_Direct._ XIII. For especial preparation for affliction, sufferings, sickness, death, read Mr. Hughes's Rod;--Mr. Lawrence's Christ's Power over Sicknesses;--Mr. S. Rutherford's Letters, &c.;--my Treatise of Self-denial;--the Believer's Last Work;--the Last Enemy Death;--and the Fourth Part of my Saints' Rest. I will add no more, lest they seem too many. [50] Xenophon primus omnium quae dicebantur, notis excepta in publicium edidit. Laert. in Xenoph. [51] Saith Aristippus, (in Laert.) As they are not the health-fullest that eat most, so are they not the learnedest that read most, but they that read that which is most necessary and profitable. CHAPTER XXII. DIRECTIONS FOR THE RIGHT TEACHING OF CHILDREN AND SERVANTS, SO AS MAY BE MOST LIKELY TO HAVE SUCCESS. I HERE suppose them utterly untaught that you have to do with; and therefore shall direct you what to do, from the very first beginning of your teaching, and their learning. And I beseech you study this chapter more than many of the rest; for it is an unspeakable loss that befalls the church, and the souls of men, for want of skill, and will, and diligence, in parents and masters in this matter. _Direct._ I. Cause your younger children to learn the words, though they be not yet capable of understanding the matter. And do not think as some do, that this is but to make them hypocrites, and to teach them to take God's name in vain: for it is neither vanity nor hypocrisy to help them first to understand the words and signs, in order to their early understanding of the matter and signification. Otherwise no man might teach them any language, nor teach them to read any words that be good, because they must first understand the words before the meaning. If a child learn to read in a Bible, it is not taking God's name or word in vain, though he understand it not; for it is in order to his learning to understand it; and it is not vain which is to so good a use: if you leave them untaught till they come to be twenty years of age, they must then learn the words before they can understand the matter. Do not therefore leave them the children of darkness, for fear of making them hypocrites. It will be an excellent way to redeem their time, to teach them first that which they are capable of learning: a child of five or six years old can learn the words of a catechism or Scripture, before they are capable of understanding them. And then when they come to years of understanding, that part of their work is done, and they have nothing to do but to study the meaning and use of those words which they have learned already. Whereas if you leave them utterly untaught till then, they must then be wasting a long time to learn the same words which they might have learned before; and the loss of so much time is no small loss or sin.