and over in his Political Discourses upon Livy : That where the manners of a People are generally corrupted, there the Government cannot long fubfift. I say, he affirms it, as a stated, allowed principle; and I doubt not, but the Destruction of Governments may be proved and deduced from the general Corruption of the Subjects manners, as a direct and natural cause thereof, by a Demonstration as certain as any in the Mathematicks, though not so evident; for that, I confefs, the Nature of the Thing may not allow.

V. The Fifth Proposition is, That this ill Principle, which being thus habitually improved, and from Personal corruptions spreading into General, and National, is the cause of all the mischiefs and disorders, Publick and Private, which trouble and infest the World, is to be altered and corrected only by Discipline, and the infusion of such Principles into the rational and spiritual part of man, as may powerfully sway his Will and Affections, by convincing his Understanding, that the practice of Vertue is preferable to that of Vice; and that there is a real Happiness, as well as Honesty in the one, and a real Misery, as well as a Turpitude in the other; there being no mending or working upon the Senfual part, but by well Principling the Intellectual. VOL.V.

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VI.

VI. The Sixth and last Proposition is, That this Discipline and Infusion of good Principles into the mind, which only can, and must work this great and happy change upon a man's morals, by counterworking that other sensual and vicious Principle, which would corrupt them, can never operate so kindly, so efficacioufly, and by consequence, so successfully, as when apply'd to him in his Minority, while his mind is ductile and tender, and so ready for any good Impression. For when he comes once to be in years, and his mind having been prepoffeffed with ill Principles, and afterwards harden'd with ill Practices, grows callous, and scarce penetrable, his cafe will be then very different, and the success of such applications very doubtful, if not defperate.

Now the fum of these fix Propositions in short is this. That there is in every man naturally, (as Nature now stands) a sensual Principle disposing him to Evil. That this Principle will be sure, more or less, to pass into action; and, if not hinder'd, to produce vicious Habits and Customs. That these vicious Habits are the direct causes of all the Miseries and Calamities that afflict and disturb mankind. That when they come to spread fo far, as from Personal, to grow National, they will weaken, and at length destroy Governments. That this ill Principle is controulable and and conquerable only by Discipline, and the Infufion of good and contrary Principles into the Mind. And lastly, That this Discipline or Infusion of good Principles, is never like to have its full Force, Efficacy, and Success, upon the Minds of Men, but during their Youth.

Which whole Deduction or Chain of Pro positions proceeding upon so firm and natural, and withal so clear and evident a Connexion of each Proposition with the other; I suppose, there can need no farther Demonstration to prove it as absolutely necessary, as the Peace of Mankind, Publick and Private, can be, that the Minds of Youth should be formed and seasoned with a strict and vertuous, an early and preventing Education.

Let us now in the next place fee, who they are, whose Province it is to be so great a Blefsing to Society, so vast a Benefit to the World, as to be the Managers of this important Truft.

And we shall find that it rests upon three forts of Men, viz.

1. Parents. 2. Schoolmasters. And 3. The Clergy; Such especially as have Cure of Souls.

1. And first for Parents. Let them endeavour to deserve that Honour, which God has commanded their Children to pay them; and believe

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believe it, that must be by greater and better Offices, than barely bringing them into this World; which of itself puts them only in Danger of paffing into a worse. And as the good old Sentence tells us; that it is better a great deal to be Unborn, than either Unbred, or Bred amiss; so it cannot but be matter of very fad reflexion to any Parent, to think with himself that he should be instrumental to give his Child a Body only to Damn his Soul. And therefore let Parents remember, that as the Paternal is the most honourable Relation, so it is also the greatest Trust in the World, and that God will be a certain, and fevere Exacter of it; and the more fo, because they have fuch mighty Opportunities to discharge it, and that with almost infallible Success. Forasmuch as a Parent receives his Child, from the Hand of God and Nature, a Perfect Blank, a mere Rafa Tabula, as to any guilt actually contracted by him, and confequently may write upon him what he pleases; having the unvaluable Advantage of making the first Impressions; which are of so strong, and so prevailing an Induence to determine the Practice either to Vice or Vertue, that Buxtorf in the third Chapter of his Synagoga Judaica tells us, that the Jewish Fathers professedly take upon themselves the Guilt of all their Childrens Sins till they they come to be thirteen Years old; at which Age the Youth is called Filius Precepti, as being then reckoned under the Obligation of the Law, and fo by a folemn Discharge left to Sin for himself.

Now these and the like Confiderations (one would think) should remind Parents, what a Dreadful Account lies upon them for their Children; and that, as their Children by the Laws of God and Man, owe them the greateft Reverence; so there is a fort of Reverence also, that they, as much, owe their Children. A Reverence, that should make them not dare to speak a filthy Word, or to do a base or an undecent Action before them. What says our Saviour to this Point? Mat. xviii. 6. Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him, that a mill stone were hang'd about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the Sea. And furely he, who teaches these little ones to offend God, offends them with a witness: Indeed so unmercifully, that it would be much the less Cruelty of the two, if the Wretch their Father should stab or stifle those poor Innocents in their Nurses Arms. For then he might damn himfelf alone, and not his Children also; and himself, for his own Sins only, and not for theirs too.

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