.  
All then they have to do, is humbly to adore the designs of God upon them, to content themselves with the measure of grace he gives them; and by not hiding from themselves the difficulties and the obligations of their State, to resolve to accomplish faithfully whatever God appoints them.  
Now if the persons who have slightly engaged themselves in Marriage are obliged not to hid from themselves the Difficulties and the Obligations of that Estate: they who as you, my Sister, have not embraced it, but after many Prayers and serious Reflections; may they neglect them without being unfaithful to the lights and to the graces by which God hath made them conceive the Hope of being sanctified therein, by accomplishing the things which he exacts of them?  
Wherefore to be in a condition to practise them yet more perfectly than you perchance have done hitherto; you must quit all humane sentiments and feelings, and raise up yourself above all the low and carnal aspects which people have ordinarily of Marriage, to the end you may enter into the sentiments of Christ Jesus, and into the designs he had in exalting this humane alliance to so high a dignity.   

CHAP. I. Of the Excellency of Christian Marriage.  
ONe of the principal reasons which induced the Saviour of the world to place so great a dignity upon the humane alliance of Marriage, was the will he had to sanctify by this means the generation of Children, and to give to married persons the necessary graces to apply themselves holily to their Education. For, as St. Augustin observes, 
August. l. 1. de Nupt. c. 8.  The will of faithful people not determinating itself in Marriage only to put Children into the world to die; but to the end that they being born again in Christ Jesus, may receive eternal life: how could they have acquitted themselves of this Duty with greater ease, than in receiving (when they contract this holy alliance) the particular grace which our Lord hath annexed to it, and which he hath merited for them by his Passion? 'Tis by this grace that Marriage hath been reestablished in its first dignity, from which it was fallen after sin, in the law of Nature, and in the law of Moses: And as the holy Council of Trent says; 'Tis by it, that the natural love, (which married persons bear to one another,) hath been perfected, that the iudissoluble union of their hearts hath been strengthened, and that all their actions have been sanctified.  
The 2d. Motive which induced Christ Jesus to raise the Marriage of Christians to the dignity of a Sacrament, was, that he might give us an exterior and sensible sign of the infinite love he bears us, and of the strict Union he hath contracted with the Church which is his Spouse: so that the principal glory of them whom he unites by this sacred knot, is the honour they have to represent perfectly unto us this Divine alliance. This is that which St. Paul admirably expresses in his Epistle to the Ephesiaus in such terms as I could wish could be engraven in the bottom of your heart, and which I conjure you to keep continually in your Memory.  
Let the Wives, (says this Apostle) be submitted to their Husbands as they are to God: for the Husband is the Head of the Wife, as Christ Jesus is the Head of the Church which is his Body, and whereof he is the Saviour. Wherefore as the Church is submitted to Christ Jesus, so Women ought to be submitted in every thing to their Husbands: And you Husbands, love your Wives as Christ Jesus hath loved his Church, and hath delivered himself to death for her, to the end he might sanctify her after he had purified her by the Word in the Water of Baptism, and that she might appear before him full of Glory, having neither blemish, nor wrinkle, nor any such like thing, but being holy and irreprehensible. Thus Husbands ought to love their Wives as their own Bodies. He who loves his Wife loves himself; for no one hates his own Flesh, but nourishes it, and entertains it as Christ Jesus doth his Church, because we are the Members of his Body, making a part of his Flesh, and of his Bones. And 'tis for this that it is said in the Scripture, that a man shall abandon his Father and his Mother to live with his Wife, and that of two which they were, they should become one selfsame Flesh.— Thus let every one of you love his Wife as himself, and let the Wife respect and honour her Husband, Eph. 5.22. etc.  
You see by this, my Sister, that St. Paul, makes a continual Parallel of Jesus Christ and of his Church with the Christian Bridegroom and his Spouse; that he concludes the Duties of the Wife towards her Husband, and the Duties of the Husband towards his Wife, of the Submission which the Church hath for Christ Jesus, and of the Grace which Christ Jesus communicates to his Church; and that he gives no other Idea or Form of the mutual Love or Fidelity which they own to one another, and of the indissoluble Union which ought to be between them, than the Love which Christ Jesus hath for his Spouse, than the Fidelity which this holy Spouse hath for Christ Jesus, and than the Union which he would have with the Church by rendering 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; 'tis also he who by his invisible hand hath tied 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 yourself 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 yourself to be conducted by his Spirit, as the Church leaves herself 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 Patriarches and the Israelites esteemed themselves very much honoured in having Children, because the people of God were thereby much augmented; that they hoped the Messiah 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 yourself of the principal Duties of the state wherein you are engaged, if you apply yourself seriously to give your Children a truly Christian and Holy Education, having first laid aside the false Lights and pernicious Errors, which are the cause why the major part of Fathers and Mothers neglect the Education of their Children, and that they have no other Ideas 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 Error 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 heroic 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, persuading itself that none but Religious Persons are called to Sanctity; and that the common Life of Christians hath nothing that is laborious 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, aught according to the express words of the Gospel, to be perfect as their Heavenly Father is perfect; Mat. 3.48. and as 
* Chrysost. count. vit. vitae. Mon. l. 3.  St. chrysostom 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 Error, 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 addresses to a faithful Father of Children.  
This great Saint, after he had made appear, that persons engaged in the world are no less obliged than the Religious to observe exactly the Commandments 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, 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 than 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 mere invention of men. The holy Scripture knows it not, but will have all Christians, and even them who are engaged in Marriage, observe the same Rules and the same Institute as do the Religious. Harken to what St. Paul says, and when I name St. Paul, it is as if I produced 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 , 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 clothing and dressing themselves may breathe nothing but decency and chastity: that they wear no frizzled hair, nor ornaments of Gold or of Jewels, nor sumptuous habits; but that they be clothed 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  ourselves we ought to be content: could he exact any thing more of Religious persons? 
After St. chrysostom 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 babbling and the reciting of Fables and human Inventions, but moreover pleasant fancies and immoderate gaieties; whether for the Meekness and for the Charity which he enjoins 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 find 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 , of vainglory, and of other Pomp's 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 design 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: 'Tis Christ Jesus himself who teaches it: 'Tis 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 Pomp's 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 yoke 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 enjoins to enter into the straight way, he lays not this command only upon Religious, but equally upon all men. Jesus (these are the proper terms of the Gospel) said to all; If any one will give himself to me, let him renounce himself; let him daily 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 persuaded, 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 Interior 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 Error, 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 one's Innocency, and that it is easily recovered, contributes also extremely 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 ourselves his Trophy 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 Baptised; 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 die.  
This moved St. Paul to say in his Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb. 6.4. That 'tis impossible for them who have once been illuminated, who have tasted the gift of Heaven, who have been rendered partakers of the Holy Ghost, who have been nourished with the sacred word of God and with the hope of the happiness 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, find 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 Victim, 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 Penance above the Idea which people are wont to form of it. So that one may say, 'tis 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. IU. 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 Child who is wise and well instructed, is all the joy of his Father, whereas a Child 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 Domestics and of his Friends. If he comes to die, adds he, it will scarcely appear, because he leaves behind him a Successor 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 advantageous 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 Friends, 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 Friends to join 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 slighted 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 withal: 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 myself do advance this astonishing proposition. It proceeds from Saint chrysostom; 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 men's sins, is the greatest of all crimes, concludes, that they who shall have neglected the good Education of their Children, aught with much more reason dread to be rigorously 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: 'tis 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 heinousness 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, broke his brain pan, and there died. So that forty years employed in the government of God's 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 Murderers. For although these of this Highpriest, 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. 'Tis thus, says St. chrysostom, that we ourselves treat our Children with more Inhumanity, than Barbarians would do; because all their cruelty can extend itself 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 wondered at, that God punishes with such severity the little care Parents have of the Education of their Children? and can we be surprised 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 Doctor, although these Children should afterward come to acknowledge themselves, and to get out of the way of Vice to walk in that of Virtue, and that by a pure effect of God's 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 children's ruin 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 Doctors, 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 God's 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 'tis 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 herself are reduced in a great measure to the Christian Education of her Children.  
'Tis St. Paul who teaches us this Truth, when after he had spoken of the modesty which Christian. Women ought to use in their , 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. chrysostom: My Sisters, do not thrust in yourselves to procure the glory of God and the salvation of your Neighbour by public Instructions. A woman meddled once only with teaching, and she ruined the whole World: yet do not you afflict yourselves 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 person of the first Woman, and he presents to you another occasion to save yourselves, to wit, the Education of your Children, whom you ought to consider as so many helps he affords you to arrive at his glory. Eve alone shall not be saved by the means of her Children, but all they of her Sex shall not gain Heaven but by the care they have taken in the Education of them whom God hath bestowed on them, in Faith, in Charity, and Innocency.  
'Tis upon this ground that the same Apostle will have the first thing upon which Widows are to be examined, when they were to be chosen for the Church's Ministry, to be, In what manner they have educated their Children: As if the most evident mark of the Sanctity of a Mother, were that of her Children, and that it was needless to seek any other proof of her fidelity towards God, and of her zeal for the good of the Church, but her fidelity and her zeal to see that the conduct and the conversation of her Children was solidly Christian.  
The foundation of all this is, that Children in their low age, are much more frequent with their Mothers than with their Fathers, and that Fathers have right to repose themselves upon them until their riper years. And thus it belongs to them to watch particularly over their Children in their Infancy, as from whom God will demand a more exact account of these years, the most important of our lives. As Children have almost always their Mothers before their eyes; may we not presume that they do nothing but what they have seen them do, that they have entered into all their ways; and to make use of S. Chrysostoms' terms, that 'tis as it were by necessity that they are become their likes.  
And moreover since nothing can be hid from Mother's concerning the secret Inclinations of their Children, because they have been witnesses of all their cries, of all their plays, and of all their motions: may one not without injustice attribute to them all the unhappy effects which have followed the Passions that they suffered to increase in their hearts; and are they not cause of the crimes which they hindered them not to commit, by not opposing themselves to the bad customs which they contracted under their government?   

CHAP. V Wherein particularly consists the Obligation which Parents have to endeavour the Christian Education of their Children.  
WHat we have hitherto said, sufficiently shows the Obligation which Fathers and Mothers have to labour with care to bestow on their Children a Christian Education; since we have made it manifest that this Education is one of the principal Duties of persons engaged in Marriage, and that they are highly obliged, especially the Mothers to be very careful and faithful therein. But because one cannot be too clearly convinced of this verity; we must, my Sister, more fully establish it, by showing that it is that which God particularly exacts of Parents.  
To be persuaded of this, there needs no more, but to consider on one side the submission of wills to Fathers and Mothers, wherein God will have Children to live; the feelings of love and acknowledgement which he commands them to have for them; and the recompenses he promises them to encourage them to honour them: and on the other side, the Authority which he gives Fathers and Mothers over their Children, and the rigour wherewith he revenges the contempt they receive of them.  It was not enough, says St. Chrysostom, that God in the design he had to recommend to parents the good Education of their Children, imprinted in their heart a natural inclination, which should so powerfully draw them, as that they could not without using violence to themselves disobey him; he would moreover that Children should have great respect towards their parents, thereby to render them more dear and more agreeable, and that their Obedience and their Love might be as so many charms which should allure them to take special care of them in their Infancy. 
And since nothing more strongly engages us not to neglect business, than the confidence they have in us, and the absolute power they give us: could God impose a sweeter necessity upon Fathers and Mothers in regard of their Children, than in making them their Masters; and by entrusting them with their Education to imprint on their foreheads the authority which is necessary to succeed therein?  
By revenging so severely the injuriries done by Children to them who brought them into the World, and punishing them with death when they offend them; doth he not solicit them, not only to educate them in the fear and in the submission they own to them, lest Justice should take them from them; but moreover to nourish them in the respect and in the fidelity which they own to him, who is truly their Father? And what a confusion must it needs be to parents, to see that God hath taken so much care to hinder their Children from affronting them, and that they have taken so little care that these same Children should be hindered from treading under their feet his Commandments and his Ordinances?  
But if that which God hath done in favour of Parents, permits them not to neglect this Education, that which he hath done for their Children doth not less indispensably oblige them to employ therein all their Vigilancy and their whole industry. What then? The Son of God shall annihilate himself for their love; he shall have laboured so many years, and suffered so many torments to sanctify them; and Fathers and Mothers would not humble themselves to instruct them, or use the least violence to themselves to form them in Virtue? He who needs no creature, made himself poor, and rendered himself obedient even to death, thereby to give them example, and to encourage them to contemn the World, and to labour for Eternity: and they whose very Salvation is advanced by the means of their Children, shall they not think of showing them the way to Heaven, and endeavour to withdraw them from that which leads them to eternal punishments?  
He hath made them members of his Body in order to make them partakers of his Glory: and they who have had the happiness to procure this good for them, shall they not take care to procure for them all the Spiritual Health and all the necessary proportion to increase in Christ Jesus who is their Head, and to receive from him by being united to him the increase which he communicates, as St. Paul says, to all the parts of his Body, by the efficacy of his influence?  
Certainly there's nothing more unjust nor more punishable than this conduct, nor is there any thing which Fathers and Mothers ought not to do to avoid it. They are to educate for God their Children, as he commands them, because his sole possession can make them happy.  
They ought to do it, because the exactness of his Justice will render them responsable for all the faults these their Children shall commit by their negligence. They ought to do it, because their labour shall receive infinite 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 heroic 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 with faithful, generous, and disinteressed Subjects; the Parliaments with firm and  Magistrates and Judges; Colleges 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 completes 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 horror. 'Tis it only which can make the spirit of Poverty flourish again, by exciting in the Hearts which it informs, a contempt of all creatures. 'Tis by it alone that the love of sufferings may be reestablished among Christians, by banishing from the yet-tender Bodies the eases and delicacies of the World, and accustoming them timely to suffer. 'Tis it alone which can conserve Order, and retain Inferiors in respect and submission to their temporal and spiritual Superiors, in using them to the practice of an exact Obedience: 'Tis 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 find 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 yourself from communicating unto them.  
'Tis 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 clothed in your bosom, they might take a new Nativity in Christ Jesus in the bosom 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 becoming the Members of Christ Jesus, and be enroled 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.  
'Tis 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 'tis 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 Ministry 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 Homely, o● the manner how Anna educated Samuel.  chrysostom) the Mother of little Samuel respected that Child because he was vowed 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 persuade yourself that your House should be all Holy, since it encloses those Children whom he hath sanctified and rendered 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 reborn 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 form in their actions, their inclinations, their affections, and their cogitations.  
The Church hath rendered them (by the consecration she hath made of them) the living Temples of the Holy Ghost, and the animated dwellings of the Divinity: she leaves them to you, to the end you should have the glory to finish these Spiritual Buildings, and that you should adorn them with all the Virtues and all the enrichings beseeming the presence of so sublime a Majesty.  
She received them not into her bosom, 
Tertul. de coro. militum. and in l. de Spectaculis. Cyprian. epist 7. Optatus Melevitanur. l. 5. cont. Parm. Salvian. l. 5. de Providentia. Cyril. cat. 1. Amoros. l. the instuend. Cathecum. Augustin. l. 2. de Symb.  but upon condition that they should wage War with the World, with the Devil, and with themselves: she presents them to you, to the end you should direct and fashion them for the combat, and that they may learn under your conduct to contemn all the vanities of the World, and to triumph over all their Passions.  
These are the Souls which she will introduce into the Marriage-chamber of the Lamb; she entrusts you with them, to the end you should  them with Nuptual Garments, that you should preserve their Purity and their Innocence, that you should not permit any creature to seize upon their hearts, or rob this celestial Bridegroom of the affection they own him. Finally, the Church encharges you with the Education of your children because she judges that no other person hath more Interest than you to put them in an estate to conserve the Grace of Christ Jesus; and to continue them in the favour of this Sovereign Monarch of the whole World.  
Ought you not then to tremble, my Sister, in the sight of an employ so great, so sacred, so difficult? Can one commit small faults in the administration of a thing so holy and so precious; And now shall we wonder that the Son of God hath raised Marriage to such a dignity, since the persons who are therein engaged, have need of such extraordinary grace to acquit themselves, as they are bound by their Duty, and to fill up worthily the extent of their Vocation?  What shall I do (said once St. Bernard, 
Bernard. Serm. 3. Dom. Advent.  considering that he was encharged with the care of Souls) and on what side shall I turn myself, unhappy man that I am, if I come to keep with negligence this great Treasure wherewith I am entrusted, and this precious Depositum, which Christ Jesus himself hath judged preferable before his own Blood? If I had gathered up the Blood of my Saviour at the foot of his Cross, which I had put into an Earthen Vessel, and should have been obliged to transport it from one place to another; in what pain and in what a fright should I have been in this danger? yet that in which I now find myself is nothing less: For they have entrusted me with the care of Souls for which this wise Merchant, and who is Wisdom itself, hath given all his Blood; and this treasure is shut up in Vessels of Earth exposed to a thousand dangers to be broken in pieces. 
But to make you comprehend yet more the greatness of this danger, and the difficulty of this employment; you must know that it is not enough for you to apply yourself to the Education of your Children by a secret inclination which Nature forms in the heart of all Mothers, and by motives purely human, which they cannot avoid: You will do no more if you act only in this manner, than what the Pagans, and even the most barbarous people do as well as you; and that which in some sort the fiercest Beasts perform more faithfully than you; But you ought to labour herein with sentiments altogether particular of piety, and to make it the principal part of your Devotion.  
And yet who thinks of this? How many pass for good people who perchance have never thought of offering to God the cares and labours which they propose to employ in this Education, who have never implored his grace, nor taken care to strengthen that which they have received upon this account, and who have never protested to God that they would seek only his glory and his Interests in their Children. Thus it is that by following merely the movings of Nature, which is totally corrupted by sin, Parents without any design to distil Vice into their Children, do notwithstanding educate them only according to the Maxims of flesh and blood, which are contrary to them of the Gospel, and which draw them into an unhappy necessity of following the World.  
When I say, my Sister, that this Negligence of Fathers and Mothers draws the Children to follow the World, think not that I intent to speak of the Civil Society, and that I complain only that Parents bring not up all their Children in the design of making them Religious. I speak of the World, which yourself hath made them renounce, by making them receive Baptism; of the World which hath been excommunicated by the mouth of Christ Jesus; of the World which hath much love and much esteem for the goods of the Earth, and for the pleasures and commodities of Life, and which hath nothing but aversion and contempt for that which God loves, and for what he commands. John 1.15. and ch. 17.  
I complain with St. Chrysostom, 
Tom. 5. upon the 20. chap. of St. Matt.  That there are so many Mothers so affectionate for what regards their children's Bodies, and so indifferent for the perfection of their Souls; That they desire with so much passion to have them exempt from the incommodities of this life, and that they care so little for the torments which attend them in the other. I complain with this great Doctor, that Fathers are so solicitous to procure for their children great Employments and Honourable Offices, without thinking to procure for them the the possession of God: That they purchase at an excessive price that which must cause their loss, being unwilling to receive as a pure gift their eternal salvation: That they afflict themselves, and sigh to see their children in poverty, without testifying any sorrow to see them commit crimes which deprive them of the Riches of grace.  
Be afraid, my Sister, be afraid to fall into this blindness: and since it proceeds only from the small reflection which Parents make upon the excellency of their Vocation; consider often, that you have in custody that which is in the world most precious, that not only the whole world was created for this child whom you are to educate, but that Christ Jesus himself annihilated himself for him. Hereupon protest that you will not love him, but because he hath loved him; That you will take an exact care of him because he belongs to him; and that you embrace with humility and joy all the pains you are to endure, in training him up to perfection, in regard of the pains and labours which Christ Jesus suffered for him, and of the blood which he poured forth to sanctify him.  
Propose to yourself, that you will establish your children as your supplement near unto God, in the practice of the Virtues which you perhaps have neglected: If Christ Jesus hath lost in you some of his rights and deuce, let him find 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 errors of your life; and let their fidelity and their Submission to his Commandments, extenuate your unfaithfulness 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) justify 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 ourselves of our Marriage, is to see you draw some profit from the labours we have endured; and I shall esteem myself almost as happy to be a Mother of Virgins, as if I myself 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: 'tis a sacred Hostie, the Sacrifice whereof being daily renewed renders God propitious towards the Mother who presents it.  
Do not therefore propose to yourself, my Sister, any thing that is mean or indifferent in the Education of your Children, since you yourself 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 designs 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 Model 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 Thiefs, 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 thiefs, when you permit base and servile desires to possess them, and irregular concupiscences to master them. For 'tis 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 yourself 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 yourself to make them keep the pact and bargain they made with God in that Sacrament; have always 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 yourself faithfully of this your Duty, which is the greatest and holiest of the World.   

CHAP. VII. What Ideas 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 'tis 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.  chrysostom) hath rendered 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 Commandments: He inspires them with a holy horror (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 'tis 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 practise after a gross manner and accommodated to their weakness, that which the faithful in a riper age and after the coming of Christ Jesus ought to know and exercise distinctly.  
'Tis 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 horror of sin, and an extreme dread to displease God; you are to accustom them to bless him and to thank him for all they have, making them to understand that 'tis 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 yourself 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. Examine 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.  
'Tis 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 Fast and other Mortifications disposes them (according to the thought of Tertullian) to suffer if it is necessary Martyrdom itself; 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 Ministry which concerns Religion, she confirms upon them the character 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 sovereign Power by the mouth of children, and even of them who hang yet at their Mother's breasts to confound his Enemies; and that when he reprehends his Disciples for hindering these little children to come to him, as 'tis 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 Commandments, 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.  
'TIs 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 Practice in making this Copy all the Maxims of his Art. It suffices not then that you propose to yourself in the Education of your children these exceilent Ideas 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.  
Wherefore 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 sanctified in Baptism, and that they are there replenished with the graces and gifts of the Holy Ghost; yet the concupiscence is not taken from them in this Sacrament, and there remains in their hearts a certain Inclination towards the creature, which is the cause of all the sins committed in the World, and which is commonly attributed to the corruption of Nature.  'Tis this concupiscence which (in the opinion of St. 
S. Aug. l. 1. Conf. c. 7.  Augustin) causes children to covet the duggs of their Mothers with so much greediness, and to seek for the bosom of their Nurse with such sensible signs of impatience. 'Tis through it that they demand with so much eagerness and tears the things which are hurtful unto them: that they are vexed and displeased with them who will not submit to them, that they show themselves froward against free persons, and such whose age should render venerable to them, against their Fathers and Mothers, and against so many others who are incomparably wiser than themselves; and that they strive even as much as they can to hurt them by striking them, because they will not do what they desire of them, nor will blindly obey them in things which would prove pernicious unto them. And thus (pursues this Father) the weakness of the Body is innocent in Children, but the spirit of Children is not so; and we suffer in them patiently many things not because they are not bad, since one cannot suffer them in persons more advanced in age, but because we hope they will vanish together with their Infancy. 
You are therefore, my Sister, to consider your children as totally inclined and wholly bend to evil. And do not doubt, but these impatiences which they make appear, this obstination not to will but what themselves will, this despite, this love of play, this disgust of their first instructions, this curiosity, this desire of overcoming, this ardour to command, this aversion they have from Prayer, this jealousy they conceive upon the signs of friendship given to their Brothers or Sisters, this envy and this desire to ravin from others all they possess; finally, the inclination they have to lie, and the esteem they have for the glittering vanities and ornaments of the World, proceed from the same principle which causes the hatreds, the murders, the envies, the jealousies, the desire and the love of the goods of the earth, and of the Pomp's of the World, and which causes them to fall, who are in a ripe and advanced age, into greater disorder.  
In effect, grace being not given to man, but to perfect his Nature, the action of grace supposes that of nature; and man must be capable to reason before he can be assisted and sustained in his ratiocination. So that the superior part of the soul being not capable in children to do its functions; and the regulation of the inferior depending on its orders and its lights: this which hath no need of extraordinary succours to carry it on towards its object, but which hath a natural bent towards pleasing things, which cannot be regulated by grace, which doth not yet act in them; seizes upon the command, and giveth liberty to all the passions to sally forth, and to make appear in all the actions of children, and in their weakest motions, the Empire they have in their hearts, and the violence wherewith they draw them towards creatures.  And this is it, 
St Aug. l. 1. Confess.  (exclaims S. Augustin) which is the pretended innocence of children. There is none for them, Lord, there is none for them, my God; and I demand your pardon yet at this day, for having been of the number of these innocents'. For 'tis the very same and this first corruption of their spirit and of their heart, which passes by sequel into all the rest of their life. Such as they were in respect of their preceptours, and of their Masters, they are in regard of Kings and of Magistrates. After they have committed petty-Injustices to get Nuts, Balls, and Birds; they commit great ones to heap up Money, to get fair Houses, and to have a multitude of Servants. Their irregularity increases with their age, as the great Punishments which the laws ordain, succeed the light Punishments of children. And thus, my God and my King, when you said in the Gospel, That the Kingdom of Heaven is for them who are like to children, you did not only propose the Innocence of their Spirit for a model of Virtue, but also the littleness of their Bodies as the image of Humility.  

CHAP. IX. The Maexims which ought to be followed, to render the Education of Children Christian.  
'TIs upon these Principles I have now proposed, that all the advices and all the Maxims which the Fathers of the Church have given to Parents touching the Education of their children, are supported. And 'tis without doubt for this subject that the sacred Scripture enjoins them to use therein a holy Rigour and a just severity: because their age being susceptible of apprehension, which is a natural motion, there's nothing but fear that can retain them in their Duty, and render them capable of Discipline. This you will observe in the ensuing Maxims.  

Maxims drawn from the Sacred Scripture.  
SOlomon says in the Proverbs, Pro. 13.24. That he who chastises not his son doth truly hate him, and that he who loves him with a real love, watches incessantly to his Education, and pardons him in nothing.  
Pro. 22.15. That folly and the inclination to disorderly things is as it were collected and heaped together in the heart of a Child, and that there is nothing but a somewhat severe conduct that can drive it from thence.  
Pro. 33.13. Take great heed (pursues this Wiseman), that you permit not your children to take overmuch liberty, and that you withdraw them not yourself by a too great facility from your Discipline: for your son will not die for being a little chastised. You shall strike him with the rod and give him some blows; and you will deliver at the same time his soul from Hell, by hindering him from falling by this rational severity.  
Pro. 29.15. The Wand and Correction give Wisdom: whereas a Childc left to his own will affords nothing but confusion to his Mother.  
Pro. 24.5. Educate well your Son, he will prove your comfort, and he will fill your soul with joy.  
Eccle. 52.5. Be not therefore ashamed (says Ecclesiasticus) to make show of great solicitude and a strong application for the well bringing up of your Children.  
Eccle. 30.1. He who loves his Son chastises him for every fault he commits, and almost continually.  
Eccle. 30.8. As an untamed Horse becomes restive and hard to be managed, so a Child who is left to himself becomes sturdy and temerarious.  
Eccle. 30.9. If you nourish your Son with Milk (which is the symbol of meekness) he will make you fearful, and you will become terrible to yourself: If you play, and render yourself over-familiar with him, he will bring you sadness.  
Eccle. 30.10. Do not laugh, nor divertise yourself with your Children, for fear lest one day you may repent it, and that in the end you be not constrained to show extraordinary signs 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 show 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 horror 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 Doctors 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 increase his Patrimony, or at least 'tis 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 control 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-childrens be so honest, and their purity so singular, that they may deserve praise from God and from Men. Let them learn under your Discipline, Abstinence, and Sobriety; not to make superfluous expenses, but to let alone all magnificence, which is commonly sought after in things of show 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 ourselves to be led by the mere 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 exterior 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 rendering him a faithful man. He stands in need of Modesty, and not of Eloquence; of good manners, and not of crafts and subtleties; of good actions, and not of fine words; endeavour to render his soul pure, rather than his tongue polished: Not that I forbidden the instruction of children, but 'tis 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 recompenses for having adorned the Image of the Sovereign 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 show you in the sequel, in the mean while because I should enlarge myself 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 damage 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 overstrong 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 Idols 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 repartees 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 child whom she sees to be infirm.   

4. Maxims concerning the care they ought to take to disentangle 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 Pomp's 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 compliments 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 form 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.  
Mother's are wont to teach their children in such manner that they may conceive a horror 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 blind them and to surprise 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 passionately 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 public Interest; extol before them the glory of these sufferings, and strive to make them relish the happiness there is in exposing one's 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 yourselves to be ill-treated. And then endeavour to make them render some small service, or show 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 threatening them yourself, 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 happened unto them.   

5. Maxims concerning the search Parents should make of the predominant Inclinations of their Children.  
Study the nature of your Children and their Inclinations; and having observed that to which they are most biased, apply yourself 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 reigns in them, will be very useful to you for their particular conduct. For there are certain Passions which must not be openly set upon, but must be battered by removing the objects which excite them, and by presenting good ones unto which they may apply themselves: And there are others on the contrary, which (as we may say) they must be forced to produce, to the end that Parents may make use of the very faults which they cause them to commit, how little soever they appear, that so they may give them a horror and an aversion from them which are more animated.  
Besides that, you ought particularly to propose to yourselves in the conduct of your Children, to follow God, and to conform yourselves (as much as in you lies) to the dispositions which he shall put into their souls; to the end that by making use of the knowledge you have of their dispositions, you may apply them to such things as are proper for them, and to which you shall judge they will most freely apply themselves.   

6. Maxims touching the Instruction of Children.  
PRopose unto them little rewards, to engage them to remember what you teach them: and (as says St. 
St. Jerome in Epist. ad Le●am.  Jerome), Gain them by small presents and by things they most esteem, as by comfitures or poppets.  
Make them acquainted with children of their own age who are well educated, that so they may have an emulation for them, and that the praises you give them may excite them to imitate them.  
Do not hastily reprehend them if they are of somewhat a meek temper, but encourage them sometimes by praises; and at other times causing them to render an account of what they have learned before them of their own age, bring it so about that they may rejoice to have outgone them, and then ashamed to be behind them. St. Jerom. ibidem.  
Take heed above all, that they get not a hatred of Studies, lest they having taken an aversion from them in their tender age, should retain it in their riper years. Endeavour to make them love what they must be constrained one day to learn and practice; to the end it may not be then a pain to them but a pleasure, and that they may not do it by constraint, but by their own choice. You must neglect none of these least things, when the greatest cannot well subsist without them.  
Increase and nourish in them the love of labour, by keeping them always employed. Let the changing of their business be their divertisement; and let pious reading succeed their prayers and employs. Time seems short when it is divertised by good occupations.  
Remember that there's no time to be lost in the instruction of children; and that as you are to apply yourself to form their manners from their most tender years, you are also from their most tender Infancy to imprint in them the first disposition to the Sciences.  
True it is, that one can hardly during all that time teach them what they will apprehend in one sole year of their riper age. But because they must of necessity be employed in something, even in that age, one can assuredly do nothing better to make them employ their time profitably, after they once begin to speak, than in making them to study to speak naturally and in good terms: and one should never neglect any thing which may conduce in the least to their advantage, because they will thereby become capable to learn things of more importance in the age in which they must learn those of less concern, if they have not already learned them. 'Tis thus that advancing by little and little, children find themselves capable in their youth of great matters; and that the time well husbanded during their Infancy, contributes much to make them employ more profitably the time of their following youth.  
Yet they must not be too much pressed to any thing, but one is to accommodate one's self to their strength and to the reach of their spirit. Studies have (as it were) their Infancy as well as man: and as the strongest bodies have been nourished with milk, and laid in a cradle in the first years of their life, so the most eloquent Men have sent forth cries like others, and have had at their beginning like them a difficulty to speak and to form their Letters.  
Philip of Macedon had not made choice of Aristotle, who was the greatest Philosopher of his age, to teach Alexander the beginnings of humane learning; nor had that Philosopher undertaken that employ, had not both the one and the other been persuaded that the first tinctures of Studies ought to be received from the most able persons. Manage therefore, my Sister, so discreetly the first years of your children, that all may serve to render them both more knowing and more pious.  
Cause them to learn to read in such books, where the purity of language and the choice of good matter meet together. 
S. Aug. l. 1. Confess. c. 15. n. 2.  St. Augustin thanking God for having forgiven him the faults he had committed in his Infancy by taking overmuch pleasure in vain things, which he learned by reading the Poetical fables and fictions, says, that although it is true, that he had learned many useful words among those follies, it was nevertheless more true, that he might as well have learned them in more serious Lectures; and that to do so is a sure way to instruct Children well. 'Tis this therefore, my Sister, which you ought to practise in regard of yours: and to take care that the lectures you give them in order to teach them to pronounce distinctly, and to observe the Points and Commas, and to discern a perfect sense from an imperfect, be more profitable than curious.  
When they shall begin to write, permit not the Copies which are given them to be stuffed with bad manners of speaking, and with the first fancies which fall into the mind of a Master: but provide that there may be proposed unto them such Verses or Sentences as contain some pithy expression or some pious Rule of Christian Morality. One may insensibly by this means replenish their memories with the greatest Truths: and as they shall have made a strong impression in their tenderest Infancy, they will easily present themselves to them when they shall be more advanced in age, and capable to make good use of them.  
Your principal care ought to be to cultivate their memory, and to make them learn by heart as many things as you can. In effect, as on the one side the spirit of children is not then capable to produce many things of itself, and on the other side they have ordinarily a very good memory, there is scarcely any other faculty of their soul which one can profitably exercise.  
When they shall be in an estate to go to the Schools, or to have a Master in the house, make choice of the best regulated College, and of Masters, not only the most able, but the most pious and 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 yourselves 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 cloth, or on a Marblestone, but upon the spirits? Yet we neglect all these things. We trouble not ourselves to render our children Christians, but eloquent: and this very desire is for our own interest. For the end we propose to ourselves, 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 slight 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 recompense 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 yourself 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 children's infancy the thirst which Men, but particularly Women, have after these sorts of vanity, to entertain it and cause it to increase in them by refusing to afford them such Ornaments as they see others use: take care at least (as this great Doctor advises Gaudentius) that your children may perceive how they of their own age are praised for not using such sorts of Ornaments. Make much of them yourself in their presence: speak with praise of their modesty and of their comportment; and insensibly strive to instill into yours a disgust of all exterior trickings and trim 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 endued 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 show 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.  
Avoid 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 study, 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 tied 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 Palaces; 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 Latin Tongue. And thus it is, (exclaims this great Doctor,) 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 vainglory, which corrupt and stifle in their souls all the seeds of virtue; which cause to spring up there such a quantity of thorns and briars, and which spread about so much sand and dust, that their spirit remains barren and uncapable to produce any fruit,  
'Tis of this disorder that St. Augustin complains to God, 
S. August. l. 1. Confess. c. 9 n. 1.  when making reflection 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 excel 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 children's health, and for what concerns their bodies.  
BE not over-solicitous 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 to comfort them and to cure them, strive nevertheless to make them in love with sufferings; accustom them to complain as little as may be, and by little and little instill into them constancy and stability.  
Repress in them such inconsiderate desires as are ordinary in that age; and teach them, for example, so to regulate their thirst and their hunger, according to the laws of temperance, that they may inure themselves by little and little not to have so much as a desire to do what they know they may not do honestly. St. Augustin for a mark of the discretion and of the prudence of a maidservant extremely aged, 
St. August. l. 9 Conf. c. 8. n. 1.  to whom the Parents of St. Monica had committed the conduct of their Daughters, relates, that except the hours in which they repasted themselves very soberly at the table of their Father, whatever violent thirst they felt, she permitted them not so much as to drink water, for fear lest they might contract that bad custom.  
The thing which I entreat you most religiously to observe, is, my Sister, to accompany always the refusal which you are constrained to make, with so much sweetness and such testifications of good will, that it may be to them supportable; and by giving them such reasons as they are capable to relish, and which relate only to their own Interest: strive to send them away better satisfied with your refusal, than they would have been with your overmuch easiness.   

9 Maxims touching what is particularly to be avoided in conversation before Children.  
NEver suffer in their presence vices to be covered with the name of virtue: 
St. Chrysost.  Let it not be said, that 'tis to be of a good humour to frequent Shows, Balls and Comedies: That 'tis to be liberal, to make great expenses: and that 'tis to be courageous to have ambitious designs.  
Permit not the name of vice to be given to virtue: to call devotion that which is hypocrisy, liberality that which is prodigality; the love of retreat, a savage disposition; the fear to offend God, a scrupulosity and a weakness.  
Rouse up their courage without raising in them ambition: render them bold without egging them on to rash erterprises: teach them to be meek without effeminacy; constant without obstinacy; grave without severity; eivil and obliging without baseness; frank and free without folly and fondness; prudent without cozenage; secret without dissimulation; liberal without prodigality; good husbanders without avarice; devout and religious without superstition.  
Repeat unto them no less frequently then did the Mother of a great King, these words: my children, God knows how well I love you; but I had rather an hundred thousand times see you carried to your graves, than to see you commit one only grievous sin. Perhaps you may be so happy as to engrave deeply in their soul this sentiment, and to conserve them, as this Princess did this great person, in the Innocence of their Baptism.   

10. Maxims touching the correction of Children.  
YOu must let pass no faults without punishment: but you must not equally punish every fault. The blemishes which dust makes upon a garment is cleansed by shaking it off, and not by casting water upon it or by applying fire to it. You are to employ remedies according to the strength and the nature of the constitution and complexion of the diseased person.  
As nothing but love aught to move you to punish them, it were to be wished that they could be persuaded that you acted towards them only by that principle, and that you should always appear rather their Mother than their Mistress, according to these pithy words of the Author of that letter to Celancia. You ought to be have yourself, says that excellent man, towards all them of your house, and rule them in such sort, as that they may consider you rather as their Mother than as their Mistress; and it must be rather the goodness and the sweetness you testify to them, than your rigour and your severity, which must oblige them to render you all the respect they own you.  
Above all, beware of treating them amiss, when you are in choler; and take heed of entering into passion against any one in their presence; to the end they may not lose the natural fear they have of angering you, and that they may always apprehend the effects of an irritated power, whereof they never have had the experience.  
Because a child stands in awe of you, do not reprehend him, nor threaten him upon all sorts of occasions, but only in such things as are absolutely vicious, or which conduce to sin. Leave them in great liberty as to things indifferent, and which will pass away as they increase in age and in judgement: and remember that there's nothing more dangerous than to accustom children to chastisement, because thereby one hardens them rather than corrects them.  
It were to be wished that children had never heard the mention of blows or of rods; that the sole desire to please you, or the sole dread to anger you, regulated all their motions; and that, following the Counsel of a great Bishop, you could bring them to respect you rather by your sweetness and by your goodness, than by a harsh and severe carriage.  
For my part, I conceive that the rigour which the sacred Scripture, in those many passages which I have before-cited, ordains to follow in regard of children, is exercised much more perfectly, and even according to the spirit of God, by the refusal of a kiss or of ordinary cherishings, than by whip or other bad treatments of the body; and that the greatest dexterity of Fathers and Mothers consists in rendering their children so jealous of the marks of goodness they give them, whereby they become much afflicted at the least coldness appearing in their countenance; that they fear nothing more than to be deprived of their presence; and that nothing is to them more sensible, than to see their Father or their Mother prefer the service even of an underling upon occasions when they were disposed themselves to obey them.   

11. Maxims touching the differences and disagreements which children ordinarily have with the domestics, and the liberties they take with them.  
TAke good heed that you be not transported with anger, when it chances that the servants exclaim against your children, Inform yourself gently of the subject of their plaints and tears; and even when you shall find out that your servants were in fault, never reprehend them in the children's presence, for fear they should thereupon grow insolent, and should from thence take an occasion to be absolute in all things, and to exercise a petty-tyranny over your domestics, upon the assurance of being supported by you in their self-wills.  
But if on the contrary your servants have chanced to say or to do something that is bad in the presence of your children; although otherwise they may be excusable, yet fail not to testify your being displeased, and to reprehend them vigorously before them. The child 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 domestics, and especially with Lacquais and Footboys. These kind 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 domestics; 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. Father's 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 yourself oblige them by your rigour to wound the respect which they own 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 slaughtered 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 rejoice; 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 proceed 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 yourself, since 'tis 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 own to their Fathers and Mothers, when they find 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 'tis 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 yoke of a command full of threats and of terror.  
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.  
'TIs 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. the civet. 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 pierced with sorrow for so great an injury, and suffering herself 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 daybreak to pronounce this imprecation against him upon the sacred Font of Baptism. The Devil presented himself to her in her way under the form of her husband's brother who was Uncle to her children, and questions her whether she was now going? she answered, that she went to lay a curse upon her eldest Son because of the insupportable injury he had done to her: then that accursed fiend who had no difficulty to find an entrance into the heart of this Mother, which the spirit of revenge and of anger had opened unto him, persuades her to extend her malediction upon all her other children, since their silence rendered them no less criminals than their eldest brother.  
This Woman therefore suffering herself to be inflamed with choler against all her children by that envenomed counsels of this tempter, comes to clip and embrace the Baptismal Font, spreads abroad her hair, discovers her breast, and demands of God in this posture, that he will revenge her of all her children in such a manner as that they may bear about them over all the earth, the marks of the chastisement laid upon them for the outrage she received from them; and that they may imprint by their example a terror into the spirits of all people.  
Her prayer was heard so speedily, that her eldest son was struck at the same instant with a horrible trembling in all the Members of his body: and within less than one year all her other children were punished with the same chastisement, one after another, according to the order of their birth.  
Then this unfortunate Mother, perceiving her curses to have been so efficacious, and being no longer able to support the reproaches which her conscience suggested to her of her impiety, nor the confusion which she suffered before the world for permitting herself to be transported to so great an extremity, strangled herself, and ended her accursed life by a death yet more accursed.  
St. Augustin upon the occasion of one of these children, whose name was Paul, and who had been miraculously cured, having caused to be read to his people the recital which this young man had made of this History as I have now told it, and making reflections upon the circumstances which accompany it, exclaims, 
Aug. serm. 32 de diversis.  Let children learn from this example to respect their Fathers and their Mothers, and let Fathers and Mothers fear to fall into choler against their children. 'Tis said in sacred Writ, That the blessing of a Father establishes the House, and that the curse of a Mother roots it up even to the foundations. This we see accomplished in these accursed children, who being at this present vagabonds over all the earth, have no establishment in their own country, and who not only serve for a dreadful spectacle to all men, but also by presenting their punishment and their misery to the eyes of all them who look upon them, should above all affright proud children, who fail in their duty towards them who brought them into the world.  Learn then, O children, to render unto your Fathers and Mothers according to what is commanded you in the sacred Scripture, the respect and the honour which is due to them. But you, Fathers and Mothers, remember, when your children offend you, that you are Fathers, and that you are Mothers: This unhappy Mother invoked God against her children, and she was heard because God is truly just, and because she had been truly offended. True it is, that there was but one only among them who had injuriously struck her, and the other had only been silent in this occasion, or had not uttered a word in her defence. But surely God is just who heard her prayer, and who gave ear to the expressions which grief put into her mouth. All this while what shall we say of this poor Mother? Was not she herself punished by God with so much more rigour, by how much she was heard more readily and more conformably to her own desires? 
'Tis thus, my Sister, that this great Saint believed that God permitted this Mother should make so unhappy an end, after she had abandoned herself to such choler against her children, to teach Fathers and Mothers not to suffer themselves to be transported easily to such resentments, although most just in appearance; and not easily to lay their malediction upon their children, however so reasonable a cause they may seem to have for so doing; and never to implore the succour of God against them during the violence of their indignation, for fear lest God hearing the prayers which grief drew from their hearts, and granting to them the things which passion alone inspired them to demand of him, the revenge which they call down upon their children's heads falls not upon their own, and hurry them not on to despair, when the heat being passed over, and the feeling of nature having got the upper hand, they shall perceive themselves to have been the cause of the misery and ruin into which their wretched children are reduced.  
And this reflection ought to make so much the deeper impression in the spirit of Fathers and Mothers, because this miserable Mother we have here spoken of, was in desperate hazard of being damned for all eternity for having suffered herself to be transported to that excess of revenge against her children: whereas the said children were not punished for the fault they committed against her, but only during this life; and that God afforded mercy to the major part of them, at the instant prayers, and importunities of holy men, to whom they had recourse in their affliction; as was seen in two of them who were recovered; in one at Hippo, and in another of them at Revenna.   

14. Maxims touching the Equality which Parents are to keep among their Children.  
IF God gives you many children, take care to unite them in perfect friendship with one another; let the younger respect the elder; let the elder condescend to the younger as being yet less rational: and make in every thing appear so just an equality in the marks of love and tenderness towards them, that they may have no manner of jealousy against one another. The only embroidered robe which Jacob gave to Joseph, was cause of the hatred his Brethren conceived against him, and that they hatched the design to take away his life.  
Upon which St. Ambrose makes this pithy reflection: It very frequently falls out, that the affection of Parents is hurtful to their children when it stays not within the limits of a just moderation: and this happens, when either through an overgreat goodness they pardon their faults, or that testifying more love to some than to others, they extinguish by this preference that fraternal affection which should keep them united in friendship. The greatest advantage which a Father can procure to one of his children, is to leave him the love of his Brethren, As Fathers and Mothers cannot exercise a more glorious liberality towards their children; so also the children cannot receive from their Fathers and Mothers a more rich Inheritance than that. It is just that nature rendering them equal, the favour of them who gave them birth should continue them in a perfect equality. Piety permits us not to fancy, that Money gives an advantage to a child, 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 Doctor,) shall we blame this Patriarch 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 child 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 than 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 show of more coldness, but withal of more reservedness and more modesty; 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 tie 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 recompense 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 subsistence 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 tie 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 expenses.  
There is another disorder crept in among the faithful, and which no less destroys the equality which Parents own to their children, which is, to think of settling 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 Cloisters whether they will or not, and they must be timely sacrificed to the interests of him whom they design 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 own 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 increasing 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 as may be they lie alone, or with such persons in whom you may have as just a confidence as in yourself.  
'Tis an advice which St. 
St. Franc. de Sales l. 1. Epist. Ep. 1.  Francis of sales gave to Madam de Chantail in prescribing her Rules for the Education of her children. And to make her comprehend the profit hereof, he says; that experience rendered this observation daily more and more recommendable unto him.  
In effect, because Parents neglect this Counsel, it chances not only that of two children which are in the same bed, there's but one of them whom God draws out of the heap of corruption, and leaves the other by a just judgement abandoned to his irregularities; but even that both of them perish miserably by losing the innocence they received in Baptism.   

16. Maxims touching the Complacency which Parents have in their Children.  
NEver approve the actions of your children in which there is on the one side Wit, and on the other side Malice; for fear lest not knowing how to disentangle that which there is of spiritual, from that which is of malice, in the thing they do, they should attribute to the whole action that pleasure you take and the praise you give them; and that thus they should accustom themselves to practise it, and should (to please you) get a habit of telling petty lies, and inventing tricks against their brethren or against the other domestics.  
Be you very reserved in the praises you give them, even for their most spiritual actions; and be afraid lest by relating in their presence all they do wherein there appears wit, and by discoursing with them or of them, they should be puffed up with pride, and so become insupportable to others.   

17. Maxims touching the Plays and the Recreations of Children.  
Permit them such Divertisements as are honest and not dangerous, but moderately; for fear lest if you should keep them overlong embusied in serious exercises, they should be disgusted with them: and lest on the contrary they should become Idlers if you should suffer them to play continually.  
It would be a great good so to order it, that their very recreations might contribute to exercise their Judgement and their memory; that according to the counsel of all the Fathers of the Church, they were taught to sing Psalms and Hymns. thereby to clear their spirit in forming their voice, and to untie their tongue in pronouncing the praises of God; and (as St. Jerome says) that they had no Pastimes which were not to them a study.  
'Tis thus that this great Doctor counsels a Roman Dame, to cause letters to be made of Box or of Ivory, thereby to teach her Daughter by playing with them, and mixing them together, to know the Letters, and to join them, and so to form Syllables: And 'tis thus, that after children can read, one may as it were for a divertisement show them the Map, and as they grow in age and understanding give them a taste of the pithiest passages of the sacred and profane History, and oblige them to repeat the same, and to remember the sacred Genealogies and the Succession of Monarches; to the end, (says this Father,) that by such very things which will be perhaps useless unto them, their memory may be disposed to conserve those they are bound to know.  
It would be also much to the purpose to make them play sometimes before you, and to let them recreate themselves in your presence; because the inclinations of children are more easily discovered in their Play. In effect, as they stand then less upon their guards, and that joy fills their hearts, their other passions are more free to show themselves, and they quickly manifest the eagerness they have to gain, the desire they have to overcome others, and the discontent they have for being conquered; so that you may thereupon manage, (as one may say) these divers passions, and make use of their play to instruct and teach them not to apply themselves to it with so much heat, not to have an eagerness for gain, not to set themselves against others when things succeed not to their wish, not to be dejected at their losses, to preserve a certain indifferency which is necessary to practise justice and fidelity, and to avoid cheating and petty-cousenings which are very common among children, and which oftentimes pass along with them in their more advanced age.   

18. Maxims touching what company ought to be permitted to Children.  
TAke great care that your children neither play nor converse ordinarily but with children brought up in the fear of God. Job permitted his to recreate themselves, but 'twas among themselves, and without strangers who might have corrupted them and hindered them from entertaining themselves in virtuous employs, which they always did according to the relation of Origin and of St. John Chrysostom: and that charitable Father ceased not, during their recreations and divertisements, to offer up to God for them his fervent prayers and sacrifices.  
St. Jerome writing to Gaudentius, gives him a very important advice, which I desire you to mark well: It is, so to order it that his daughters should not play nor divertise themselves but only with them of their own sex, and that they should in no sort seek, but rather shun the frequentation of boys.  
St. 
St. Teresa, in her life written by herself. c. 2.  Teresa, whose spirit was perfectly cleared and every way judicious, making reflections upon the first faults of her life, attributes them to the liberty she took in her tenderest age to converse with some of her cousin-germans. I had, (says she) some cousin-germans who came frequently to my Father's house. He was very circumspect to forbid all entrance to any but to them: and would to God he had used the same caution towards them also: for I now see the danger there is, when one is in an age proper to receive the first seeds of virtues, to have commerce with persons, who knowing the vanity of the world, entice others to engage themselves therein. I was almost of the same age with my cousins; we kept always together; they tenderly loved me, and I entertained them with what ever I fancied would please them. They related to me the success of their affections, and such trifles which were not very good to be heard. And which was yet worse, my soul was sensible of impressions which have been the cause of all her evil. Ha! were I to give counsel to Parents, I would warn them to be well advised what persons frequent their children in that age; because the bent of our corrupted nature bears us rather to bad than to good: I found this in myself: for I made no profit of the great virtue and honesty of one of my Sisters, who was much elder than myself; whereas I retained all the evil examples which a kinsman gave me who haunted our house.  And in the sequel, after she had deplored the bad use she made of her youth till the age of fourteen years, she exclaims: I am sometimes seized with an astonishment, when I consider the evils which come from bad companies; nor could I believe it, had not I myself proved it by a sad experience. 'Tis principally during the time of youth that this evil is most dangerous, and this makes me wish, that Fathers and Mothers would make their profit by the example of my faults, to hinder by their care the like accidents: For 'tis but too true, that the familiarity I had with that person did so change me, as that it left in my soul no sign of the good nature nor of the virtues which were there before: and it seems to me, that she and one other who lived in the same way of folly, imprinted in my heart their wicked inclinations. 
You see, my Sister, by the example and by the Words of this holy woman, how reserved you ought to be in giving access to persons into your children's familiarity, although their alliance and nearness of blood permits you not to exclude them from your house; and how you must never suffer that under this pretext of parentage your children should contract a strict friendship with children who are not brought up in the fear of God, which you strive to inspire into yours.  
Above all, take care that your Daughters go not forth of the house without you; and it were to be wished, that they went not abroad but only for things absolutely necessary. The sole example of Dina, Genes. 34. who for having once only gone forth of her Father's house to take a view of the Daughters of the Town of Sichem, was forced away to the excessive grief of her Father Jacob, and of all her Brethren, may suffice to make you apprehend the gadding abroad of your Daughters, and to oppose yourself against any design they may have of contracting acquaintance with strangers, that is, with such as have their spirits filled with vanity, and who have not been educated, as yours, according to the spirit of Christianism.   

19 Maxims touching the care which is to be taken to induce children to do what they ought to their Fathers.  
TAke great care in particular, that your children show much respect to their Father, that they love him, that they honour him, and that they fear him. Never pardon their least disobedience to his orders. Suffer them not to speak otherwise to him then with submission and respect. He who obeys his Father gives much joy and comfort to his Mother, says the Scripture, Eccle. 3.7.  
St. Paul says, That women must be submitted to their Husbands in all things: Ephes. And they ought to be so, says St. Chrysostom, because when they are in good intelligence, their children are well educated, their Domestics are well instructed, their Friends and Neighbours are marvellously edified. In fine, the quality of head which is proper to the Husband, and which he bears in regard of his wife, makes it sufficiently appear, that 'tis for him to watch over his actions, to govern by his prudence the whole family, and to give out his orders for the conduct of all the members which compose it. And this is it which the illustrious Author of the letter to Celancia endeavoured particularly to insinuate unto her.  
It must be in the first place, says this great man, 
Letter to Celancia.  that the authority remains entirely in your husband, and that all your family may learn by your example what honour and respect they own him: you must therefore by your obedience make it known, that he is the Master: your humility must raise him, and your submissions must make him to be respected by all the rest; because yourself will be so much more honoured, by how much you render to him more honour. For the man, according to the Apostle, is the head of the woman; and the body can never appear well adorned, unless its head be well dressed: which moves him to say elsewhere, speaking to women, that they must be submitted to their husbands for the love of our Lord as they are obliged to be; and the Apostle St. Peter: 1 Pet. c. 3. Wives, be ye submitted to your husbands, to the end that if there are any who believe not the preaching of the Word, they may be gained without the Word by the good life of their wives, considering the purity in which you live, and the respectful fear you have for them. If then the law of Marriage obliges wives to render honour to their husbands, even when they are Infidels, it surely obliges them yet more strictly when they are Christians. If this is true, my Sister, as to the least duties of the civil life, it is much more as to what concerns the children. And by consequence you ought in this point, as in all things, to act as much as possibly you can jointly with your husband.  
Bless our Lord for having given you a person who will never oblige you to follow the irregularities which are crept into the World; but who on the contrary will take care, according to the counsel of St. Jerome, that the very  of his children may make them know him to whose service they were engaged by the vows of Baptism.  
But if, (as says the same Author,) a Lady of very high birth was reprehended with much severity by an Angel, 
St. Jerome, Ep. ad Letam.  for having presumed, (that she might not displease her Husband,) to frizzel the hair of her little Niece, and to trick her up a la mode; if for having caused her to wear Pearls and Diamonds according to her condition, but not according to the spirit of Christianism, God took away from her by death both her husband and her children, and made appear by so sudden and so extraordinary a chastisement, how great an aversion he hath against them, (says this great Doctor) who violate his Temples by profane ornaments, and that his Divine Majesty so much detests and abhors them, have you not cause to tremble and dread the just judgements of God, if you bring up your children according to the fashion of the world against the will of him whose sentiments you have espoused by espousing his person, and if you surprise his Religion & his Friendship, to oblige him to condescend to the sentiments of vanity which you desire to follow?    

CHAP. X. Important Advices for the Christian Education of Children.  

1. Advice. Concerning the Excesses and the Ornaments of the World.  
THe love of worldly Ornaments and braveries, is in itself a great evil, says St. John Chrysostom, 
S. Chrys. Hom. 10. in Epist. ad Colos. c. 4.  even although it should cause no other disorder than the adhesion to those vanities, and although they might be used without scandal and without hurting the conscience.  
'Tis for this reason, my Sister, that Tertullian, S. Cyprian, S. Jerome, and all the other Fathers of the Church could not hinder themselves from sighing, from complaining, and from uttering the zeal wherewith they were animated, when they beheld how Christian women were loaden with chains of gold, with Jewels, and with precious stones; and that instead of esteeming themselves glorious to be clothed with Christ Jesus, they had no passion but for stuffs of ignominy, (according to the language of the Church,) and for  more suitable to courtesans then to the Daughters of Christ Jesus, that is, to Children conceived in the tears and in the torments of a God crucified.  
And yet neither the dreadful threats which God thunders out against the daughters of Jerusalem for having loved these lewd Ornaments, nor the horrible chastisements wherewith he punished them, nor the prohibitions made by the Apostles, nor clamours of the whole Church for the space of sixteen hundred years, have been able to stop this exorbitancy.  
Behold (says Isay) what our Lord says to the Daughters of Zion who are arrogant and proud, who walk with stretchedout necks, with wand'ring eyes, mincing as they go, making a tinkling with their feet, and trailing after them those long tails of their robes: our Lord will bereave them with shame of all these vain ornaments, stinks shall succeed to these sweet perfumes, and harsh cords to their girdles of Pearls and of Diamonds, Isay. 3.16. etc.  
St. Peter. 1 Pet. 3.3. etc. after he had excited Christian Wives to win their husbands to Christ Jesus by their good example and by their good life, recommends to them above all things, that they put not on their Ornaments to dress themselves outwardly, by curling their hair, by enrichings of gold, and by bravery of , but to adorn the invisible man concealed in the heart by the incorruptible purity of a spirit full of meekness and of peace, which is a rich and magnificent Ornament to the eyes of God. For thus it is, (adds he) that the holy women who placed their hope in God, were wont formerly to attire themselves, being submitted to their husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham, calling him her Lord.  
St. Paul in like manner 2 Tim. 2.9. recommends unto them, to be clothed as honesty demands, to adorn themselves with civility, modesty and charity, and not with frizzled Perruks, nor with trim of gold, nor with Pearls, nor with sumptuous habits: but as such women ought to be, who make profession of piety, and who testify the same by their good works.  Take good heed, (said formerly St. Jerome) writing to a Lady of quality concerning the Education of her Daughter, that you bore not her ears for the hanging there of Jewels, and that you paint not with white and red the Face which hath been consecrated to Christ Jesus, nor give unto her Necklaces of Pearls, nor load her head with precious stones: Cause her by the ear you take to possess the inward ornaments and the precious riches of the soul, wherewith she may purchase the inestimable treasure of Salvation. 
From whence then (imagine you, my Sister) springs this general disorder, and this common obstinacy of them of your Sex in a matter which is opposite to Christianism, but from hence that this contagion is communicated to Children by the means of their Mothers, and particularly to daughters, who (as experience makes it appear) are very susceptible of their Mother's manners and inclinations.  
We complain that in this age, the girls of ten years old have more ambition and vanity, than others had heretofore at thirty: We cannot endure that they should seek to be seen and to be courted: We wonder at the eagerness they have for companies, Comedies, Balls, and walkings abroad: but it were a matter much more to be marvelled at, if they having received from their Fathers and from their Mothers all the dispositions which are necessary to love nothing but divertisements, and to seek after the occasions of vanities and of pleasures, as they permit them to do, they should affect retiredness, and should refuse to please the eyes of men.  
Reflect seriously upon these important verities; and believe me, my Sister, that there is nothing one ought not to do in order to instill into girls the hatred of the vanity and of the pomp of apparel: Wherefore in such things as are even necessary to form their body, order it so, that the advices which you give them may not carry them on insensibly to love themselves, and furnish them with other motives than such as the love of the world may inspire into them.  
Thus when you oblige your Daughters to keep themselves strait, tell them, that one ought to take care to conserve their stature, because God hath given it to us, and that he would we should always have our eyes elevated towards him, to bless him, and to implore his assistance; because 'tis for them who have no other love but for the things of this world to crouch their body towards the earth; and because finally Christ Jesus hath not broken the bonds wherewith we were shackled, but to the end we should march with our head lifted up towards Heaven. And do not tell them, that they will not be esteemed in the world if they have not a good grace, and that people in their assemblies, make small account of the beauty of the countenance, when the stature of the body is crooked.  
If you cloth them decently according to your condition, and according to the rules of the Gospel, make them understand that this exterior decency ought to be the mark of the inward purity and cleanness of their heart, and that they are to take greater care of the Ornament of their soul then the dressing of their body.  
If, 
St. Jerome, to Leta.  according to the advice of St. Jerome, you permit them not to affect a certain wantonness in the pronunciation of their words, or that they use words which are unproper and out of date, do not tell them, that otherwise they will be uncapable to receive a compliment, or to entertain a company; but tell them, that by avoiding these defects they ought to put themselves in condition to make others one day to know the greatnesses of God, and to excite them to virtue.  
Let them know, that the care you take to make them learn to work whether it be in Tapestry, or in Embroidery, or in Points and Laces, proceeds not out of a desire you have that they should deck themselves with their own works; but out of the knowledge you have of their obligation to make good use of their time, and of the easiness they may have by this means to help their necessitous neighbour by their labours.  
Finally, instruct them to want even things permitted and which are innocent; to the end they may have no love for those things which are forbidden. St. Lewis who was one of the chiefest Saints and greatest Princes of the world, never suffered the Princesses his Daughters to wear upon Fridays, Garlands and Coronets of Roses and of other Flowers, which were the richest ornaments of their age; because Christ Jesus had been crowned with thorns upon that day.  
This great King was far from that accursed complacency of some Mothers, who being interiorly attracted to recollection and to a contempt of worldly vanities, engage themselves nevertheless in dangerous conversations and assemblies upon pretext of their having children, that it is fit they should divertise themselves, and that they must yield something (say they) to an age which is totally addicted to pleasure. As if these very considerations ought not to oblige them to break off the intelligence they might have with the world, and as if the fear of engaging their children in dangerous companies, out of which they shall not perchance escape with so much happiness as themselves have done, were not sufficient to make them shun these encounters, and to move them to choose a life which is more Christian, more modest, and more retired than the former.  
This I say, my Sister, because there are many Fathers and Mothers who fancy they can justify themselves one day before God for having quitted their solitude to lead their children to a Ball; for having stifled the feelings they had of a simplicity in their garments to satisfy the vanity and the ambition of their children; for not having openly embraced all the other Maxims and all the other counsels of the Gospel, for fear of engaging their children to follow them, and for causing them to enter into a disgust of the Maxims and vanities of the World. As if this unfaithfulness to the motions of a grace, which was perchance given them for the sanctification of their children, ought not to make them apprehend the just judgements of God; and that they were not to answer to him for all the bad thoughts, for all the evil desires, and for all the libertine actions done by their children in these assemblies, and which indeed they perceived not, but which the eyes of God observed, and which his justice will impute one day to the compliance of them who engaged them in these dangerous occasions.  
Take good heed also of imitating those Mothers, who upon pretext of sparing, or because they are tired with the vanities and with the follies of the world, unclothe themselves to  their children; and who by a kind of hypocrisy, the most dangerous that can be imagined, not daring to follow the fashions, which the world it  permits only to youth, will at least satisfy their vanity by making their daughters follow those modes, and who being themselves no longer fit for pleasures and divertisements, render, (as says St. Jerome) those innocent Souls the most ordinary sacrifices of pleasure.  
I will not insist here to represent to you the obligation you have never to suffer your Daughters to paint and patch themselves; to ruddy their lips and to blacken their eye brows; to whiten their cheeks, and to seek out such other ridiculous vanities; which the spirit of the world hath invented upon pretext of repairing the defects of nature, but in effect to satisfy the passion which they of their Sex have to please.  
That which I have now spoken of the excesses and magnificent , suffices to make you comprehend how far you ought to estrange them from those follies; since there is less evil, according to the Fathers, in these proud Garments, than in tricking up the face with strange colours.  
St. Ambrose, among the Latin Fathers, in the books he made for the Instruction of Virgins, highly condemns in Christian Women, curled hair, Necklaces of Pearls, Pendants at the Ears, and other such like ornaments. But there's nothing which he beats down with more zeal and with greater eloquence, 
S. Ambros. l. 1. de Virgin.  than the care which the women of his time took to paint themselves upon the pretext of pleasing their husbands. He pleasantly rails at them for thus betraying themselves by seeking in this manner strange beauties; and he reproaches them, in that by applying themselves with so much study to change the lineaments of their face, they condemn themselves, and render their natural defects much more remarkable.  
St. Chrysostom among the Greek Fathers, teaching husbands (who have wives which are altogether worldlings, 
S Christost. ser. 10. in Matth.  who love excessive riots, and are plunged in delights) after what manner they are to labour to withdraw them from these irregularities; counsels them not to begin by bereaving them of their magnificent dress, but by taking away the solicitude they have of painting their faces. And this holy Doctor produces nothing upon this subject, which a Mother ought not to make use of, if she perceives any of her Daughters to have the least inclination to these sort of vanities. For than it is that she should represent unto her, that there is no wise man who condemns not them that disguise thus the visage by powders and by borrowed colours, to force in some sort nature, and to give to themselves what they have not; and who having been bred in the Faith and in the knowledge of the true God, and having Christ Jesus for their head, they ought not to seek an artificial beauty by these disguises which the Devil hath invented.  
Consider, (says in the sequel the said Doctor addressing his speech to all Christian Women,) that Christ Jesus is your Bridegroom; that 'tis for him you ought to adorn yourselves; and than you will avoid with horror these shameful embellishments. For Christ Jesus loves not these false and counterfeit dresses. His will is, that his spouses should be fair, but with a true beauty. 'Tis that beauty which the Prophet advises you to keep with care, when he tells you, and the King will love your beauty.  
Let us then no longer seek those studied beauties, which are as ugly as they are vain: The works of God are complete: He hath put there all that there should be, and he hath no need of you to reform them. After an excellent Painter hath finished the King's Picture, no one dares presume to add strange colours; and such a boldness would not pass unpunished. You have then a respect for the work of a man; and dare you alter and corrupt the work of God? you do not remember that there is a Hell: you tremble not at the consideration of those flames; you forget your very soul, and you treat her unworthily without taking any care of her, because you give all your thoughts and all your affections to your Body.  
But I mistake when I talk to you of your soul, since you give to your body no better treatment, and that there comes to it the contrary of what you pretend: you will appear fair by this Paint, and it serves only to make you deformed: you will please your husband, and nothing more displeases him, and not only him but all the world. You will pass for young, and you become thereby sooner old. Finally, you will have your beauty admired, and every one flouts you: you cannot without some shame look either upon your friends, and such as are your equals, nor upon your own chambermaid; and your very looking-glass makes you blush.  
But I will not stay upon these Reasons. There are others yet more strong and much more considerable. For you sin against God; you lose your shamefacedness which is the glory of your Sex; you enkindle criminal flames in the hearts of men, and you render yourselves like to those infamous sacrifices of public 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 yourself no longer but only upon that interior 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 horror of these painted and counterfeit beauties which they so much affect. Finally, you there find the motives which oblige yourself 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 praises, 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 Psalms, 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 itself, 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 subtle poison. 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 praises 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 bloody Satyrs, sparing neither the sacred persons of Sovereigns, 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 horror, 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 Ideas 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, accustom themselves insensibly to lose their shamefacedness, though they would blush to hear them in a more advanced age, if they had not timely enured them to this corrupted language.  
Lactantius, in the abridgement 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 die in their soul; yet their Fathers ceased not to be their Murderers; because forasmuch as depended on them, they caused their souls to die spiritually.  
How much more culpable are Parents who teach their children songs of detraction or of obscenity, than 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 of the soul. But verses which are animated with the modulation, charm the soul with their sweetness; they get possession of the spirit of the hearer, and push him on with violence whither they please; they persuade him to all that which they make him fancy is agreeable, and they almost surprise him, and entirely master his will whilst they flatter his senses: You ought not then (concludes this Author,) conceive any thing to be sweet to your ears, but that which nourishes your soul and renders it better: and you should particularly apply yourself to avert that Organ from vice, which is given us by God to hear his truth, and to receive his doctrine. If you take delight in singing and in Poetry, please yourselves in warbling forth the praises of God: There is no true pleasure but that which is evermore accompanied with virtue.  
Behold, my Sister, what you are timely to instill into your Children: never suffer any thing to be done or spoken in their presence, which is in the least wise unbeseeming the modesty, the prudence, and the charity which is due to your Neighbour, whereof you make profession in quality of Christian. 
S. Chrystost. hom. de ann.  Permit them not to hear effeminate and lascivious songs, for fear lest they may prove to be an unhappy charm to mollify their soul and to make them lose all their vigour.  
Endure not, that the mouths which are to be one day sanctified by the celestial food of the Body of Christ Jesus, be profaned by infamous songs; and that the tongues which are to be dipped in the blood of our Saviour be employed in a language which is altogether corrupted.  
Have evermore present to your spirit those excellent words of St. Paul Ephes. 5.3, 4, 17, 19 which includes the Rules of the conversation of the Faithful: Let not fornication or any other impurity whatsoever, be so much as once named among you: Neither filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor jesting, all which things are disagreeable to your vocation; but rather words of thanksgiving to God. Be not indiscreet, but know how to discern what is the will of our Lord; entertaining yourselves with Psalms, with Hymns, and with spiritual Canticles, singing and making melody from the bottom of your hearts to the glory of our Lord. Let all dishonest Words be banished from your mouth. Let the word of Christ Jesus dwell in you with fullness, and replenish you with Wisdom. Instruct and admonish one another with Psalms, with Hymns, and with Spiritual Canticles.  
Thus you see, by these words of the Apostle, that Christians are not permitted to speak the least word, not only which is dishonest, but even which is not serious, or which hath in it any thing of jesting; so far is he from suffering them to make such things all their joy and divertisement: and that if they sing, 
S. Augustin. l. 10. confess. c. 33.  it must be Psalms, Hymns, and spiritual Canticles; that so by the pleasure which touches the ears, the spirit yet weak may raise up itself to feelings of piety, and that being more ardently moved to devotion by the tunes animated with Divine words, it may receive with more respect and sweetness the verities there included, and employ itself therein more profitably.  
Parents who will not endeavour to follow these Apostolical Rules in the education of their Children, and who have not absolutely forbidden them these corrupted songs, will be found by so much the more culpable before God, by how much it is more easy for them in this age to hinder them from it: since there are many persons of piety who have successfully laboured in putting into Verse the Psalms, the Hymns, and the Canticles of the Church; that there are many who have composed spiritual songs which are very sweet & pleasing; and that they have set these Psalms, these Hymns, and these spiritual songs to very harmonious tunes and airs, which by recreating the spirit raise it to God, and nourish piety in the soul.   

3. Advice. Concerning Romances.  
'TIs not yet enough, my Sister, to watch over the tender years of your children, to hinder them from learning accursed sonnets: you must furthermore when they are more advanced in age, and capable to apply themselves to reading, keep carefully from them the Romances and other Books of that nature, which only serve to instill the spirit of the world into their minds, and to ruin in them the spirit of Christ Jesus.  
I cannot better make you comprehend the importance of this Advice, then by relating to you the words of St. Teresa, 
St. Teresa c. 2. of her life.  wherein you will see how dangerous it is for Mothers to indulge their children in this point, and for themselves to take pleasure in these kind of Lectures, which charming the spirit by agreeable dotages, corrupt the heart with real irregularities.  
It seems to me, says she, that what I am going about to relate, was to me very prejudicial. I consider sometimes the great evil done by Parents to their children in not endeavouring with all their authority to place continually before their eyes the objects of virtue. For although my Mother was as virtuous as I now have declared her, yet when I had attained the use of reason, I remember very little, and almost nothing at all of her good qualities; whereas the bad ones which I observed in her, did strangely hurt and damage me.  
She was delighted with the reading of Romances; but this divertisement was not to her so dangerous as it was to me, because she lost no more time than what she employed in reading them, and that perhaps she did it only to untire herself from the wearisome cares of her family, and to hinder her children from worse employments: but as for me, although my Father was so much against it, that we were forced to take care he might not perceive it, I ceased not to keep on my ordinary custom of reading these Books, and how small soever this fault was in my Mother, it failed not to cool my good desires, and was the cause of my falling insensibly into other defects.  
It seemed to me, that it was not evil to lose many hours of the day, and of the night, in so vain an occupation, although I hide myself from my Father; and I was so enchanted with the extreme pleasure I took in it, that methought I could not be content if I had not some new Romance in my hands.  
I began to imitate the Mode, to take delight in being well dressed, to take great care of my hands, to make use of the most excellent perfumes; in a word, to affect all the vain trim which my condition permitted, and which my curiosity invented in a very great number. Indeed my intention was not bad; for I would not in the immoderate passion which I had to be decent, give any occasion to any person of the world to offend God; but I now acknowledge how far these things, which during several years' space appeared to me innocent, are effectually and really criminal.  
I do not think, my Sister, that any thing needs to be added to these words to make you abhor the reading of Romances; since they discover so clearly the greatest part of the bad effects which these fabulous Histories produce, which the idleness and licentiousness of these later times have invented to nourish and entertain the most dangerous passions.  
For you see in the words and in the example of this holy woman, how these unhappy lectures charm in such sort the spirits of young people by the pernicious sweetness and the dismal pleasure they present unto them, that they neglect all other exercises to tie themselves to this; that they make it their only and their principal business; and that they employ the days and the nights, even against the will of their parents, to satisfy the curiosity which the connexion of the divers adventures they meet with in those books, excites more and more in their spirits, as they proceed in the reading thereof.  
You see how these empoisoned Lectures change all the good inclinations they received from nature; how they chill by little and little the desires they had for goodness; and how they banish in a short time out of their Soul all that was there of solidity and of virtue.  
You see how they instill into their Readers the love and esteem of all worldly vanities; how they teach them to seek out means whereby to please the world, to flatter their senses, to trick up themselves, to render themselves pleasing, to stay and deceive the eyes; finally, to find out disguises and cunnings to conceal that wherein the body is defective, and to place in its highest splendour whatever may make for their advantage.  
Oftentimes one is surprised to see young girls educated in a great reservedness and in great modesty, take all on a sudden an air full of vanity and gallantry, and to make show of no other ardour than for that which the world esteems, and which God abominates. One is astonished at this deplorable change; and since they had not as yet haunted companies, one knows not well to what it may be attributed. 'Tis that Fathers and Mothers have not watched over them to hinder their reading of these dangerous books, which have instilled into them this secret vanity, and this desire to raise in them who look upon them those passions for which they conceived so high an esteem, by seeing them expressed so agreeably in those Books. Those feigned and imaginary adventures have charmed their hearts. They have redoubled the ardours of their passions, and have permitted to pass first into their souls, and afterwards into their gestures, and into their actions all the motions they have found registered of those fabulous Ladies. They have espoused their Maxims, their spirit, their conduct, their language, and all their manners of proceed. They have there learned not to be so untractable, nor so severe, to be somewhat tender and compassionate; to suffer themselves to be coneerned in the services, cherishings, kindnesses and tears of their wooers; finally, to hid themselves from themselves, and to cloak the motions of a love which is totally irregular with the appearances of a civil honesty, and of an easy, complying and gay humour and disposition.  
Be vigilant therefore my Sister, and carefully hinder your Children from falling into this dangerous snare, which the devil lays to entrap their Innocence. Let them not be hurried away with this dismal torrent, which St. Augustin says, 
S. Aug. l. 1. Confes. c. 16.  drags along the children of Eve into that vast and dangerous sea, out of which they scarcely (says this Saint) can escape, and save themselves, who pass over upon the wood of the Cross of Christ Jesus.  
And let them not say, (adds this Father,) that in these Books they may learn the purity of the language, and that it is from them that this eloquence is to be sucked which is so necessary to persuade what one desires, and to express with a grace one's advices and conceptions. You ought to take greater care of the purity of your children's heart than of that of their language. And although there may be found good things in those books intermixed with the bad, 
S. Jerome to Leta.  yet (as St. Jerome observes upon the subject of dangerous books) one needs much discretion to seek and find out gold in the dirt, and one is ofttimes in danger to defile himself in this search without finding what they look for.  
After all, there are now an infinity of Books of Piety much better written, from which your children may draw together, with the knowledge and the love of Christian Verities, true Eloquence, and where they may find all the graces of the Language without any need of seeking them in fabulous Histories, which are only capable to quench Charity in their souls, and to enkindle there foreign flames, which will consume by little and little all the feelings of piety which you have endeavoured to instil into them.   

4. Advice. Touching, Balls, Dance, and public meetings.  
IN the occasion of scandal which the world is full of, we are not solicited to evil at the same time by all the ways by which we are susceptible of it. But (as Salvian observes,) 
Salvian. l. 6. de gubernat. Dei.  either the spirit alone is set upon by thoughts contrary to purity, or the eyes are struck with dishonest objects, or the ears filled with discourses opposite to charity: so that if any one of these senses suffers itself to be engaged in the sin, the others may at the same time be exempt from it, and may serve the soul for an instrument to raise her up from this fall.  
But in Balls and Assemblies, which are at present but too common among Christians, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, assault the spirit of young people by all the ways whereby they may instill vice into them. They present at the same time to all their senses all the different objects which may charm them and allure them to evil. You may say, that they have heaped together in the same place all that which can give entrance to pleasure into the heart of man, by which they are wont to make themselves Masters of him.  
The Ear is there charmed with the concert of Musical Instruments; and the Eyes with every object which riot and vanity can produce and expose as most proud and pleasing; the delight which is found in sweet odours is there awaked by most precious parsumes and most agreeable smells; and the taste by most delicious fruits and most exquisite dainties. Finally, there is, as it were a general conspiration of all that voluptuousness hath of allurements and of charms to effeminate the heart of man and to flatter his several passions.  
The persons who are invited to these assemblies apply themselves only to render themselves pleasing and to make themselves to be loved. They spend whole days in dressing, trimming, and disguising themselves, and in hiding as much as 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 one's 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 dress, explicate what the tongue dares not express.  
Who can represent all the snares which the devil than 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 mud 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 darksome images of an infamous love.  
'Tis there that they swim in this unhappy joy, and the dismal pleasure whereby the children of the world tie 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 interior 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 shamefacedness, 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 lead 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 public 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. Charles Bor. tract. against Dances.  if St. Charles Boromeus, in an excellent Treatise he made against Dances, and in which he shows 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 judgement 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 Physician, 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 Physician of our Souls, hath prescribed unto us, contributes to their health and serves them for a remedy: 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 Doctor, that a Christian should place all his joy in a good conscience, and not in Feast, in Dance, and in worldly Meetings. For the chastity is not in security, and the pleasure which allures us aught 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 Forerunner 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 reflection 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 shameful passions, than to discover, as they do in dancing, those parts of the body which nature and civility oblige to hid; 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 noises 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 reflection 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 blindly abandoned himself to his passion. For, adds he, the devil is ever found wherever is dancing. God hath not given us feet for so shameful 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 choir 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 Doctor 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 poison 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 forbidden 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 Damosels, prattling Girls, and shameless persons. But if there are such people at home with us, or dwelling in our neighbourhood, or wherever they be, let us expressly 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 damage.   

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 oftener and with more zeal than the love of shows and spectacles. We find 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 faithful.  
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 designs.  
They lay open the indispensable obligation one hath to quit the near occasions of incontinence: They call these Assemblies the Schools and the public 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 spectators are found at their going forth from these divertisements, that one cannot read 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 increased 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 shown so great zeal, deserved the blame they laid upon them, these which are now adays represented upon the stages, cannot be sufficiently praised, because they contain for the most part nothing but examples of Innocence, of virtue and of Piety.  
But with however specious a pretext the Authors of these Plays cover themselves, and however pure and holy may be their intentions; there is nevertheless such a mixture in their Works, and the Saints also whom they bring upon the Theatre testify there so much tenderness, touching love, which is the predominant passion of Comedies, that it is very hard for the hearers not to be transported, and that instead of sanctifying the stage by the actions of the Martyrs there represented, they profane not the sanctity of their sufferings by the amorous sictions which they there intermingle.  
And in effect, if they there represent the Martyrdom of a Virgin-Saint, 
Theodora.  must it not be some Intrigue of love which makes her die? And are they not constrained to suppose that another Lady is desperately in love with the young Prince who hath a violent passion for the Saint, and that an enraged Mother spares not the Blood of this Saint to fatisfy the passion of that poor wretch.  
And even the Saint in the sequel of the Play comes lastly to discover the secret passion she hath for a young man: and although the Author makes her beat it down, yet she ceases not to give place to the hearers to justify in themselves by her example the passion they resent, and to entertain it under pretext of not consenting thereto. They learn of her to look upon the motions of an irregular Love as the impressions which in their birth form bravest passions. And the young man whom she loves, (as Christian as he is, and ready to endure death for the defence of the Faith and of the purity of this Saint,) ceases not to persuade her to espouse this young Pagan-Prince who loves her: So that if one sees in this Piece of Poetry in the person of a Virgin-Saint, Faith triumphing over the most shameful punishments; one there sees at the same time profane Love triumphing over many wretches which it hath subjected to itself, and pursuing even to death a holy Virgin, and a generous Martyr. One there beholds the motion of Christian Charity, which obliges this illustrious Saint to expose his life for the defence of the purity of that Virgin-Saint, so much obscured by the feigned passion which the Author foists into his and into her expressions, that the hearers know no more than the actors whom he introduces on the Stage.—  
Whether it is the zeal of a lover or the fury of the Christian.  
And although the Saint declare himself in the sequel that he acted not in this occasion but by a motive of Christian generosity, yet this appears mixed with so many tender and passionate words, and with so many circumstances which tend to turn away the spirit from consideration and to carry it on to profane Love, that whatever remains in the mind of the Spectators is a high idea of the strong passion which this Lover had for the person he loved.  
Behold what are these examples of Innocence, of Virtue, and of Piety, they so much brag of: But rather behold how in the Comedies they make use of Christian generosity and charity which the Saints made appear in their actions, to raise up the lustre of profane love, and to give it an esteem, and to excite its flames in the heart of the Spectators.  
But, Sister, to make you see yet more clearly how merely imaginary the difference is, which is pretended to be between the Comedies of these our times and the Spectacles of the Ancient; and that it is neither Scruple nor Capriciousness but a true zeal which moves them who blame them thus to decry them; you must observe that the Fathers of the Church have scarcely said any thing against the adhesion which people had in their days to spectacles, which may not be applied with much justice to the Comedies of our time.  
Tertullian, in the Book he made of Shows and Spectacles, undertakes to show that these divertisements could not be accommodated to the spirit of Religion we profess, and to the duties of a Christian: that the reason why they have so many Defenders, is the fear man hath of having the number of his pleasures diminished: that it is in vain to fancy that Christians did not abstain from them, but because they being resolved to suffer death for the Faith, renounced all the pleasures of life, to the end they might less love it, and not be retained by pleasures, which are as it were fetters that fasten us to it; but that they abstained because although these divertisements are not forbidden in express terms in the sacred Scripture, yet they cease not to be there sufficiently condemned.  
First, in the passages which forbidden us to follow the irregular desires of covetousness, and of satisfying our Passions. For it is certain (says this learned man) that the seeking of pleasures is one of the most violent passions of man, 
Tertul. l. de spectat. c. 4.  and that among pleasures that of spectacles is one of them which most transport him.  
Secondly, in the passages which oblige us to tend always to perfection, which consists in the subjection of Passions to grace: which cannot be acquired but by banishing from the spirit all that may serve to strengthen them and to entertain them.  Whereas, says he, chap. 15.16. Spectacles on the contrary make the passions revive in the hearts of the most mortified persons, they re animate them, they fortify them, and after they have put them who behold them as it were out of themselves, they excite in them motions of hatred, of love, of joy, of sadness, which are by so much more irregular, by how much one oftentimes loves what they should hate or which deserves no esteem, and one hates on the contrary that which they are not permitted to hate. 
Thirdly, in the passages of sacred Writ, which forbidden us the least impurities, and the least dishonest or frivolous words. For why, (says this great man,) chap. 17. should it be permitted to a Christian to see represented on a Theatre such things as he is not permitted so much as to think of, and to hear that spoken of there which ought no where be once named before him?  
Finally, Tertullian shows, that spectacles may not be permitted to Christians: First, by the judgement which men make of such as represent them, and who pass in their opinion for infamous persons. chap. 21. Secondly, by the judgement which God, himself gives of them, there being nothing in the spectacles which he condemns not. chap. 23. Thirdly, because the said spectacles are of the number of the pomps of the devil, which we have renounced by our Baptism. chap. 24. Fourthly, because the very Pagans judged that a man was become a Christian when he absented himself from them, acknowledging that the instinct of Christian Piety, removed from the Theatre all such as professed it. chap. 25. Fifthly, because it is impossible to conserve there the feelings of piety which a Christian ought always to have in his heart. Sixthly, because all the objects there represented are only proper to divert him from God and to link him to the creature. Seventhly, because it is ridiculous to pretend that one may make good use thereof, and to do it in reverence to God. chap. 27. Eighthly, because supposing there were some of them honest, Christians ought always to consider them not otherwise then as empoisoned honey, whereof they cannot taste without danger of death. chap. 29. Finally, because the state of a Christian in this life is to fly all sorts of pleasures, and to cause all his joy to consist in the tears of repentance, in the pardon of his sins, in the knowledge of truth, and in the contempt of pleasures even the most innocent and the most lawful.  
What is there, my Sister, in all this, which this great man alleges against the shows and spectacles of the ancient, which may not be said of the Comedies of these days? Are the Christians of these times less obliged than they of the time of Tertullian, to quit the passions of the world, and to mortify in themselves the desires which provoke them to seek for pleasures and divertisements?  
Are they less bound than they of the first ages to labour for the attaining of the Evangelical Perfection, to weaken and conquer the passions of the flesh, and to shun the objects which excite them, which entertain them, and which strengthen them?  
Are they less obliged than those of former ages to fly all that may wound the purity which God requires of them? And their Eyes and Ears must they be less chaste than their Tongues, which are not suffered to speak any vain and unbeseeming word, as St. Paul expressly pronounces?  
Moreover, the Comedians of these times, are they of more consideration in the world than those of former ages? What a corruption is it, says Tertullian, 
Tertul. c. 22.  to love them whom the public laws condemn; to approve of them whom they despise; to extol an art and an employment at the same time when they are branded with infamy who did addict themselves unto it?  
What is there in Comedies which can be pleasing to God's eyes? Is it the pomp and the magnificence of the ? Is it the dexterity of the Actors to excite in themselves and in others criminal passions? Is it the industry wherewith the musical Airs are accommodated to the subjects, and rendered proper to strengthen the said passions? Is it the skill wherewith the Poet hath disguised the truth by mixing Fabulous fictions and imaginary accidents? the Author of truth, says Tertullian, chap. 23. loves not lies: and whatever is feigned, passes before him for a spice of Adultery.  
They who renounce the world, and are truly touched with a desire to live to God, do they not avoid Comedies as very dangerous rocks? And is it not acknowledged that they have changed their life, and that they are (as may be said) become Christians a second time, in that they refuse to be found in those places, which they too well know have been unfortunate unto them?  
Will a Christian conserve in a Comedy the feelings he ought to have always in his heart; and will he have his spirit raised towards God in an Assembly, where, says Tertullian, chap. 25. there is nothing of God, and at a time when all the senses are embusied to feed upon the vain pleasure which is there presented unto them, and where the thoughts are applied to the gestures, to the Words, and to the motions of the Actors?  
That which Tertullian esteemed to be the greatest scandal which was found in the spectacles of Pagans, is it not met withal in Comedies? Men and Women, young Gallants and young Girls, meet they not there together, and appear they not there with all the gaiety and pleasingness possible? Go they not thither (as this great man says) with this sole design and disposition to see there and to be there seen? And the approbation they give with common voice to the Comedians, and the joy they feel to meet together in the same opinions, are they not as so many sparks which increase the secret fire burning in their hearts? Insomuch, as one may say, that each one of them after his manner acts there his part, and that ofttimes the Actors do but represent what passes secretly among the persons who behold them.  
Tertullian therefore says nothing against the spectacles of the Ancient, which may not be applied with justice to the Comedies of our times. And in this sort, my Sister, if I feared not to extend myself too far, (having not undertaken to write against Comedies but only to show you the obligation you have to withdraw your Children from them), I could make it manifest unto you, that all which St. Cyprian, or the Author of that Treatise of Spectacles, which is among his Works; All that Salvian, and all that the other Fathers of the Church have said against the shows and spectacles of the Ancient, fall naturally upon the Comedies of our times.  
I could make you see, that they do at this day no less profane the sacred Mysteries, in going to a Comedy upon the days in which they have communicated, and in carrying thither (as one may say) the Eucharist yet persent in their bosom: that they ought at this day no less fear to learn to practise what they are accustomed to see represented: 
The Author of the Treatise of Spectacles, among the works of S. Cyprian.  and that if the Comedies of these times should contain nothing that is criminal, yet they would not cease to carry along with them, a vanity and an unprofitableness which is as incompatible with the duties of Christians of our times, as with those of the Primitive Christians.  
I well know that the Fathers insisted particularly upon that, That there was then no spectacle which was not dedicated to some false Divinity, and which had not in its origin or in its execution something of Idolatry.  
But I also know, that if according to St. Paul, Gal. 5.2. the adhesion one hath to riches is a spice of Idolatry; that which one hath to pleasure is by so much more dangerous, by how much it engages the man to sacrifice himself to pleasure which is the most infamous of all the Idols.  
I know that St. Augustin said, 
Aug l. 1. Conf. c 17.  upon his being exercised in his youth to recite the Fables of Poets, That there are many different ways of sacrificing to the rebel-Angels; and that if the Comedies of our times are not represented in the honour of a Mars, of a Jupiter, and of a Neptune, they are nevertheless consecrated to profane Love, to the pleasure of the beholders, and to the avarice of those who represent them.  
Thus they who would render the Comedy Christian by interweaving therein the actions of Saints, have proceeded somewhat like to Pompey, who (as Tertullian relates) seeing that the Roman Censours had frequently caused the Theatres to be pulled down, 
Tertull c. 10. the Spect  because they corrupted the manners of the people, and desiring to hinder the demolishing of that which himself had caused to be erected in Rome, made therein an Altar which he dedicated to Venus, and called the said building, not the Theatre, but the Temple of Venus. So that, says Tertullian, by giving this specious title to that work, which deserved to be condemned, he eluded by that superstition all the regulations which the Censours could make to cause it to be thrown down.  
But supposing that there is nothing in Comedies which can wound the Innocence of young people, nor excite in them any dangerous passions: supposing that of Thirty Plays there represented, there is not one which openly hurts purity and innocence: supposing that there is nothing in the dress, in the nakednesses, and in the gestures of the Comedians which offends modesty; and which corresponds not to the purity and to the piety of the Virgins whom they represent: supposing that the persons who assist thereat cannot instill into young people the spirit of the world and of the vanity which shows itself in their manner of trimming, in there behaviour, and in all their actions: supposing all that which passes in those wretched representations induce to no evil, that the words, the dress, the gate, the voice, the songs, the looks, the motions of the body, the sound of instruments, the very subjects and plots of the Comedies; finally, that all were not full of poison, and should breathe no impurity: yet you ought to hinder your Children from frequenting them; because, 
St. Chrysost. ho. 6 in Matt.  says St. Chrysostom, it is not for us to pass the time in laughters, in merriments, and in delights. 'Tis not proper for the spirit of them who are called to a heavenly life, whose names are already written in that celestial City, and who make profession of a warfare altogether spiritual: but 'tis for the spirit of them who fight under the ensigns of the devil.  
Yes, my Brethren, adds this Saint, it is the Devil who hath made an art of these divertisements and of these Plays, to draw to himself the Soldiers of Christ Jesus, and to slacken all the vigour and as it were the sinews of their Virtue. 'Tis for this end that he hath caused Theatres to be set up in public places, and that exercising and forming those Bouffons and Jeasters, he makes use of them as of a Pestilence wherewith he infects the whole City. St. Paul hath forbidden us impertinent words, and such as aim only at a vain divertisement; but the devil persuades us to love the one and the other.  
That which is yet more dangerous is the subject for which they transport themselves into these immoderate laughters. For as soon as the ridiculous Bouffons have produced some blasphemy, or some dishonest word, one may see the greatest fools ravished with joy, and transported into loud Laughters: They applaud them for what they should stone them: and they draw thus upon themselves, by this detestable pleasure, the punishment of an eternal fire. For by praising them for such follies, they persuade them to do them, and they render themselves yet more than them worthy of the condemnation which they have deserved. If all the world would agree not to behold their fopperies, they would quickly leave them off: but when they see you daily to abandon your employs, your labours, and what money you can scrape up; in a word, to renounce all to assist at these shows, they redouble their eagerness and apply themselves much more to these fooleries.  
You see, my Sister, that St. Chrysostom as well as Tertullian, doth not only condemn Comedies because of their dissolution and impurity; but moreover because it is not permitted to Christians to pass the time in Laughters and divertisements, and in such delights as are inseparable from these spectacles; that they condemn them because one cannot choose but give an approbation and an applause to things for which the faithful should conceive an extreme horror; and because (as the same Saint adds) they who assist at these shows, entertain the licentious life of those who represent them, animate them by their admirations, by their applauses, and by their praises; thus labouring by all means to beautify and exalt this work of the Devil.  
This without doubt moved Salvian to say, 
Salvian. l. 6. the guber. Dei.  That it is as a kind of apostasy from the Faith, and a mortal prevarication from the Sacraments thereof, to go to a Comedy. For what is, says he, the first profession which Christians make in Baptism? Is it not to renounce the devil, his Pomps, and his shows, and all his works? The spectacles then and the pomps are according to our own confession the works of the devil. And how, O Christian, canst thou go to Pageants since thy Baptism, thou who confessest that they are the work of the devil? Thou hast once renounced the devil and his spectacles; and by consequence, 'tis necessary, that when thou voluntarily returnest to spectacles, thou must confess that thou returnest under the obedience of the devil.  
And it is so true, that one cannot go to Comedies without engaging one's self voluntarily under the tyranny of the devil, 
Tertul. c. 16. de Spectaculis.  that Tertullian relates, how a Christian Woman having gone to the Theatre, and to a Comedy, came back possessed with the devil, and the Exorcists demanding of him how he durst assault a Christian, he answered, that he had done it without any fear, because he had found her in a place which appertained to him.  
You must therefore, Sister, instil into your Children a horror of Comedies; because it is a dangerous divertisement and unworthy of a Christian. Yes, you must, because it is very hard for them to avoid there at the same time the sullying of their eyes, their ears, and their souls. You must, because Pageants and spectacles are of the number of the Pomp's of the world, and of the works of the devil, which they have solemnly renounced by their Baptism. You must, because although there is nothing but feigned stuff in those representations, yet one ceases not (as St. 
S. Aug. l. 1. Con. c. 2.  Augustin observes) to take part in the joy of those Lovers of the Stage, when by their cunning they compass their unchaste desires, and to make themselves criminals, by suffering themselves to be touched with a fond compassion for him who afflicts himself at the loss of a pernicious pleasure and of a miserable felicity. Finally, you must, because one takes no pleasure, as the same Saint marks, in seeing Comedies, unless one is moved with those Poetical adventures which are there represented, and wherewith nevertheless one is by so much more moved, by how much one is less cured of his passions. So that by how much your Children shall testify more ardour for Comedies, by so much the less you are to permit them to go to them; because this their eagerness is an evident sign of the inclination they have to excess, to pomp, and to sensuality, to wantonness, to idleness, to effeminacy, to the arts and disguises which triumph upon the Stages, and which you ought to endeavour to banish from their heart.  
I do not doubt but that they have inclinations altogether contrary to these practices. But it is for that very reason that you ought to be constant and not swerve from this discipline and from this fear of our Lord, in which St. Paul ordains you to educate them, lest they engaging themselves insensibly in these disorders, should fall at last to affect and search after these criminal divertisements. And I may say upon this occasion what St. 
S. Augustin.  Augustin said in regard of the Prayers which we present to God to obtain such goods as he foresees would be the cause of our ruin, and which he for that reason refuses to afford us: Let them weep their fill, let them lament all the day long; you show your love to them if you do not listen to them, and you are cruel to them if you hear them.   

6. Advice. Against Gaming, and against the soft and idle life of Worldlings.  
ST. Ambrose advertises the Faithful to take heed lest in desiring to relax their spirit, they break not all the harmony and all the concert of their good works. This advertisement is by so much more necessary in these our days, by how much the major part of Christians live in a continual relaxation, and that instead of diverting themselves only as much as is needful for them in order to enable them afterwards to follow their employments with more ease and attention, they make their divertisements their whole business and occupation. You ought therefore to forget nothing, my Sister, to fortify your children against this disorder, and to hinder them from engaging themselves insensibly in this soft and delicious way of living, which is so common among the people of the world.  
To see the manner of their life and conversation, it seems they were born only for pleasure; and that the advantages they have above others, either by the nobility of their descent, or by the great riches they possess, give them a right to remain in an idleness altogether profane, and in a wretchlesness altogether opposite to the life of true Christians, which ought to be all vigilant and all laborious.  
These persons upon pretext that they feel I know not what aversion from all gross and shameful crimes, and that they propose to themselves only to pass pleasantly each day, make no scruple to consume days and nights in vain conversations, in walkings abroad, in banquets, and in gaming; without fearing that the freedom they give to their senses and to their desires in all these things, should afford them the occasions of being corrupted, wherewith it cannot be but that they are incessantly accompanied.  
I pretend not, Sister, to stay here in order to make you see the illusion of this conduct, nor the obligation which all the faithful have to avoid it, I have already shown it in the second Chapter of this Book: and I know that you are, thanks be to God, fully convinced thereof. I desire only to encourage you to beat down timely in your children the passions which cause these irregularities, and particularly that of play and gaming, which exercises at this day in the world so great a tyranny over men's spirits, and which causes such dreadful evils.  
I avouch unto you, my Sister, that I cannot comprehend how this passion could get possession of so many persons, and how the effects it produces should not make them abhor it, and should not have yet stopped its course. For what excesses doth not the love of gaming cause to them who abandon themselves unto it? Doth it not stifle in them by little and little all the feelings of piety towards God, of charity towards their children, their Domestics and their Neighbour, and of the love one owes to himself? This passion enchants them in such sort by the pleasure they find in it, or by the hope of gain wherewith they flatter themselves, that they forget all things, that they let slip the hours which are even most necessary for repose, that they lose their drink and meat, that they embusy their minds only upon that which they imagine to have been the cause of their gain or of their loss.  
They have no more gust for all other things of life: the exercises of piety are irksome unto them. They apply themselves no longer to prayer, or if they do, it is with a spirit full of perplexity, disquiet and despair, as they themselves acknowledge, for the losses they have sustained, or with a false joy for the gain which hath befallen them. And if they pretend an indifferency to win or lose, they cease not at least to show an extreme impatience to return to their play and gaming.  
Instead of sanctifying the Sundays and holidays, they profane them, as if they had no sense of the Christian Religion. They know no more, what it is to assist at the Divine Office, or to hear the Word of God; or if they go to the great Solemnities, it is to make there new Matches, and to engage themselves afterwards in gaming with more eagerness and with less scruple: as if people of quality and such as have means enough to play away, were therefore dispensed withal in the duties of piety and in the keeping of God's Commandments; or that it were permitted them to make no distinction between holidays and others, than by assisting at a low Mass, and that also in such a manner as that they make so little piety appear, that it is sisible they seek rather to discharge themselves of a burden, than to acquit themselves lawfully of a duty.  
But what shall I say, Sister, of the power which gaming hath to nourish, to strengthen, and to entertain the most criminal passions? Doth not vanity slide ordinarily into gain? and do not they fancy that to be due to their own address and good conduct, which they only own for the most part to haphazard? Anger, Envy, Spite, Rage and Fury, do they not flash out in lose and in bad success? and all the other passions do they not follow one after another in this manner? Do we not see them in less than an hours space to appear with all their different motions in the gestures, in the words, and in all the actions of these Gamesters? They are dejected and jolly, moderate and transported almost in the same moment. And they who conserve outwardly a greater equality, and who strive to keep more moderation, cease not whether they will or not to be agitated interiorly with all these violent passions.  
I let alone the Lies, the Injustices, and the Infidelities which are there committed; the Blasphemies and the execrable Oaths wherewith they are transported; the Quarrels, the Enmities and the Murders which happen, and all the other accursed effects which the passion of Play ordinarily produces: The inability into which they bring themselves to assist the poor in their need, and the harshness they show towars them whilst they rob from their necessity the money which they play away, is alone an evil great enough to persuade 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 essential and much more indispensable. The Women leave their houses and leave the care of their family to such domestics who have ofttimes 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 public, 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 own 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 own to each other. How many Wives are there, who having not wherewithal 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, find themselves easily disposed to satisfy the criminal passions of such as can furnish them wherewithal to Play? Of what disorders is not a Woman capable who hath had a considerable loss at Play, and who sees herself 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 expressly overcome by the women with whom they play, upon design to corrupt them, and who thus make a shameful and infamous traffic of that divertisement?  
And here it is, my Sister, that I entreat you to make reflection 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 win 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 signs 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 kind of liberty to speak any thing, which although it passes not absolutely the bounds of honesty and exterior 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 itself, 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 expenses. There are not wanting indiscreet friends 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 itself 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 find 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 youthful 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 yourself 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 persuade 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 slighting the riches of God's bounty, without contemning his tolerance 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 subsistence, 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 ought to cut off even from what is to themselves necessary, to impart it to them. This moved St. 
S. Aug. ep. 54.  Augustin to say, That all they who know not how to use as they ought the goods which they lawfully possess, are real Usurpers of the goods of other people.  
You are to make them understand, that a Christian may not seek in his divertisement any more than a simple untiring of his spirit and of his body in order to render himself more capable to act Christianly; and that accordingly all such divertisements as notably prejudice his health, or diminish the fervour of his spirit, may not be permitted him; and that in general he hath right to no divertisement whatever, till after an innocent labour, and conformable to the obligations of his estate and condition.  
Finally, you ought to teach them, that there are Plays wherewith they may innocently divert themselves, but that there are also others which they must absolutely avoid: the Plays permitted, are such as serve to exercise the body and the spirit, and in which Art and Industry have the principal part: the Plays which are forbidden are such as consist purely in chance and hazard.  
These sorts of Plays have been at all times condemned by the Churches, which would in the first regulations she made upon this subject, have them who thus played, to be suspended from the holy Communion. She hath also ordained, that the laity should be excommunicated, and the Churchmen degraded who should fall into this sin. Finally, she hath proceeded in the general Council of Latran, to forbid Ecclesiastical persons to assist at them, which was renewed in the year, 1524. in the Synod of Sens: by which it appears, how the Church in all ages hath abhorred these divertisements, since she hath forbidden the very sight thereof to her Ministers, and that she suffered them not so much as to assist at them.  
And this is it undoubtedly which obliged an ancient Ecclesiastical Author, 
An ancient Author among he works of St. Cyprian.  in a Treatise he composed against such as play at the Plays of hazard, and which is among the Works of St. Cyprian, to rank these Plays in the number of the strongest temptations which the Devil makes use of to destroy the faithful. He says, That the Play of Chance and Hazard is a manifest snare of the Devil; that it is a mortal and subtle Poison which penetrates even to the bottom of the heart, and entirely corrupts it; that the wound it makes in the Soul cannot be cured; that God is thereby mortally offended; that one sees there nothing but transportations without reason; that truth hath there no place; that lying reigns there; that it is an obscurity and a cloud which the enemy spreads before men to draw them into precipices; that the devil is present at this Play to triumph and to make his profit of the loss of them who there expose themselves with the ardour which is ordinary to such as love this criminal divertisement: He calls this ardour a fury and a madness. He calls the hands which there play, cruel, because they turn their weapons against themselves, in bereaving themselves all at once of the goods which their Ancestors had got together for them with much sweat and painstaking. Finally, he says, that it is a kind of Idolatry for a Christian to apply himself to it, and that the Play of Chance and Hazard is one of the means the devil hath invented to engage man to sacrifice to him his goods and his own quiet.  
Nor is it only the Church which hath testified in her Councils, and in the Writings of her principal Authors, a horror of these Plays of Hazard; 
Laws of Kings and Emperors against Gaming.  but Kings and Emperors have also condemned them. They have prohibited them as infamous and criminal occupations, and as a means of getting so unjust, that the laws permit him who hath lost at these sorts of Games, to force the Winner or his Heirs after his death to restore the said get: 
Cod. de Aleatoribus.  And if he neglects to make this restitution, they ordain, that any one may undertake to constrain him, and particularly Magistrates and persons constituted in power and dignity, who are to employ this recovered money in public reparations. 
Cid. de Aleat. & de Episcopis audient l. 25. & vet.  The laws also give power to Bishops to take cognisence of this crime, and they ordain Magistrates to lend them their helping hand. So true it is that they who made the Civil and the Ecclesiastical laws have equally judged the Games of Hazard to be no less contrary to good manners and to the spirit of Religion than to the common good of the State and of particular Families.  
I know well that by condemning the games of Hazard in general, we must not (to do justice to each one in particular) so severely condemn some of them as we do others, because they are not all equally full of hazard; and that for example, the Play at Dice is worse than certain Plays of Cards, where judgement and industry have some share. But I also know that they all are equally forbidden to Christians, although they are not all equally evil.  
There needs no more (to convince them of this Truth who will call it into doubt, than the testimony of Authors of this last age who have treated of Cases of Conscience and who cannot be censured of overmuch severity.  
Cardinal Tolet, 
Tolet. l. 1. Sum. c. 27.  after he had observed that there are some games which are permitted, to wit, such where Art and Industry have a greater part than hazard, and which contribute to the exercise of the body; and that there are others which are forbidden, to wit, such where hazard hath a greater share than Art and Industry, and then the strength of the body, says, That although the games of Hazard are in some sort more permitted to worldlings than to Churchmen, when they seek thereby only to divert themselves, and that they play only for a light sum, yet they cannot be excused from mortal sin when they play for a considerable sum. He adds afterwards, speaking of Play in general, that gaming is most commonly a mortal sin, by reason of the circumstances which accompany it, and that oftentimes one is obliged to restore back what they have gained, as when he who is the loser had not power to dispose of that he played away, as it falls out with Children or married Women.  
Navarre says, That all Plays and Games of hazard are forbidden, 
Navar. Manual. c. 20.  and that even such where Art and Industry have a greater part than hazard, become criminal, when they are clad with some criminal circumstances, or when instead of seeking a simple divertisement the Gamesters propose gain for their end. For then, (says he,) they make a shameful traffic contrary to the true end of play, which is to ease and refresh the spirit: and this commerce toils them more than would a lawful occupation, by the disquiets which it causes in them: He adds, that although he will not say positively, that Lay-people are as strictly obliged as Ecclesiastical persons to avoid these Games, yet he entreats them all, and particularly such as are of great quality, to consider, that if they sin only venially, yet their fault ceases not to be very great; that they exercise a traffic no less shameful than the gain they make of it; and that they are oftentimes bound to Restitution; and lastly, that they cannot without drawing upon themselves a great confusion before God, and committing a great indecency, receive the Sacred Eucharist, unless they are resolved to abstain for the future from these sorts of Games.  
Other Casuists, though more remiss, 
Sanches. Molina. Escobar.  yet still maintain, that whoso gives Gamesters an entrance into his house, and makes thereof an Academy for them to play at hazards, sins very grievously, because one rarely plays at those games without mortal sin, and because every one is obliged by the natural law not to furnish others with the matter and occasion of sin. From whence one of them concludes, 
Escobar. Moral. Theo. p. 1. Exam. 12. c. 2.  that they who expose their houses to these sorts of games, do not only sin mortally, but that if they who have there won money do not restore it when they are bound to it, they themselves are obliged in conscience to do it.  
You need only, my Sister, apply all these Maxims to Gamesters, to be persuaded that very few of them are innocent. The major part of them play only at such games wherein chance hath chief sovereignty, and which by consequence are forbidden. They play for considerable sums, and which by little and little drain their purses or notably incommodate their Family. A Woman thinks herself moderate when she exposes herself to lose but forty or fifty Pistols in an afternoon, not only without the consent of her Husband, but even against his will: and she considers not, that she really robs him of all that she plays away, because he is master of the Community according to the civil law; and (as says St. Augustin,) 
S. Aug. Ep. 99 ad Eccl.  because she cannot say, I may do what I please with my proper goods, since she may not dispose of her own person as she pleases, and because she belongs entirely to her Husband. Nor do the Husbands on their side render themselves less criminal in exposing to hazard the goods of their Wives and Children, and in exposing themselves, 
S Ambr. in Tobiam. c. 11.  as says St. Ambrose, to change their estate at each chance of their play; there being no more stability in their estate, than is in the Dice and Cards which they incessantly shake and shuffle.  
As to the games which are permitted, how many are there of them which are not accompanied with circumstances which render them criminal? Do they not spend therein whole days and nights: and instead of using them to divert the spirit and to fortify the body, do they not very frequently destroy the forces both of the one and the other by the excesses therein committed? How small soever is the sum they play for, do they not fall into passion? See we not there reigning spite, envy, jealousy, wrangling? Do not Pride and desire to win and overcome, regulate (as one may say) all their motions? So that it may be said, that it is a very hard matter to play innocently at any game, and without feeling I know not what alteration, which declares either that the Soul is not yet cured of her spiritual infirmities, or that she is ready to relapse into them unless she promptly quits this contagious exercise.  
I know, 
Ionas. Bish. of Orleans.  (says the Illustrious Ionas Bishop of Orleans in the excellent work he made at the entreaty of the Comte de Mathfred, to teach that Lord in what manner he ought to live in the state of Marriage,) what they answer who love Play and Gaming: What evil do we, (say they,) what sin do we commit in Play? But it must be answered them that they offend God in several manners; First, in that it is almost impossible to play without Lying, without forswearing, or without being transported into choler and discord: and in the second place, because in case one should commit none of these excesses, yet 'tis always a sin to be thus in idleness, which is the enemy of the soul. Remember then whoever you are that delight in gaming, that you must one day render an account to God of the days and hours you have wasted.  I know moreover, (adds he,) that many will answer me with indignation; For what then serves the world to a secular person, if it is not permitted him to play when he pleases, and to take his divertisement? I will not answer them, but in the very Words of our Saviour: What will it avail a man to gain the whole world, and to lose his Soul? Now it is very certain, that the soul reaps no profit by all the plays: Furthermore, let them listen to the advice which the Apostle St. John gives them in these Words: Love not the World, nor that which is in the World: If any one loves the World, the love of the Father is not in him: For all that which is in the world is but concupiscence of the Flesh, or concupiscence of the Eyes, or Pride of life; which come not from the Father, but from the world: Now the world passes, and the concapiscence of the world passes away with it, but he who does the will of God remains eternally. Let them hearken again to the Apostle St. James: Whoever will be a friend of the World makes himself an enemy of God. 
Behold, Sister, how this Bishop, who was in the beginning of the nineth age one of the greatest ornaments of the Church of France, and all they who were instructed as he was in the science of the Church, have answered the reasons which they make use of yet at this day to justify the passion they have for Play. Now it is easy to judge from thence that they believed it to be a sin to employ a considerable time in Play, however innocent and otherwise permitted; there being no moment of our life, since we arrived to the age of discretion, whereof God exacts not of us a faithful employment, since we must render to him an account at the day of Judgement of all the unprofitable words we have spoken: This appeared to that learned Prelate to be worthy of so great consideration, that in the excellent Treatise he writ for the instruction of Pepin King of Aquitania, the son of Lewis le Debonnaire, this was the first thing he exhorted him daily to think upon.  
Endeavour therefore, my Sister, to educate your Children in an aversion from all manner of gaming. And as a divertisement is the most ordinary pretext for their engagement therein, regulate so their spirit and their heart as to 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 ruins 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 itself, 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 mind 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 yoke 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 domestics, 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 lead 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 find in the sacred Scripture, that he wept, and that his life was a continual chain of labours and pains; but that we read 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 ourselves, 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 Moment's 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 find 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 gauges of God's 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 myself will not tell you, (says this great man,) the sacred Scripture must teach it them, which addressing itself 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 own 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 yourself 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 who engage their Children in the World by procuring for them some establishment by the means of Marriage; yet he prefers the conduct of those who marry them not, and who make a firm resolution in their hearts to move their Children to renounce the world and those sorts of settlements and to embrace Virginity.  
This great Apostle considered, Ib. v. 25. That although he had received no command from our Lord which obliged to Virginity; yet it was advantageous to man, because of the wretched necessities of this present life, not to marry, v. 26.  
He considered, v. 29. That what time remains is short; and therefore that even they who have wives, should be as if they had none; they who weep as if they wept not; v. 30. they who rejoice as if they did not rejoice; they who buy as possessing nothing, and they who use the world as not using it, v. 31.  
He considered, v. 32. That he who is not married employs his care upon the concerns of our Lord, and of what he ought to do to please him; v. 33. whereas he who is married, employs his care upon the things of the world, and what he is to do to please his wife, and so he finds himself thus parted and divided. In like manner that a Woman who is unmarried and a Virgin, hath her spirit employed upon things of our Lord, v. 34. to the end she may be holy in body and in spirit; whereas she who is married, hath her spirit employed with solicitude upon the things of the world, and casts about what she is to do to please her Husband.  
All these Considerations made St. Paul desire, Ib. v. 7. That all men were in the state in which himself was, and that they were disengaged from cares and disquiets; v. 32. having no design, as he declares, to enthrall them by his words, nor to put upon them any necessity, but only to induce them to that which is most pure, and which affords them a more easy means to tie themselves to God without any distraction, v. 35.  
And it is in this spirit that he praises the conduct of Fathers and of Mothers, who take a firm resolution in their heart to conserve their Children Virgins, and not to engage them in Marriage, forasmuch as by this means they induce them to that which is most pure, and to that which gives them an easier means to adhere to God without distraction.  
'Tis this, to which parents are particularly obliged, according to the judicious observation of Gaudentius Bishop of Bresse. For this great man after he had declared in one of his Sermons, that parents cannot force the will of their children in what regards the choice of Marriage or the state of continence, adds this prudent reflection: I will not, (says he,) that Fathers and Mothers or the other kindred of Virgins, whether Boys or Girls, should flatter themselves with that which I say, that they ought to leave their children in the liberty of this choice, and that they cannot domineer over their spirits upon this account, For 'tis true that they cannot command them a perpetual continence, because that's a thing which ought to be altogether voluntary; but they may, whilst they are yet young, educate, elevate, and nourish their will in the love of that which is most perfect; they ought to induce them by their advertisements and their exhortations to such a love, to enkindle it in them, to entertain it in them, and to show much more eagerness to engage them in the service of God than in following the world; and offering some of their Sons to serve in the Clergy in the Ministry of the Altars, and some of their Daughters in the Monasteries of Religious Women, to the end they may there consecrate themselves to Chastity. 'Tis thus that by adorning the Church with the fruits of a holy Education, they may attain to the happiness which is promised in the sacred Scripture to him who hath of his posterity in Zion, and of his family in Jerusalem.  
Would to God, Sister, that parents had these sentiments graved so deeply in their heart, that one might re-establish them at this day in the possession, wherein they were in the ancient Testament and in the first ages of the Church, to offer up their children to God, and to consecrate them entirely to his service, even in their most tender years.  
This power of Fathers and Mothers over their children shone gloriously in the Church at that time in particular when the Monasteries of Saint Benedict flourished most in sanctity. 
Monasteries of S. Benedict.  For parents placed their children in these holy Schools and in these happy Retraits to learn there the science of Christianism and to be there safely sheltered from the malice and from the corruption of the world; and they did it with such a fullness of their will, that they seemed to divest themselves, in placing them there, of all the feelings of flesh and blood, and to renounce entirely all the right they could pretend to them. From whence it was that they had a custom, as it is expressed in the Rule of St. Benedict, to enwrap the hands of the child in the cloth of the Altar, as it were to signify that this innocent youth took God, who is represented by the Altar, for his inheritance.  
And because Riches are one of the strongest temptations of the world, and one of the most powerful means the world makes use of to make itself beloved; the Children were made poor, and were destript of wealth for ever. The Fathers could no longer make them partakers of their goods but by giving Alms to the whole Monastery: and moreover, to the end they might remain happily engaged to the service of Christ Jesus without hope of returning, they promised with an Oath that they would never re-place them in possession of the goods they had now quitted by abandoning the world.  
This practice was yet in use in the Eleventh Age, where we find that the child who was thus offered wore a Crown, as if he had been already a Religious man, for a mark of the Victory he was going to obtain over the World: and as another Isaac he carried in his hands not Wood and Fire, but Bread and Wine, to signify that he was himself a thing consecrated to God, and a living and spiritual Sacrifice.  
As in Baptism, Parents promise for their children, that they renounce the Devil and his Pomp's; so here the Fathers promised before witnesses, that their children should remain in the regular observance of the Monastery: they protested that it was no longer in their power, after this Oblation, to cast off the Yoke of the Rule to which they were now subjected; and they made use of that form, which is somewhat near the same which is still used by the Religious of St. benedict's Order in their Profession: I promise before God and his Saints for this my Son a perpetual stability in this Monastery, the conversion of his manners, and an 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 advantageous to children, that she obliged the said children to observe them all their life. There was no difference put between the destroying of one's 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 overrigorous in this proceeding: but on the contrary, it was full of justice and highly advantageous 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 Father's 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 children's side, is this engagement to Religion to be dreaded? Is not the yoke 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 customs, who from their cradle have been form 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 sometimes 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 bereft 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 retreat to march on, both more courageously, 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 practice, 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 children's 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 persuasions 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 Cloister, unless the world could not have force enough to corrupt them.  
God will have us try ourselves, but not put ourselves into the hands of the World and of the Devil to try ourselves: He on the contrary commands us to fly from the mortal Enemies of our salvation, for fear of falling into their snares; to save ourselves in the solitude, for fear to perish with Babylon; and to hid the treasure which we have found for fear lest in showing it, the Devil who seeks incessantly to take his advantages, should take it away from us.  
The Prudence of God's holy spirit cannot be deceived, but it leaves us and abandons us, when we quit his house and the place where he cleared and enlightened 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 to suffer the spirit of God to be extinguished in our hearts.  
If Adam had kept his Eyes always shut, he would not have had cupidity to fight against, and he would have continued in perfect peace. Wherefore it is to imitate the Devil's malice thus to open the eyes of children, whom the grace of the second Adam hath rendered innocent, to make them see the vanities of the World to engage them in new combats, and to bereave them of peace. 'Tis not to try their Vocation, but to make them lose it: And 'tis so far from making the grace of Religion triumph in them by this proceeding, that it renders it useless, and extinguishes it in their hearts, because it is not given to sanctify men in the middle of the World, but to make them abandon it.  
In the times of Persecution, Christian Prudence taught the Faithful to fly from the Executioners; and this just and humble Fear was the source of the strength which the Saints obtained of God to suffer the most cruel torments, when they fell against their will into the hands of their Enemies. Who doubts but that the spiritual Persecutions of the World which corrupt Souls, are more dangerous, and aught much more carefully to be avoided: and that the allurements of pleasure, that the abundance of riches, that the pomps and the excess of ambition are Tyrants which murder more Souls than the Nero's and the Dioclesian's murdered bodies?  
How great then is their unhappiness who are exposed to this cruelty? and what an indiscretion is it in Parents who thrust their children into this precipice? they were happily hidden and covered in the Cloister from the surprises of their enemies. The continual Prayers, the labour, and the charitable care of the Religious persons who supported them both by their example and by their prayers and by their advertisements, were as so many Bucklers wherewith they were shielded, and which rendered them invincible against the Devil: Is it not then to engage them in the combat, after they are bereft of their Weapons and of their Forces, thus to withdraw them from these holy places and practices?  
The Pleasures, the Flatteries of men, the spectacles of vanity encompass them. They hear nothing but the voice of Ambition and of Wantonness. They see nothing but what shows them the Angels of Satan, which cast them into blindeness, or cozen them by false lights. They are in the midst of the mire, and yet you would have them contract no filth. They are amidst fires and flames, and you pretend they should be preserved by a Miracle, like that which preserved the three young Hebrews amidst the Babylonian Furnace.  
You well see, my Sister, that this pretention is altogether unreasonable, and that it is in no sort conformable to the principles of Christianism. Observe then inviolably in regard of your children whom you design to God's service, the two things I now propose unto you: place them in houses well regulated, and force them not thence upon any pretext whatever.  
Let the grace of Christ Jesus act in these young Hearts, according to the extent of his bounty. Leave them to listen at leisure to the voice which calls them. Give them all the time which is necessary to discern what he demands of them: and unless you clearly perceive that he calls them not to Religion, and that persons of knowledge and of piety do assure you thereof, do not withdraw them; for fear lest by a false prudence, or by an overhasty precipitation, you should pull out of the house of Christ Jesus one of his spouses to expose her to the corruption of the world.  
Finally, if they have not sufficient courage to sacrifice themselves to God, and that they will return back into the world, receive them with that sweetness and charity which you own them; but suffer them not to become the sacrifices of the Devil. If they could not follow Christ Jesus in the exercises of the Religious life, do not suffer them so far to desert them as to follow the Maxims of the world. And if they could not put themselves into an estate to receive the abundant graces and favours which God communicates to such souls as totally disentangle themselves to unite themselves more strictly unto him; do your best to hinder them from engaging themselves in the disorders which reign in the world, lest they should draw upon their heads the dreadful effects of his anger and revenge.    

CHAP. XI. At what age these Maxims and these Advices are to be applied.  
AS to the time, my Sister, when you ought principally to reduce into practise all these Maxims and all these advices, it is that time which commonly seems least proper for the acquisition of virtue, and to know its excellence and its beauty: I mean that of Infancy.  
This is that which the holy Ghost himself insinuates unto us by the mouth of Solomon, who says, Pro. 32.11, That one may easily judge of the Innocence and of the virtue of a young man by the things to which he is affected in his Infancy. He would signify hereby that Parents and they who are encharged with the Education of children, will be unexcusable, if the children become not virtuous under their conduct; since they might easily prevent their disorders by applying wholesome remedies to the first accesses of their evils, and that they might have weeded out in their tenderest years the seed of all those bad productions, which then begin to bud forth and appear.  
And it is this which Ecclesiasticus declares yet more smoothly, when he says: Eccles. 7.25. You have children, instruct them and curb them from their Infancy: Where you see Sister, that God's holy spirit makes an allusion to trees, and that he will give us to understand, that as we prune and bend trees whilst they are yet young, lest by overlong delaying it, they may be apt to be broken than bended: so children, who in the langage of the Royal Prophet, Psal., 107.4. are round about the table of their Parents as new Plants of the Olive-tree. are to enter under the discipline of their Fathers and Mothers, as soon as they leave the arms of their Nurses; and that they are no less to be taught how to march towards Heaven, than they are instructed to go upon the Earth. So that as they are informed to render to their Parents and to such persons as present themselves before them, the little marks of respect and of honour whereof they are then capable, although they know not the reasons why they should prefer them before others; so they are to be accustomed to render to God little testimonies of Piety, and to practise weak actions of virtue although they cannot comprehend the obligations they have to his Divine Majesty, nor the excellence of virtue.  
We are not to expect, says St. John Chrysostom, till our children are great, to imprint fear into them: but we are to regulate them, instruct them, 
Chrystost. l. 3. cont. vituperatores vitae Monast.  and form them from their Infancy, and then they will never need our threats or our severity. We carry ourselves towards them in such sort as if a Physician 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 evil 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 advantageous employments in the Court and in the Camp: We hoard up Wealth for them: We get them Friends: 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 yoke 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 ourselves 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 Ideas and the Fancies which they receive by their parent's 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 losing 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 Jewels, 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 child 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 design if he finds those of a child 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 baptised children who die 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: 'Tis 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 Hell's 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 customs 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 design which was so discreet and so advantageous 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 Dam 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' 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 Governor who had taught him in his Infancy, notwithstanding that he was otherwise very powerful, and had conquered the major part of the World: which shows how hard it is to blot out of the spirit of a young man the tinctures it hath taken in his Infancy; that it conserveses 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 changed (if we may say it) into its substance.  
This made one of the most clearsighted among the Pagans to say, That one of the things we should chief take care of in the Education of children whom we intent to leave a long time 
Quintilian.  in their Nurse's hands, is concerning the choosing 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 newmade conserveses almost ever after the odour of the first liquor poured 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 itself 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 child 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 form 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 Mother's womb. Samson, Samuel, and St. John Baptist in the Old Testament, St. Augustin, St. Bernard, in the New, are authentic proofs of the advantages which are derived from this holy practice. And it is most certain, 
S. Chry. l. 1. cont. vitupera. vitae Monast.  that God despises not so rational a devotion, and a so well regulated piety; but that on the contrary he lends his  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 yield 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 Heirs 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 lead 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 for the public 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 design for the World.  
To make you comprehend how much the interest of Commonwealths and Kingdoms is engaged 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 retreat; 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 comers. 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 remembering 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 Doctors 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 show 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 they design for the World. For it is certain, that Virtue hath this advantage, to make itself esteemed by its own enemies, and that if it hath not sufficient allurements and charms strong enough to gain all men's 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 address 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 arbitrator 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 welcome in the Courts of Sovereign Kings and Princes?  
Do not fear that the modesty of your Daughters in their dress, that their reservedness in company, that the little intercourse 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 design for the World, is it not advantageous 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 design for Cloisters and for retreat. 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 winds and the tempests: so he who is designed for the solitude being to lead 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 men's 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 surprise 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 persuaded 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 friendship 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 settled 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 increase, 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 read such Books as will profit them, if you yourself 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 Domestics, truly Christian. It seems they dare not discover to them the sentiments they have for God. They hid 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 falsehood, 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 ruin of all their posterity, and which rendered 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 and to please Christ Jesus? that they are ignorant of nothing that concerns the Modes which Vanity and Flattery have introduced into the World, and that they are so ill instructed in the Rules of the Gospel, and in the laws, customs, and ceremonies of the Church?  
'Tis long since, Sister, that God would have brought a Remedy to this Disorder.  
In the law of Nature, he ordained, according to the Tradition we have from S. Jerome, that the first born of the Family should be exalted to the Priesthood, that they should be initiated therein by their own Parents, and that they should have no other Doctors and Teachers but them concerning the truths they were to believe and the functions they were to exercise. 'Twas for this, that when he was ready to revenge the crimes of Sodom and Gomorra, Gen. 26.18. he said that he could not conceal this his design from Abraham, because he knew he would make use of this dreadful example to induce his children and all his Domestics to walk after him in the way of his Divine Ordinances, and to live holily; giving thereby all Fathers and Mothers to understand, that the means to become his familiar friends, and to oblige him to discover unto them his secrets, and to conceal nothing from them, was the care they should take to instruct their Family.  
In the Law of Moses, at the same time when God ordained the days of Feasts and of Solemnities, he commanded Parents to instruct their children in the Ceremonies which were there to be observed, and to teach them the reasons and the motives of their Institution. Thus after he had prescribed to the Israelites what they were to observe in eating the Pascall-Lamh, Exod. 13.8. he commanded them to recite to their children on that day what he had done in their favour to draw them out of Egypt and feee them from the tyranny of Pharaoh. He would have the Feast of Tabernacles yearly celebrated, and that they should remain seven whole days under Tents made of the branches of Citron-trees, of Myrrhs, of Palms, and of Willows, to the end their children might learn how God had conserved their Ancestors the space of Forty years in the Desert under Tents and Pavilions. Finally, he ordained them to offer up unto him all the first born of the Males, as well of Men as of Beasts, to the end that their children being surprised at these so extraordinary and so frequent presents, might inquire the cause and so come to be instructed of the meaning of these Ceremonies, and as the sacred Scripture says, that the Parents might have evermore in their mouths the recital of the benefits they had received from God's bounty, and that from thence they should take occasion to teach their children his Law, and to make them have it in high esteem, according to that more particular Commandment which he gave them in Deuteronomy, where he ordains them to have his Law in their heart, Deut. 6.6. to entertain their children therein, and to teach them to meditate upon it, and to think on it in their house and in their journeys, during their rest and during their labour, and finally in all their occupations, and at all the hours of the day, Deut. 1.18.  
In the Law of Grace, the Church which is animated with the same spirit renews every year the Memory of the Mysteries which Christ Jesus wrought for us, and she endeavours to place before our eyes by many ceremonies and sensible signs the marvails which have been so long concealed from the eyes of Angels, and whereof they were not informed but by the Ministry of this holy Spouse.  
'Tis true that she particularly destinies her Pastors to explicate them to her Children. But that also which St. 
Chrys. ho. 9 in 3. ad Colos.  John Chrysostom says is no less true: That the Heads of Families are not to remit all entirely to them of the Church: That as for themselves they are indeed to be instructed by the Preachers of the Gospel; but that after that, they ought to instruct their children; and like those Birds, whereof the same Doctor speaks, having heard something that is profitable for the nourishment of their own souls, to bring it home upon the tip of their tongue, to communicate it unto them.  This moved Venerable Beda to say in the Discourse he made upon the Shepherds who watched when our Saviour was born: 
S. Beda. hom. de Nativ.  Do not fancy to yourselves that there are no other Pastors but the Bishops. the Priests, the Deacons, and the Superiors of Monasteries? for all the Faithful who have the government of their family are truly Pastors; since they are established to command and to take care of all their domestics: and he among you who hath any authority over one or two of his Brethren, is assuredly obliged to exercise in their behalf the Office of a Pastor, and to feed them to the utmost of his power with the Word of God. And I say furthermore; Each one of you, my Brethren, although you lead a private life, ceases not to be a Pastor, since you feed a spiritual flock, and watch in the night to conserve it, if you truly endeavour to heap up a great treasure of holy actions and good thoughts, if you govern it with prudence if you employ all your care to nourish and entertain it with the delicious pastures of holy Scriptures, and if you watch continually over this holy flock, to defend it against the assaults of the Enemy. 
St. 
St. Chry. Ser. 77. in Matt.  Chrysostom says the same in one of his Sermons, where, after he had related the words of Christ Jesus to St. Peter; If you love me, feed my sheep, he says, That one is not to take these words as spoken only to the Pastors of the Church: They are, (adds he,) for every one of us, to whom Christ Jesus hath committed but a small flock; for although 'tis small, yet 'tis not to be neglected, since Christ Jesus himself says, that his heavenly Father finds there his pleasure and his delight. Each one of you hath some sheep in his Family; let him take care to govern them and to feed them. As soon as a Father arises from his bed, let him not think of any other thing till night, but to do and say what may contribute to the spiritual good and advancement of his Family. Let a Mother have the same care: 'Tis good she should think of her housewifry, but she is to apply herself yet more to the salvation of her whole Family, and to take care that each one of it be saved, and be zealous to gain Heaven.  
You are not therefore to persuade yourself, Sister, that you have satisfied the obligation you have to instruct your Children, because you send them to Catechisms, that they follow you to the Church, that they assist with you at Sermons, and that they faithfully recite the abridgements of the Christian Doctrine: You must furthermore, when you make them render an account of what they have learned, examine them whether they comprehend what they say; and because they are not capable of themselves to make good use of it, you are to apply to the little occasions of their souls that which hath best pleased them, or that which hath the nearest touched them. You are to make preservatives against the vices you see them most inclined to, and remedies against the imperfections which they most ordinarily fall into. You are with words full of tenderness and sweetness to instill into them the love of the Virtues there praised, the horror of the Vices there condemned, and to leave them always in a sacred hunger of this celestial nourishment, I mean in the desire to hear the Word of God, which you are to excite by little rewards and by an honest liberty you will give them to recreate themselves when they have well remembered what you told them or what they heard from others.  
Prevent the Solemnities to instruct your children in the Mysteries, the memory whereof are then celebrated; and accommodate yourself to their age to make them enter into the Spirit and into the practice of those Virtues which are honoured in the said Mysteries. Entertain them frequently with the life and actions of Christ Jesus, and repeat often to them what Tradition and the Gospel teach us of those of his holy Mother. And because children are strongly inclined to hear the recital of such things as they can least imitate, and of events accompanied with fear and horror: relate unto them the conflicts of the Martyrs, the temptations of the Anchorets, the miracles of the Confessors: And as there is almost no day wherein the Church proposes not to her children a meditation upon the life of some Saint; let no Evening pass without proposing to them some action of Virtue, and without prescribing to them some little practice of piety for the Morrow. The Confessarius of the famous S. Lewis, who wrote the Life of that great King, says, That each Evening he caused his Children to come into his Chamber, where he always spoke to them some words of edification before he sent them away.  
As for example, in the time of the Birth of our blessed Saviour, representing to them the cold which little Jesus endured in the Crib, may you not excite them to suffer for his sake the incommodity of the season, and the cold they feel in the School or in the Church?  
If they complain that they are denied the things they desire: Why may you not say to them; Well, my children, consider how many other things you have: Alas! our Saviour Christ had not a little bed as you have to lie on, nor fine linen, nor a good Coat to  him: He was almost naked in a manger and upon straw; and yet all things belonged to him, although he would not make use of them, but left them for our use and comfort: Is it not then very reasonable we should want some small matter for the love of him? Go, he can and will reward you in Heaven.  
If they find it painful to follow you to the Church; tell them, that they are far from doing as our Lord did, Luke 2.41. who stole himself away from his Parents to remain in the Temple, and who made every year a long journey to go thither with them.  
If they show some Impatience in their small sufferings, say to them: Ah, my children, how far are you from enduring the torments which so many Saints suffered for Christ Jesus? How will you endure Martyrdom when you shall be men, if you cannot now endure the pricking of a Pin? And if you cannot bear a little blow from your Brother or from your Sister, when will you be so perfect and patiented as to turn your other Cheek to him who hath struck one of them?  
Instill into them a great love and a great esteem of their own littleness and Infancy: Repeat frequently unto them that which is advantageous for Infants in the Gospel: Tell them how our Lord reprehended his Apostles Matt. 18.19. for hindering such Infants as they are, to come unto him; that he took one of them and placed him in the middle of his Disciples; and that he said several times, that one must become like them to enter into Heaven. And thus at the same time they grow according to the Body, make them conserve in their Soul a great love for the qualities and the dispositions of Infancy.  
Bring them up in a great respect and in a great confidence for their Guardian Angels. Let them know principally the life of that Saint whose name they bear; and the obligation they have to imitate him or her. And as it is said of Christ Jesus Matt. 2. that he grew in the house, and under the conduct of his holy Mother, in Wisdom, in Age, and in Grace before God and before Men; let your children advance by your care by little and little in the knowledge of the sacred Mysteries, and in your colloquies and your instructions let all things serve you, as St. Paul says, to make them increase in Christ Jesus Ephes. 4.15.  
Above all, teach them to prefer God and his Commandments before all other things. Tell them often that they ought to have for him much more tenderness and more respect than they have for yourself. Imitate that excellent Mother of whom mention is made in the Book of Maccabees, who to encourage her children to endure constantly their torments for the defence of the Jewish Religion, excited them to look upon God as their Father, and to esteem themselves happy in sacrificing their lives for the glory of him of whom they received them, and who had prepared lives much more glorious for them in Heaven. Imitate the admirable art she made use of to strengthen the youngest of her seven children, whom the Tyrant endeavoured to withdraw from the resolution of dying; and do you, as she did, make use of the consideration of such things as you have done for your children, thereby to engage them to persevere in Virtue: Take compassion my Son, (says she to him,) 2 Maccab. 7.17: upon a Mother who hath born you in her bosom, who hath nourished you whole years with the Milk of her Breasts, and who hath educated you with tenderness even till this time: I demand of you, my Son, by all these considerations, that you will lift your heart and your eyes towards Heaven, and that in imitation of your Brothers you will receive death with joy, that I may have the satisfaction to see you partaker of their glory.  
'Tis thus, that you should make use of the power, which the gratitude and the love your children have for you gives you over their spirit, to engage them to raise up themselves to God, and to honour him to whom alone they are indebted for the care you employed in their Education. And because there are occasions in this life where the tenderness and the respect which children have for their Parents may prove 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 own 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 own 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 kind 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 Commandments: And Fathers and Mothers cannot be offended that he thus ordains us to hate them, although we own to them in that quality much tenderness and affection; since it is also enjoined us to hate ourselves. 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 yield 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 than conceive against their Fathers and Mothers, is honourable; and it is just and advantageous 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 find 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 show 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. Read 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, named 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 herself 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 starknaked 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 herself 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 behind 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 herself all alive as he was to his companions. But this blessed child dying in his dear Mother's 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 quality named Dionysia, whose example, (according to the relation of an African Bishop called Victor who writ the History of the Martyrs of the Church of Africa, 
Victor. Africa. l. 3. c. 1.  persecuted by the Wandales,) was the cause of the salvation of almost all her Country, 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 rendered him even more valiant than herself; insomuch as this young Champion fought Faith's battle 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 heroic, 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 kind 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 read 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 wellborn and yet tender souls by showing 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 herself 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 herself by the Lecture of Ecclesiastes, to despise the World, and to trample under her feet all its grandures and all its vanities; to furnish herself with examples of courage and of patience by reading the Book of Job; that afterwards she should read the Gospels, and have them always in her hands; that she should read with fervour the Acts of the Apostles, and their Epistles; and after she shall have filled herself with the riches she hath heaped up by these precious Lectures, let her moreover read the rest of the Books of sacred Scripture. He will also have her read 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 find will be the obligation he hath to honour you: and without doubt God hath so permitted it, that you might not say 'tis only for solitary and Religious persons to read it. Say not that you have no design 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 increases daily 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 Counterpoison in the sacred Scripture and apply them from their tenderest Infancy to this holy reading.  
I well see that I shall seem to dally, (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 Philosophy 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 Poesy, they will there see the small solidity that can be found in all creatures, the sweetness and the advantage that is found in the practice of Virtues, and finally, they will there find the knowledge of their duties towards God and towards their Neighbour.  
'Tis 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 moisten 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 Doctors, to give him entrance into the sentiments and feelings which he had inspired into St, Paul, and which this great Patriarch 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 read 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 strengthened, makes it appear, that the study of Poets and profane Authors, is in regard of children who are engaged therein, as a Sea full of Monsters and of rocks, where the best provided suffer shipwreck; and that the choicest and most eloquent Words of the Courtiers of Augustus, are but Golden Vessels full of Poison, which are presented to us by drunken Doctors 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 read them, they had settled my heart and had tied it to your service: whereas it having wandered 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 praises 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; choosing rather to expose herself to death and to confusion wherewith she was threatened, 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 Maccabees 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 read 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 yourself 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.  
Action's, 
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 itself 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 join 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 children's presence, this bud sprouts up and strengthens itself, 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 choose 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 itself 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 child can do in so weak and tender an age, 
S. Aug. in Psal. 136.  is to consider his Parents, and blindly 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 ourselves 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 ruins insensibly the forces of their Spirit and of their Body. What will not a child 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 ourselves 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 shameful things pass in the greater part of our Entertainments and Divertisements. Children accustom themselves to behold and to imitate these disorders: this custom passes into nature: and these unfortunate wretches learn to commit these irregularities even before they are capable to comprehend their excess and their enormity.  
I think, Sister, that Christians cannot hear a Pagan discourse thus, without blushing that they should have less feeling of these disorders than he had; or that they should not make it appear they had better apprehensions thereof by their practice.  
Will you then acquit yourself well of your Duty, and bring up your children (as St. Paul ordains) in the Fear and in the Discipline of our Lord; live you yourself in this Fear and in this Discipline. Practise meekness and humility, that you may render them more docible and submissive: Let the respect you have for all the proceed of your Husband teach them to honour him and to fear him: Let your modesty in your  and dresses instill into them an aversion from all worldly vanities: Let the humanity wherewith you command your domestics, teach them to treat them civilly. Finally, be you such towards God as you would have your children be to him and to yourself: and forget not these words of our Saviour: Luk. 9.41. If any one is a cause of Scandal and of falling to one of these little ones who believe in me, it were better for him to have a Millstone made fast to his neck, and that he were cast into the Sea.   

The Fourth Means. Prayer.  
IT would be a small matter for a Christian Mother to give holy Instructions to her children, to cause them to read good Books, and to practise before their eyes what she would have them to practise; if she applies not herself seriously to Prayer, and if she endeavours not by little and little to render them capable to entertain themselves with God, and to ruminate in his presence what they have been told, what they have read, and what they have seen practised with edification, that so they may reap their profit by them.  
I know that they have taken up in the world a certain Idea of Mental Prayer, which makes them imagine that it is an exercise too hard and too high for many people, and that it is only proper for such persons as have made already a large progress and are greatly advanced in the spiritual life. They fancy it to be as it were a humane Art, and as an effect of curiosity and of presumption: and as soon as one mentions meditation, they represent to themselves Methods, divisions, and a multitude of Discourses and thoughts, which require a great contention of spirit. Yet surely this manner of prayer demands only the Heart: It is the most natural occupation of Piety and of Faith, and the proper effect of the feelings one ought to have on the one side of God's greatness, and on the other side of ones own weakness, necessity, and misery: so that the simplest persons, and the very children are capable thereof, assoon as they begin to use their reason, and to be sensible of their own wants.  
For in how many different manners do they express themselves even in their very Infancy, to make their Fathers and their Mothers and such other persons as govern them, understand their wants and their pains? How ingenious are they to explicate their joys, their sadnesses, their inclinations and their aversions? Make they not use of divers cries, of different accents of the voice, and of various motions of the body to discover the thought and the desire of their Hearts? And do they not render with a marvellous dexterity all these signs as conformable as they can to their wills, to the end they may become intelligible? Every thing speaks in their little Body; their Eyes, their Gestures, their Laughter, and their Tears: Finally, know they not how by an hundred different ways to get what they desire, and even to force them that resist it to yield at last and to grant it them? Why then, as they increase in age, and as their spirit opens itself, may one not endeavour to teach them to ask of God what they stand in need of, and to ask it of him in that strong and persuasive manner in which the heart knows how to explicate itself and how to make known its affections and its motions?  
St. Augustin relates, 
S. Aug. l. 1. Conf. c. 9 n. 2.3.  that among the exercises of his Infancy, having met with certain servants of God, who invoked him in their Prayers, and having learned of them (as far forth as he was capable to frame some Idea of God) that he was something very great and sublime, and that although he was concealed from our senses, he could hear our Prayers and help us in our needs; he began (very Child as he was) to implore his assistance, and to address himself unto him as to his refuge and to his place of security. I learned (says he, raising up himself to God) and taught my stammering tongue to invoke you; although I was little, the affection wherewith I prayed you to hinder that I might not be whipped in the School, was not little.— For it is true that I no less apprehended the chastisements and the punishments which I received from my Masters, than Men apprehend the greatest torments; and that they beg not with greater instance to be delivered from them, than I conjured you to remove from me these torments of little Children.  
Behold, Sister, how advantageous this encounter with these men of Prayer, was to this great Saint, and how children in their low age are capable to address themselves to God, and to demand of him with eagerness what they desire, when they are taught to conceive as far forth as they are able, that it is from him alone they ought to expect it.  
The same Saint speaking of a sickness he had in his Infancy, and which they believed had brought to death's door, attributes the fervour and the faith wherewith he demanded to receive Baptism, 
Aug. l. 1. Conf. chap. 11.  to that which he had heard spoken of the eternal life which was promised to us by the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ Jesus, and to the care his Mother had assoon as she had brought him into the World, to cause him to be marked with the sign of the Cross upon the forehead, and to put him afterwards into the number of the Cathecumen. So true it is, that Truth makes very strong impressions in the hearts of children, when one knows how to accommodate it to their capacity, and mildly and familiarly to engage them to employ themselves before God, and to demand of him grace to love him.  
Thus, Sister, when children find difficulty in learning their lessons, they are to be made to comprehend as far as they are capable, that Wit and Knowledge comes from God, and that it is to him they must address themselves in the difficulties they have in their studies. When they show any violent Passion, as a disorderly love for Play, or an Envy or criminal Jealousy against their Brethren or their Companions, you are to endeavour, by making them see the disorder of that passion, to induce them to demand of God to cure them, and to desire of him to render them more prudent, more moderate, and more charitable. When they ask of you a new Coat or Garment, or any thing of like nature, teach them to demand it first of God, in making them rightly understand, that it is from him you have the Money wherewith to buy it; and that if you refuse them, it is because they have not yet prayed enough.  
Finally, it is in this manner, that by causing them to make reflections upon all the little arts they frequently employ, to obtain what they desire, or to avoid the chastisement they have deserved, whether it be by protesting they will be more obedient, or by making a thousand blandishments, you must strive to make them conceive how they ought either to demand pardon of God for their faults, or obtain of him what they desire.  
'Tis true that in order to this, it is necessary you should use towards children a kind of sweet speech, and such words as are insinuating, persuasive, affectionate, tender, and in brief full of a certain unction, whereof very few persons are capable. You must not tell them these things in a dry and harsh manner, nor with authority and command, but with love and by making yourself as it were a little one with them; and you must gain their heart to render them capable of an exercise which is totally of the heart, and whereof no one is capable, who hath not his heart fixed on God, however clear sighted and sufficient he may otherwise be. But how should the greatest part of Mothers, employing themselves only in worldly affairs, and having their heart divided between so many cares, be capable to instill into their children this holy practice of Prayer; especially since they themselves most commonly can only read in their Primmers what Prayers they find there, without ever having applied themselves to join thereunto the Interior Prayer, which is the Soul and the Essence of Prayer?  
Yet it is this Interior prayer which is the most precious and most necessary food of Piety. There's nothing whereby more to establish one's self in the gust of the things of God, and in the disgust of the things of the World: Without this exercise, all other exercises of Piety and Vocal Prayer itself are but dryness and languishments; and one acquits himself of Vocal prayer rather out of custom and by a simple conviction of the spirit, than by love. This made a famous Author say, that one ought never to divide prayer into Mental and Vocal, as if one could with piety pray Vocally, 
Bellarm. de Orat. ch. 2.  separating it from the Mental prayer.  
Not but that Vocal prayer is very profitable when it is well performed and accompanied with attention. It excites us to recollect ourselves, and to raise our thoughts to God. It advertises us and instructs us what feelings we ought to have in our hearts, and serves us (as St. 
S. Aug. Ep. 121. ad Probam.  Augustin notes,) to represent to ourselves what we ought to ask of God. But it must be an expression of the affections and of the dispositions of our soul, and proceed from the abundance of our heart. My heart rejoiced, (says the prophet,) and my tongue hath expressed the feelings of my joy. Psalm. 25. My heart and my flesh, (says he elsewhere,) have jointly testified to God the joy which I take in him.  
It is just, that we being bound to honour God, according to the Body, as well as according to the spirit, we should adore him, and pray to him, by our words and by our voice, at the same time we adore him by our thoughts and by the application of our heart. But this heart must of necessity be pure; and to be pure, it must be employed upon God, thereby to make the worship of the Body and the exterior homage which we render him, to be reasonable and holy. Vocal Prayer therefore ought not to be considered but as far forth as the Prayer of the heart conducts, purifies, and sanctifies it, and as far forth as it is joined to it to raise it up to the throne of God: But on the contrary, this Prayer of the heart which is made in silence and in Recollection, is all alone very profitable and very holy, and sometimes it is even more profitable to particular persons than if there were joined to it the recital of Vocal Prayers, or then if the noise and the elevation of the Voice were there employed; because one testifies to God more Faith, and because we address ourselves to him in a manner more conformable to that which he is and to that which he demands of us, by adoring him and entertaining him only with our thought and with our heart, then if we make use of Words. God is a spirit (says our Saviour,) and he desires such Adorers as adore him in spirit. He sufficiently understands our desires and our demands, although we express them but by our sole thought: so that we sometimes make ourselves better understood of God by elevating ourselves to him with all the fervour and with all the extent of our heart, when we are fully recollected and when we employ nothing that is exterior and sensible, than if we join together in our Prayer the heart and the voice, because that may diminish our attention, which (generally speaking) must be greater and more complete when one hears nothing without, and when one suspends all the use of sense and of speech.  
Why, say St. Ambrose, 
S. Ambr. l. 6. de Sacrum. c. 4.  should we rather pray in Recollection and in secret than in making a noise with our Voice? Hear the reason, which we will only draw from an example which is ordinary among men: If you will present a Prayer to some person who hath a very quick hearing, you do not believe that you need to cry out aloud, but you content yourself to speak to him in the tone of an indifferent voice: and we only raise our voice to make ourselves understood by such as are hard of hearing. 'Tis not therefore reasonable to think, that God hears none but such as strive to speak very loud: Such a fancy is injurious to his Omnipotence: But he who prays in silence, gives a singular proof of his Confidence and of his Faith: He acknowledges, that God penetrates and sounds the heart, and he testifies by praying to him in this sort, that he doubts not, but that he hears his prayer before he hath explicated it by Words.  
One might wonder, 
S. Aug. ep. Prob.  (says St. Augustin in a letter he writ to a holy Dame touching Prayer,) that God although he knows what is necessary for us before we ask it of him, will nevertheless have us ask it; if we did not know that what he thus ordains us to do, is not that he may know our will, since that cannot be concealed from him, but to inflame our desires by the instance of our prayers, and to render us capable to receive that which he is ready to grant us. For by how much his Presents are great and magnificent, by so much our hearts are little and limited to receive them. Therefore the Scripture says: Open your Hearts.  
Now these so excellent and so sublime Goods which the Eye hath not seen, because they are not colours; which the Ear hath not heard, because they are not sounds; and which are not elevated in the heart of man, because the heart of man ought on the contrary elevate it self towards them: these Goods, I say, shall be communicated unto us with so much more abundance by how much we have believed with more Faith, hoped with more Confidence, desired with more Ardour.  
'Tis therefore by a continual Desire, founded upon Faith, Hope, and Charity, that we pray without intermission.  
But if at certain hours and certain times we employ Words in prayer, 'tis only to animate us by those exterior signs to conceive these holy affections, to make us observe what progress they have made in our heart, and to excite us to increase them. For the effect of our prayer is by so much greater by how much the ardour of our desires hath been greater. So that when the Apostle says; Pray without ceasing; he intends only, that we should desire without ceasing to obtain that happy life, which is no other than the eternal bliss of him who alone can give it us. If then we demand this of God incessantly, we pray incessantly.  
But because the cares and Encumbrances of the World cool sometimes our desires, we recall at certain hours of the day our spirit to prayer; and we re-place before our Eyes by the Words which we address to God this last end whether we ought to tend by our desires; for fear lest that which gins to fall into Tepidity should pass into a Coldness, and proceed in the end to be totally extinguished, if it be not re-inkindled by frequent prayers.  
This being so, it cannot be bad or unprofitable to employ much time in prayer, when our leisure permits it, that is, when it hinders us not from acquitting ourselves of other laudable and necessary things to which our duty obliges us; although in these very occupations we ought always to pray by the activity of our desires.  
For it is to be observed, that it is not one and the same thing to pray along time or to pray with many words, as some imagine; but that there is a difference between a long and continual desire, since it is written, That our Lord passed over the night in Prayer, and that he prayed very long. And there is reason to believe that he would induce us thereby to imitate his example, he who prayed so perfectly to his Father in the time of his mortal life, and who hears us so mercifully with his Father in eternity.  
They say, that our Brethren the Hermits of Egypt make frequent Prayers, but very short, and that they only lift up their hearts to God from time to time by lively and ardent prayers, without staying too long upon them, for fear lest this application and this fervour of spirit so necessary in prayer, should relent or be dissipated, if this prayer were too continual.  
This also gives us to understand that as we ought not to weary and blunt our spirit by forcing ourselves to entertain it in this fervour when it gins to slacken; so we ought not to hasten to interrupt it when we feel it continues: Because, if on the one side one ought to banish from prayer the superfluity of Words, one ought on the other side to sustain it by continual desires and demands, so long as the spirit perseveres in its application and in its fervour. For to speak too much in prayer, is to employ superfluous Words to ask a thing necessary; and to pray much, is by holy and continual motions of the heart to press him to whom we pray to render himself favourable to our demands. But oftentimes this passes more in sighing than in speaking; Discourses have not so great a part as tears; and than it is, that he whose eternal word made all things, makes it appear that they are not the temporal Words of men which are pleasing to him, but their sighs and tears.  
'Tis then, Sister, this prayer of the heart and this entertainment with God which is done in silence, in recollection, in the disengagement from all exterior things, and by the interior sighs and affections of the soul, that Christian Mothers ought to make their Children love and practise. 'Tis a Yoke which is good for them to bear from their youth, and as soon as they begin to make use of their understanding and their reason: 'Tis a Yoke which replenishes the Soul with comfort and sweetness: 'Tis a Yoke which sustains and strengthens, and renders them who bear it, capable to raise up themselves above themselves, and above all earthly objects.  
And do not allege to me, 
S. Chrysost.  says St. John Chrysostom, that Children are not capable of this fervour, of this recollection, and of this application which Prayer requires; since we have in Scripture the examples of several children and of many young people, who have by the means of Prayer drawn upon them very great blessings. Samuel was but twelve years old when God called him in the Temple, 
Samuel.  and discovered to him the designs he had upon the house of Heli. Solomon was very young when he made that admirable Prayer which moved God to render him the wisest and the most powerful Prince that ever was. Finally, 
Solomon.  
Daniel.  Daniel was no more than eight or nine years of age when by a feeling of piety he refused to eat the Meats presented to him from the table of King Nabuchodonosor: and by the means of Fasting and Prayer he merited those extraordinary gifts which rendered him at the age of twelve years the deliverer of the chaste Susanna, and afterwards the Miracle of his age. Nor must Mothers allege their domestic affairs and the cares of their family to dispense themselves from following their Prayers; since we see (in that little Collection of Piety now newly printed,) 
Recuil de piety.  that a Princess of our days prescribed to herself a method of praying three times every day; 
Marg. de Portug. Duchess of Parma.  to wit, half an hour in the Morning, half an hour at mid day, and half an hour in the Evening: For if persons of that condition, and so much engaged in the world as Princes are, have the fidelity to apply themselves to this Exercise and acknowledge the need and the fruit thereof: what a lesson should not this Example give to all other persons who have more leisure and liberty? and with what ardour should all Mother's endeavour to follow it? Mothers, I say, who ought as much as they possibly can, to instill into their Children this holy custom of frequent prayer; and to have always at hand these excellent Words of St. Augustin to that holy Widow of whom we have formerly spoken: 
S. Aug. ep: ad Probam.  The more you labour to govern holily your house, the more you ought to employ yourself diligently in prayer; without embusying yourself in the affairs of the World and in exterior things, but only as far forth as Charity engages you.    

CHAP. XIV. What is most opposite to the Application of these Maxims and of these Advices in the Christian Education of Children.  
THere are two things particularly which hinder Fathers and Mothers from following the Maxims of the Gospel and the Advices of the Fathers of the Church in the Education of their Children, to wit, Custom and Ambition.  
The First, although most commonly, it hath no more lawful foundation than the disorder of Inferiors and the remissness of Superiors, makes itself nevertheless to be followed by all the world. It gains the heart and the spirit of them who most resist it: and as S. 
S. Augustin.  Augustin excellently says, it chokes Christians, and stifles in them the most tender feelings of piety by the very example of Christians.  
The Second transports the spirits of men to seek after the goods of the World. It serves itself of the natural desire we have of glory, to make us seek it in the estate of a high fortune. And at the same time when Custom hinders parents from following the Evangelical Maxims in the Education of their children, by instilling contrary principles into them, Ambition withdraws them from them by applying all their thoughts and all their affections to the temporal settlement of their children.  
Here it is that I pray you to observe the cunning of the Devil to deceive us, and what art he makes use of to destroy us. Parents cannot choose but labour in the Education of their children; and it is a feeling which is too natural to them not to be inclined thereto even with some sort of violence. He will not therefore fight openly against it and labour to destroy it; but he dexterously turns this inclination towards an end which is altogether carnal and terrestrial; and shutting their eyes against the lights of Reason and Faith, he presents to them a false daylight, which causes them to make a thousand false steps, I would say, which engages them by humane respects to follow in the Education of their children the air of the World, and the Rules which worldly corruption hath introduced.  
Resolve therefore, my Sister, to renounce all that the world approves, and to enter upon thoughts opposite to them which the World inspires into its bondslaves. You will find no difficulty to follow this counsel, if you read the 15. and the 17. Chapter of St. John, 
John ch. 15. and c. 17.  where Christ Jesus instils into his Disciples so strong an aversion from the world, that in good truth I think one cannot believe the Gospel, and live without trembling in the esteem and approbation of the world.  
Now when I tell you that you ought to dread nothing more than to live according to the World; think not that I pretend you should (having children) lead a solitary life, and break all the customs which Blood and Friendship permit unto you whilst you live upon earth. 'Tis not that which Christ Jesus demands of a person engaged, as you are, in Marriage. I desire only that you keep in your discourses and in all your proceed, so great a modesty, so great a reservedness, and so perfect a sweetness, that your sole exterior may condemn all the Vanities and all the pomps of the World.  
I desire that entering into company, they who are so gorgeously clothed may blush at your simplicity, and that your modest dress may give them a confusion in their excesses.  
I desire that your children may be cherished by all the world by reason of the Innocence and the piety you have instilled into them; that all Fathers and all Mothers should envy your happiness because of their obedience; and that they be not sought for in Marriage but because of their Virtue and their Modesty.  
Finally, I desire that your house should be so well regulated, and your domestics so well instructed, that all things with you may breathe nothing but Piety and Honesty: and (as St. 
S. Chrysost.  Chrysostom says) that your house in particular may be as it were a little draught and an image of the whole Church.  
For this end, Sister, you must unfetter yourself by little and little from all creatures, not studying to scrape up wealth for your children; you must not rob the poor of their due to content your covetousness and to bereave your Children of the protection of God who is their true Father. If our Lord himself builds not a House, in vain (says the prophet Psal. 126.1.) they labour who strive to raise it up. To raise it extremely high is to seek its ruin, Prov. 17.17. And he who governs himself by a spirit of Avarice troubles and overthrows his house, Prov. 15.27. And if (according to St. Augustin) 'tis God who makes the poor and who makes the rich; 
S. Aug. ho. 48  why should you so much disquiet yourself for your Children? Why should you not have a confidence in his providence? Why should you not employ all your cares to render them grateful to him, and a part of your means to procure for them Intercessors and Friends near his Divine Majesty, Luk. 16.9.  
For the rest, Sister, although God should give you grace to observe exactly in the education of your Children all that we have here represented unto you, and that you should apply yourself totally to instill into them the Maxims of the Gospel and of the Fathers of the Church, and to imprint in them a horror of all that is contrary thereunto: You are nevertheless to leave the event entirely to God, committing to his Wisdom and to his Goodness to make your solicitudes profitable to your Children.  
For as you ought to look only on his Glory in the pains you take to educate them according to the Laws of the Gospel; if he suffers you to be frustrated in some of them of the fruit of your labour, and that they should neglect all the good feelings which you have endeavoured to instil into them, to abandon themselves to the passions and to the disorders which reign in the World: you ought in this to submit yourself to his holy Will, as in every thing else, and to beware of suffering yourself to be transported to any words of murmur, or to believe that God had not accepted your cares and your pains; since nothing will happen to you in this, which he hath not permitted to befall many Saints.  
Finally, I observe in the holy Scripture that the major part of them who have been particularly favoured of 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 dissension 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 expressly 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 hi●●●●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, entered 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 ministry; 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 die 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 God's 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 trial 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 trials, 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 tied to them in a humane way; God according to the immutable order of his Wisdom, 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 find 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 design 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 spite 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 yourself 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 the 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 Ideas 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 yourself 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 designs 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 yourself 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 yourself the attaining of a very high perfection, and the faithful practice 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 yourself 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.