DIRECTIONS TO SCHOOLMASTERS ABOUT THEIR DUTY FOR THEIR CHILDREN'S
SOULS.
Passing by all your grammatical employment, I shall only leave you
these brief directions, for the higher and more noble exercises of
your profession.
_Direct._ I. Determine first rightly of your end; and then let it
be continually in your eye, and let all your endeavours be directed in
order to the attainment of it. If your end be chiefly your own
commodity or reputation, the means will be distorted accordingly, and
your labours perverted, and your calling corrupted, and embased, (to
yourselves,) by your perverse intentions. See therefore, 1. That your
ultimate end be the pleasing and glorifying of God. 2. And this by
promoting the public good, by fitting youth for public service. And,
3. Forming their minds to the love and service of their Maker. 4. And
furthering their salvation, and their welfare in the world. These
noble designs will lift up your minds, to an industrious and cheerful
performance of your duties! He that seeketh great and heavenly
things, will do it with great resolution and alacrity; when any
drowsy, creeping pace, and deceitful, superficial labours, will
satisfy him that hath poor and selfish ends. As God will not accept
your labours as any service of his, if your ends be wrong, so he useth
not to give so large a blessing to such men's labours as to others.
_Direct._ II. Understand the excellency of your calling, and what
fair opportunities you have to promote those noble ends; and also how
great a charge you undertake; that so you may be kept from sloth and
superficialness, and may be quickened to a diligent discharge of your
undertaken trust. 1. You have not a charge of sheep or oxen, but of
rational creatures. 2. You have not the care of their bodies, but of
their minds; you are not to teach them a trade to live by only in the
world, but to inform their minds with the knowledge of their Maker,
and to cultivate their wits, and advance their reason, and fit them
for the most man-like conversations. 3. You have them not (as pastors)
when they are hardened in sin by prejudice and long custom; but you
have the tenderest twigs to bow, and the most tractable age to tame;
you have paper to write on (not wholly white, but that) which hath the
fewest blots and lines to be expunged. 4. You have them not as
volunteers, but as obliged to obey you, and under the correction of
the rod; which with tender age is a great advantage. 5. You have them
not only for your auditors in a general lecture, (as preachers have
them at a sermon,) but in your nearest converse, where you may teach
them as particularly as you please, and examine their profiting, and
call them daily to account. 6. You have them not once a week, (as
preachers have them,) but all the week long, from day to day, and from
morning until night. 7. You have them at that age, which doth believe
their teachers, and take all upon trust, before they are grown up to
self-conceitedness, and to contradict and quarrel with their teachers
(as with their pastors they very ordinarily do). All these are great
advantages to your ends.
_Direct._ III. Labour to take pleasure in your work, and make it
as a recreation, and take heed of a weary or diverted mind. 1. To this
end consider often what is said above; think on the excellency of your
ends, and of the worth of souls, and of the greatness of your
advantages. 2. Take all your scholars as committed to your charge by
Jesus Christ; as if he had said to you, Take these whom I have so
dearly bought, and train them up for my church and service.[122] 3.
Remember what good one scholar may do, when he cometh to be ripe for
the service of the church or commonwealth! How many souls some of them
may be a means to save! Or if they be but fitted for a private life,
what blessings may they be to their families and neighbours! And
remember what a joyful thing it will be, to see them in heaven with
Christ for ever! How cheerfully should such excellent things be
sought! If you take pleasure in your work, it will not only be an ease
and happiness to yourselves, but greatly further your diligence and
success. But when men have a base esteem of their employment, and look
at children as so many swine or sheep, or have some higher matters in
their eye, and make their schools but the way to some preferment, or
more desired life, then usually they do their work deceitfully, and
any thing will serve the turn, because they are weary of it, and
because their hearts are somewhere else.
_Direct._ IV. Seeing it is divinity that teacheth them the beginning
and the end of all their other studies, let it never be omitted or
slightly slubbered over, and thrust into a corner; but give it the
precedency, and teach it them with greater care and diligence, than
any other part of learning; especially teach them the catechism and
the holy Scriptures. If you think that this is no part of your work,
few wise men will choose such teachers for their children. If you say
as some sectaries, that children should not be taught to speak holy
words, till they are more capable to understand the sense, because it
is hypocrisy, or taking the name of God in vain; I have answered this
before, and showed that words being the signs, must be learned in
order to the understanding of the sense, or thing that is signified;
and that this is not to use such words in vain, how holy soever, but
to the proper end for which they are appointed. Both in divine and
human learning, the memories of children must first be furnished in
order to the furnishing of their understandings afterwards. And this
is a chief point of the master's skill, that time be not lost, nor
labour frustrated. For the memories of children are as capacious as
men's of riper age; and therefore they should be stored early, with
that which will be useful to them afterwards: but till they come to
some maturity of age, their judgments are not ripe for information
about any high or difficult points. Therefore teach them betimes the
words of catechisms and some chapters of the Bible; and teach them the
meaning by degrees as they are capable. And make them perceive that
you take this for the best of all their learning.
_Direct._ V. Besides the forms of catechism, which you teach
them, speak often to them some serious words, about their souls, and
the life to come, in such a plain, familiar manner, as tendeth most to
the awakening of their consciences, and making them perceive how
greatly what you say concerneth them. A little such familiar serious
discourse, in an interlocutory way, may go to their hearts, and never
be forgotten; when mere forms alone are lifeless and unprofitable.
Abundance of good might be done on children, if parents and
schoolmasters did well perform their parts in this.
_Direct._ VI. Take strict account of their spending the Lord's
day! how they hear, and what they remember; and how they spend the
rest of the day. For the right spending of that day, is of great
importance to their souls! And a custom of play and idleness on that
day, doth usually debauch them, and prepare them for much worse.
Though they are from under your eye on the Lord's day, yet if on
Monday they be called to account, it will leave an awe upon them in
your absence.
_Direct._ VII. Pray with them, and for them. If God give not the
increase by the dews of heaven, and shine not on your labours, your
planting and watering will be all in vain. Therefore prayer is as
suitable a means as teaching, to do them good; and they must go
together. He that hath a heart to pray earnestly for his scholars,
shall certainly have himself most comfort in his labours; and it is
likely that he shall do most good to them.
_Direct._ VIII. Watch over them, by one another, when they are
behind your backs, at their sports or converse with each other. For it
is abundance of wickedness that children use to learn and practise,
which never cometh to their masters' ears; especially in some great
and public schools. They that came thither to learn sobriety and piety
of their masters, do oftentimes learn profaneness, and ribaldry, and
cursing, and swearing, and scorning, deriding, and reviling one
another, of their ungracious school-fellows. And those lessons are so
easily learnt, that there are few children but are infected with some
such debauchery, though their parents and masters watch against it;
and perhaps it never cometh to their knowledge. So also for gaming and
robbing orchards, and fighting with one another, and reading
play-books and romances, and lying, and abundance other vices which
must be carefully watched against.
_Direct._ IX. Correct them more sharply for sins against God,
than for their dulness and failing at their books. Though negligence
in their learning is not to be indulged, yet smart should teach them
especially to take heed of sinning; that they may understand that sin
is the greatest evil.
_Direct._ X. Especially curb or cashier the leaders of impiety
and rebellion, who corrupt the rest. There are few great schools but
have some that are notoriously debauched; that glory in their
wickedness; that in filthy talking, and fighting, and cursing, and
reviling words, are the infecters of the rest. And usually they are
some of the bigger sort, that are the greatest fighters, and master
the rest, and by domineering over them, and abusing them, force them
both to follow them in their sin and to conceal it. The correcting of
such, or expelling them if incorrigible, is of great necessity to
preserve the rest; for if they are suffered the rest will be secretly
infected and undone, before the master is aware. This causeth many
that have a care of their children's souls, to be very fearful of
sending them to great and public schools, and rather choose private
schools that are freer from that danger; it being almost of as great
concernment to children, what their companions be, as what their
master is.
[122] Many of the greatest divines have given God great thanks for
their schoolmasters, and left their names on record with honour, as
Calvin did by Corderius, Beza by Melchior Volmarius, &c.