Study to have your heart filled with the love of God, and the love of your neighbour, and then be contented to be no deeper a scholar, no finer a gentleman, than these tempers will make you. I am teaching you Latin and Greek, not that you should desire to be a great critic, a fine poet, or an eloquent orator; but, that you may at proper times look into the history of past ages, and learn the methods of God’s providence over the world; and that by reading the writings of the ancient sages, you may see how wisdom and virtue have been the praise of great men of all ages, and fortify your mind by their wise sayings.
Avoid all superfluous shews of finery and equipage, and let your house be furnished with moderate conveniencies. Do not consider what your estate can afford, but what right reason and religion require.
Let your dress be decent, clean, and modest; and as to your meat and drink, in them observe the highest rules of christian temperance and sobriety; consider your body only as the servant and minister of your soul; and only so nourish it, as it may best perform an humble and obedient service to it.
But, my son, observe as a principal thing, and which I shall remind you of as long as I live with you, Hate and despise all human glory; it is nothing else but human folly. Love humility in all its instances, practise it in all its parts; condescend to all the weakness and infirmities of your fellow-creatures, cover their frailties, love their excellencies, encourage their virtues, relieve their wants, rejoice in their prosperities, compassionate their distress, receive their friendship, overlook their unkindness, forgive their malice, be a servant of servants, and condescend to do the lowest offices to the lowest of mankind.
Aspire after nothing but an interest in the righteousness of Jesus Christ; and as a consequence of that, your own purity and perfection. Remember, my dear child, remember, that there is but one man in the world, with whom you are to have perpetual contention, and whom you should be always striving to exceed, and that is yourself.
The time of practising these precepts, my son, will soon be over with you; the world will soon slip through your hands, or rather you will soon slip through it. It seems but the other day, since I received the same instructions from my dear father, that I am now leaving with you. And the God that gave me ears to hear, and a heart to receive what my father said unto me, will, I hope, give you grace to love and follow the same instructions.”
Thus did Paternus educate his son.
Can any one think, that such an education as this would weaken and deject the minds of young people, and deprive the world of any worthy and reasonable labours?
So far therefrom, that there is nothing so likely to enoble and exalt the mind, and prepare it for the most heroical exercise of all virtues. And fatal experience every day evinces, that a contrary way of educating youth, is no small hindrance to their devoting themselves entirely to God, and living up to the strictest rules of the blessed and everlasting gospel.
An education which is not wholly intent upon this, is as much beside the point, as an art of physic that had little or no regard to the restoration of health: or rather, it is like administering poison instead of physic.