Prudence will direct us to lay a good foundation among our people, by catechising, and instructing them in the principles
of Christianity, without which we labour in vain. Unless we have a knowing people, we are not like to have a gracious
people. All our excellent sermons will be dashed on the rock of their ignorance. You can never fall on a better way for
securing success to your labours, than the fruitful way of catechising. What age of the church has produced more lively
and steadfast professors than the first ages? and then this duty most eminently flourished in the church. Clemens,
Optatus, Austin, Ambrose, and Basil, were catechists.
That catechising is an ordinance of God few will doubt, when they consider that apostles thus laid the foundation of
religion, by feeding babes with milk, teaching them in this manner the first principles of the oracles of God. This hath,
therefore, been a constant practice in the church, and in the first ages of Christianity they had a particular person appro-
priated to this exercise. All well-governed churches have still maintained this practice, knowing the necessity of it for
youth, to inform them in the principles of that religion into which they were baptized, and for the establishment of the
more aged.
DEVOTED TO THE BENEFIT OF AGED MINISTERS:
PUBLISHED BY JOHN SNOW, PATERNOSTER-ROW.