pleasure, yea, lordships, dominions, crowns, and kingdoms; and. hath he not much better for beloved holy souls?

Yea, doth he give the brutes life, sense, delight, and beauty; and hath he not better things for men; for saints?

There are some so blind as to think that man shall have no better hereafter, because brutes have not, but perish. But they know not how erroneously they think. The sensible souls of brutes are substance, and therefore are not annihilated at death: but God put them under us, and made them for us, and us more nearly for himself. Brutes have not faculties to know and love God, to meditate on him, or praise him, or, by moral agency, to obey his precepts: they desire not any higher felicity than they have: God will have us use their service, yea, their lives and flesh, to tell us they were made for us. He tells us not what he doth with them after death: but whatever it is, it is not annihilation, and it is like they are in a state still of service unto man: whether united, or how individuate, we know not: nor yet whether those philosophers are in the right, that think that this earth is but a small image of the vast superior regions, where there are kingdoms answerable to these here, where the spirits of brutes are in the like subjection in aërial bodies, to those low, rational spirits that inhabit the aërial regions, as in flesh they were to man in flesh. But it is enough for us that God hath given us faculties to know, love, praise, and obey him, and trust him for glory, which he never gave to them, because they were not made for things so high. Every creature's faculties are suited to their use and ends.

And love tells me, that the blessed God, who giveth to brutes that life, health, and pleasure, which they are made and fitted for, will give his servants that heavenly delight in the fulness of his love and praise, and mutual, joyful love to one another, which nature fundamentally, and grace more immediately, hath made them fit for.

Blessed Jehovah! for what tastes of this effused love thou hast given me, my soul doth bless thee, with some degree of gratitude and joy and for those further measures which I want, and long for, and which my pained, languid state much needs, and would raise my joyful hopes of glory, I wait, I beg, from day to day. O give me now, at the door of heaven, some fuller taste of the heavenly felicity: shed more abroad upon my heart, by the Holy Ghost, that love of thine, which will draw up my longing soul to thee, rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.

THE

MOTHER'S CATECHISM;

OR,

A FAMILIAR WAY OF

CATECHISING OF CHILDREN,

IN THE

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, THEMSELVES, AND THE

HOLY SCRIPTURES.

THE

PREFACE TO THE READER.

CANDID READER,

THIS is the errand of this preface, to assure thee that this treatise was left under Mr. Baxter's own hand, which now is exposed to thy view from the press. It was Timothy's great commendation and advantage, "That from a child he had known the Holy Scriptures, which were able to make him wise to salvaton, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." (2 Tim. iii. 15.) Early draughts from this spring will give us such a relish of the waters issuing from thence as will render our most diligent reading of them both profitable and delightful to us. This book at once may profit both the mother and the child and the contents thereof may, with greater ease and pleasure, impress themselves upon their minds and memories, by frequent reading of them, and discourse about them, than if children were confined to get large portions of catechisms without book. At least the former would greatly prepare them for the latter. Had Mr. Baxter completed what he did design herein, the reader might have been more advantaged thereby.

All that the author left thou hast. And, if it be desired, the continuation may possibly be exposed to view hereafter, by another hand. Pray heartily for the publisher; for none more need and crave it, than

Thine, in the best of bonds and services,

MATTHEW SYLVESTER.

THE

FAMILIAR WAY

OF

CATECHISING CHILDREN.

MOTHER. Come, child, are you willing to be taught your catechism?

Child. What is the Catechism, mother?

M. It is those things which you must know above all other. C. Why must I needs know them?

M. Because God made you to know them, and without such knowledge you cannot be good, nor blessed of God.

C. Cannot I do as well without learning as other children do? M. Those that do not learn that which God would have them learn, are all naught, and miserable, worse than beasts.

C. But I find that I had rather play, and talk of somewhat else than learn my catechism: I do not love it.

M. That is because you are foolish and naught; and it is by learning that you must become wise and better, or else you will become undone for ever, and wish that you had never been born. C. What is it that I must learn?

M. You must learn to be wise, and good, and happy for ever, and to escape hell, misery, and sin.

C. I would fain be wise, and good, and happy: how shall I learn that?

M. Not by knowing how to eat and drink, laugh and play; and those little common things which beasts and fools know : but it must be by knowing great, and excellent, and needful things.

C. What are those things?

M. The first thing that you must know is, what you are yourself, and what you are made for: do you know how man doth differ from all sorts of beasts and birds?