That baptisms should be in public was required by the Independents no less than by the Presbyterians; nor would the former, in general, object to what the Directory prescribed, except that they disliked set forms, and preferred "the administration of the seals," as they termed them, by the minister in his own way, "according to the occasion." It is mentioned as a practice amongst the Independents, that one minister preached and another performed the rite of baptism after the sermon.[399] [Sidenote: _Education._] II. The education of the young received much attention in Puritan times. Devout parents were anxious that their children should be well instructed in the truths of Christianity, and for this purpose they used certain approved catechisms. That which was prepared by the Assembly of Divines soon superseded all others. Schools, whether conducted by an Anglican priest or by a Puritan presbyter, were remarkable both for the thorough drilling which the younger pupils received in the rudiments of the dead languages, and for the use of the higher classics by elder boys in the upper forms. Such boys were required to talk during school hours in Latin, "under a penalty if they either spoke English or broke Priscian's head;" but if their Latinity was barbarous and not ungrammatical, they were subject simply to the derision of their juvenile critics. The study of Greek authors was also cultivated, and school exercises in that department took a shape bearing upon the illustration of Scripture, and sometimes presented very amusing examples. A "great anti-Puritan" schoolmaster is mentioned as being particularly careful to observe in profane authors all allusions to the contents of the Bible; and so quick were his eyes in detecting these that he would gravely tell his boys that the words, "_ubi nuper arârat_," in Ovid's story of Deucalion's flood, had in them a strange allusion, (he would not say whether intended or accidental,) to the Mountain of Ararat on which rested Noah's ark.[400] The tutors of the upper classes were ambitious of improving upon earlier methods, avoiding "the miseducation of the gentry," over which Bishop Hall, in one of his letters, pours out very characteristic lamentations.[401] William Greenhill--the Independent minister of Stepney--in the Dedication prefixed to one of his works, compliments the Princess Elizabeth upon her resolution to write out with her own princely hand the Holy Oracles in the original, thus breeding hopes that she would excel her sex throughout Europe, as Drusius said of his son, who, when five years old, learned Hebrew, and at twelve could write it _extempore_, both in prose and verse.[402] Discipline seems to have been equally strict at home and at school; and the young Puritan was taught in his earliest days to regard life as a very grave and serious business. He had to pass through long seasons of fasting and prayer, and to listen to sermons of three hours' duration, from which he was