If he is to be a lawyer, then we set great counsellors, lords, judges, and chancellors, before his eyes. We tell him what great fees, and great applause attend fine pleading. We exhort him to take fire at these things to raise a spirit of emulation in himself, and to be content with nothing less than the highest honours of the long robe.
6. That this is the nature of our best education, is too plain to need any proof; and I believe there are few parents, but would be glad to see these instructions daily given to their children.
And after all this, we complain of the effects of pride; we wonder to see grown men acted and governed by ambition, envy, scorn, and a desire of glory; not considering that they were all the time of their youth called upon to form all their action and industry upon the same principles.
You teach a child to scorn to be outdone, to thirst for distinction and applause; and is it any wonder that he continues to act all his life in the same manner?
*Now if a youth is ever to be so far a Christian, as to govern his heart by the doctrines of humility, I would fain know at what time he is to begin it; or, if he is ever to begin it at all, why we train him up in tempers quite contrary to it?
How dry and poor must the doctrine of humility sound to a youth, that has been spurred up to all his industry by ambition, envy, emulation, and a desire of glory and distinction? And if he is not to act by these principles when he is a man, why do we call him to act by them in his youth?
Envy is acknowledged by all people to be the most ungenerous, base and wicked passion, that can enter into the heart of man.
And is this the temper to be instilled, nourished and established in the minds of young people?
7. I know it is said, that it is not envy, but emulation, that is intended to be awakened in the minds of young men.
*But this is vainly said. For when children are taught to bear no rival, and to scorn to be outdone by any of their age, they are plainly and directly taught to be envious. For it is impossible for any one to have this scorn to be outdone, this contention with rivals, without burning with envy against all those that seem to excel him, or get any distinction from him. So that what children are taught, is rank envy, and only covered with a name of a less odious sound.