Q. 11. How must parents teach their households ?

A. Very familiarly and plainly, according to their capacities, beginning with the plain and necessary things; and this is it which we call catechising, which is nothing but the choosing out of the few plain, necessary matters from all the rest, and in due method, or order, teaching them to the ignorant."

Q. 12. What need we catechisms, while we have the Bible?

A. Because the Bible containeth all the whole body of religious truths, which the ripest Christians should know, but are not all of equal necessity to salvation with the greatest points. And it cannot be expected that ignorant persons can cull out these most necessary points from the rest without help. A man is not a man without a head and heart; but he may be a man if he lose a finger, or a hand, but not an entire man; nor a comely man without hair, nails, and nature's ornaments. So a man cannot be a Christian, or a good or happy man, without the great and most necessary points in the Bible; nor an entire Christian without the rest. Life and death lieth not on all alike. And the skilful must gather the most necessary for the ignorant, which is a catechism."

Q. 13. But is not knowledge the gift of God?

A. Yes; but he giveth it by means. Three things must concur. 1. A right presenting to the learner, which is the teacher's work. 2. A fitness in the learner, by capacity, willingness, and diligence. 3. The blessing of God, without which no man can be wise."

And therefore three sorts will be ignorant and erroneous. 1. Those that have not the happiness of true teachers, nor truth presented to them. 2. Those that by sottishness, pride, sensuality, malignity, or sloth, are incapable, or unwilling, to learn. 3. Those that, by wilful sinning against God, are deprived of the necessary blessing of his help and illumination.P

m Heb. iii. 13; Ezra vii. 25; Col. iii. 16; Heb. v. 11, 12, and vi. 1, 2; 2 Tim. i. 13.

"Matt. xii. 30, 31, 33; xix. 19; xxii. 37, 39; Rom. xiii. 9; Matt. xxviii. 19; Matt. xxiii. 23; James i. 27.

• Isa. xxx. 29; Matt. xxviii. 19, 20; 1 Tim. i. 3; iii. 2; vi. 2, 3.

P 2 Tim. ii. 2, 24; Acts xx. 20; 2 Tim. iii. 17; Heb. v. 12, 13; 1 John ii. 27; 1 Thes. iv. 9.

CHAP. II.

How to know Ourselves by Nature.

Q. 1. WHAT is the first thing that a man must know? A. The first in being and excellency is God. But the first in time known by man, or the lowest step where our knowledge beginneth, are the sensible things near us, which we see, hear, feel, &c., and especially ourselves.

Q. 2. What know we of the things which we see, and feel, &c.?

A. A man of sound senses and understanding knoweth them to be such as sense apprehendeth, while they are rightly set before him; the eye seeth light and colours, the ear heareth sounds and words, and so of the rest; and the sound understanding judgeth them to be such as the sense perceiveth, unless distance, or false mediums, deceive us."

Q. 3. But how know you that sense is not deceived? You say that is bread and wine in the sacrament, which the Papists say is not.

A. God hath given us no other faculties but sense, by which to judge of sensible things, as light and darkness, heat and cold, sweet and bitter, soft and hard, &c. Therefore if we be here deceived, God is our deceiver, and we are remediless; even faith and reason suppose our senses, and their true perception; and if that first perception be false, faith and reason could be God expecteth not that we should judge by other faculties than such as he hath given us for the perception of those objects.

no truer.

Q. 4. What doth a man first perceive of himself?

A. We first feel that we are real beings; and we perceive that we use and have our senses, that we see, hear, feel, smell, taste; and then we perceive that we understand and think of the things so seen, felt, &c. And that we gather one thing from another, and that we love good, and hate evil, and choose, refuse, and do accordingly.

Q. 5. What do you next know of yourselves?

A. When we perceive that we see, feel, &c., and think, love,

1 John i. 2, 3; Acts i. 3; iv. 20; xxvi. 16.

John xx. 2), 25; 27.

hate, &c., we know that we have a power of soul to do all this, for no one doth that which he is not made able to do.

Q. 6. And what do you next know of yourself?

A. When I know what I do, and that I can do it, I know next that I am a substance, endued with this power; for nothing hath no power, nor act, it can do nothing.

Q.7. What know you next of yourself?

A. I know that this substance, which thinketh, understandeth, and willeth, is an unseen substance; for neither I, nor any mortal man, seeth it; and that is it which is called a spirit. Q. 8. What next perceive you of yourself?

A. I perceive that in this one substance there is a threefold power, marvellously but one, and yet three, as named from the objects and effects; that is, 1. A power of mere growing motion, common to plants. 2. A power of sense common to beasts. 3. And a power of understanding and reason, about things above sense, proper to a man; three powers in one spiritual substance.

Q. 9. What else do you find in yourself?

A. I find that my spiritual substance, as intellectual, hath also a threefold power in one; that is, 1. Intellectual life, by which I move and act my faculties, and execute my purposes. 2. Understanding. 3. And will, and that these are marvellously diverse, and yet one.

Q. 10. What else find you by yourself?

A. I find that this unseen spirit is here united to a human body, and is in love with it, and careth for it, and is much limited by it, in its perceivings, willings, and workings; and so that a man is an incorporate, understanding spirit, or a human soul and body.

Q. 11. What else perceive you by yourself?

A. I perceive that my higher powers are given me to rule the lower, my reason to rule my senses and appetite, my soul to rule and use my body, as man is made to rule the beasts.

Q. 12. What know you of yourself, as related to others? A. I see that I am a member of the world of mankind, and that others are better than I, and multitudes better than one; and that the welfare of mankind depends much on their duty to one another; and therefore that I should love all according to their worth, and faithfully endeavour the good of all.

Q. 13. What else know you of yourself?

A. I know that I made not myself, and maintain not myself in life and safety, and therefore that another made me and maintaineth me; and I know that I must die by the separation of my soul and body.

Q. 14. And can we tell what then becomes of the soul?

A. I am now to tell you but how much of it our nature tells us, the rest I shall tell you afterward; we may know, 1. That the soul, being a substance in the body, will be a substance out of it, unless God should destroy it, which we have no cause to think he will. 2. That life, understanding, and will, being its very nature, it will be the same after death, and not a thing of some other kind. 3. That the soul, being naturally active, and the world full of objects, it will not be a sleepy or inactive thing. 4. That its nature here being to mind its interest in another life, by hopes or fears of what will follow, God made not its nature such in vain, and therefore that good or evil in the life that is next will be the lot of all.

CHAP. III.

Of the Natural Knowledge of God and Heaven.

Q. I. You have told me how we know the things which we see and feel, without us and within us; but how can we know any things which we neither see nor feel, but are quite above us?

A. By certain effects and signs which notify them how little else did man differ from a beast, if he knew no more than he seeth and feeleth? Besides what we know from others that have seen; you see not now that the sun will rise to-morrow, or that man must die; you see not Italy, Spain, France; you see no man's soul: and yet we certainly know that such things are and will be.

Q. 2. How know you that there is any thing above us, but what we see?

A. 1. We see such things done here on earth, which nothing doth, or can do, which is seen. What thing, that is seen, can give all men and beasts their life, and sense, and safety? And so marvellously form the bodies of all, and govern all the matters of the world? 2, We see that the spaces above us,

where sun, moon, and stars are, are so vast, that all this earth is not so much to them, as one inch is to all this land. And we see that the regions above us excel in the glory of purity and splendour: and when this dark spot of earth hath so many millions of men, can we doubt whether those vast and glorious parts are better inhabited? 3. And we find that the grossest things are the basest, and the most invisible the most powerful and noble; as our souls are above our bodies: and therefore the most vast and glorious worlds above us must have the most invisible, powerful, noble inhabitants.

Q. 3. But how know you what those spirits above us are? A. 1. We partly know what they are, by what they do with us on earth. 2. We know much what they are, by the knowledge of ourselves. If our souls are invisible spirits, essentiated by the power of life, understanding, and will, the spirits above us can be no less, but either such or more excellent. And he that made us must needs be more excellent than his work. Q. 4. How know you who made us?

A. He that made all things must needs be our Maker, that is God.

Q. 5. What mean you by God? and what is he?

A. I mean the eternal, infinite, glorious Spirit, and Life, most perfect in active power, understanding and will, of whom, and by whom, and to whom, are all things; being the Creator, Governor, and End of all. This is that God whom all things do declare.

Q. 6. How know you that there is such a God?

A. By his works (and I shall afterwards tell you more fully by his word). Man did not make himself; beasts, birds, fishes, trees, and plants, make not themselves: the earth, and water, and air, made not themselves: and if the souls of men have a maker, the spirits next above them must have a maker: and so on, till you come to a first cause, that was made by none. There must be a first cause, and there can be but one.

Q. 7. Why may not there be many gods, or spirits, that were made by none, but are eternally of themselves?

A. Because it is a contradiction; the same would be both perfect and imperfect: perfect, because he is of himself eternally, without a cause, and so dependent upon none: and yet imperfect, because he hath but a part of that being that is said to be perfect: for many are more than one, and all make Rom. i. 19, 20, 21.