The next class was to learn grammar (needless to say Latin grammar) and to be exercised in Æsop’s Fables, the “_Pedologia_” of Mosellanus and the “_Colloquia_” of Erasmus, such of the latter being selected “as are useful for children and not improper.” “Once the children have learnt Æsop they are to be given Terence, which they must learn by heart.” There is no mention made here of any selection, this possibly being left to the teacher; in the case of Plautus, who was to follow Terence, this is expressly enjoined.—Of the religious instruction we read: Seeing it is necessary to teach the children the beginnings of a Godly, Christian life, “the schoolmaster is to catechise the whole [2nd] class, making the children recite one after the other the Our Father, the Creed and the Ten Commandments.” The schoolmaster was to “explain” these and also to instil into the children such points as were essential for living a good life, such as the “fear of God, faith and good works.” The schoolmaster was not to get the children into the habit of “abusing monks or others, as many incompetent masters do.” Finally, it was also laid down that those Psalms which exhort to the “fear of God, faith and good works” were to be learnt by heart, especially Psalms cxii., xxxiv., cxxviii., cxxv., cxvii., cxxxiii. (cxi., xxxiii., cxxvii., cxxiv., cxxvi., cxxxii.), the Gospel of St. Matthew was also to be explained and perhaps likewise the Epistles of Paul to Timothy, the 1st Epistle of John and the Book of Proverbs. In the 3rd class, in addition to grammar, versification, dialectics and rhetoric had to be studied, the boys being exercised in Virgil and Cicero (the “_Officia_” and “_Epistolæ familiares_”). “The boys are also to be made to speak Latin and the schoolmasters themselves are as far as possible to speak nothing but Latin with them in order thus to accustom and encourage them in this practice.”[53] In his two appeals for the schools in 1524 and 1530 Luther is less explicit in his requirements than the regulations for the Visitation. According to him, apart from the languages, it is the text of Scripture which must form the basis of all the instruction. Holy Scripture, especially the Gospel, was to be everywhere “the chief and main object of study.” “Would to God that every town had also a school for girls where little maids might hear the Gospel for an hour a day, either in German or in Latin.… Ought not every Christian at the age of nine or ten to be acquainted with the whole of the Gospel? Young folk throughout Christendom are pining away and being pitiably ruined for want of the Gospel, in which they ought always to be instructed and exercised.” “I would not advise anyone to send his child where Holy Scripture is not the rule. Where the Word of God is not constantly studied everything must needs be in a state of corruption.”[54]