AN INSTRUCTION TO BE LEARNED OF EVERY The Curate of every Parish shall diligently upon Sundays and Holydays, after the second Lesson at Evening Prayer, openly in the Church instruct and examine so many Children of his Parish sent unto him, as he shall think convenient, in some part of this Catechism. And all Fathers, Mothers, Masters, and Dames, shall cause their Children, Servants, and Apprentices, (which have not learned their Catechism,) to come to the Church at the time appointed, and obediently to hear, and be ordered by the Curate, until such time as they have learned all that is here appointed for them to learn. ¶ So soon as Children are come to a competent age, and can say, in their Mother Tongue, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments; and also can answer to the other Questions of this short Catechism; they shall be brought to the Bishop. And every one shall have a Godfather, or a Godmother, as a Witness of their Confirmation. And whensoever the Bishop shall give knowledge for Children to be brought unto him for their Confirmation, the Curate of every Parish shall either bring, or send in writing, with his hand subscribed thereunto, the names of all such persons within his Parish, as he shall think fit to be presented to the Bishop to be confirmed. And, if the Bishop approve of them, he shall confirm them in manner following. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I. CATECHISING. The I. At the time of Christ schools had gained a very important place in the organisation of Judaism. Besides the higher schools conducted by celebrated Rabbis, such as the school of Gamaliel, to which S. Paul was sent for his education, every synagogue seems to have had attached to it a school, presided over by the chazzan or officer of the synagogue, to which all the children were sent from the time they were five or six years old. The object of all education was moral-the training of every child to be a good servant of God. The great text-book was the Old Testament, and for older pupils the Mishnah or traditional law. teacher sat on the ground surrounded by his pupils ranged in a semicircle 1 about him. Though there would be in each school a roll of the Old Testament, or at least of the Law of Moses, the Mishnah was at this time unwritten, and the instruction must have been almost exclusively oral. The traditions and explanations of the Law which the teacher had himself been taught he handed on unaltered to his pupils. These they had to store in the memory, and in this form, it might be, hand them on to others. 1 2. As we might naturally expect, this system of oral instruction at once passed over into the Christian Church. The necessity of instructing the new converts in the facts of our Lord's life, of impressing on them the lessons which He taught, of leading 1 Maimonides, a Jewish writer of the twelfth century, speaks of the pupils so arranged round the teacher as forming his crown of glory. The thought is one which every Christian teacher might well lay to heart. " them up to the great spiritual truths which underlay these things, must have been at once evident. Accordingly this want was early met. Evangelists and teachers appear amongst the officers of the Church enumerated by S. Paul in his Epistles (1 Cor. xii. 28; Eph. iv. 11), while teaching is reckoned amongst the gifts given by the Spirit to some in the Church, and as such to be used to edifying (Rom. xii. 6, 7). Now it is not possible to say exactly what were the duties of the several classes of officers which S. Paul enumerates, or to draw any hard and fast lines between them. Indeed, it appears likely that no such lines existed, but that the same men might discharge the duties of several classes. Still it seems clear that instruction in the truths of the Gospel was the main work of the evangelists and teachers, the work of the former being of a somewhat more missionary character than that of the latter. It is this systematic instruction which is referred to in the introduction to S. Luke's Gospel. That book was addressed to Theophilus, that by the study of it he might know the certainty concerning the things wherein he had been instructed-—catechised, instructed by word of mouth, as the original word means. 3. In the centuries which followed, this system of instruction was greatly developed. The Church sought to guard against the danger of new converts falling away after Baptism by requiring more and more careful preparation before they were admitted to that Sacrament. Candidates for Baptism were placed for a period, which in the fourth and fifth centuries lasted two or three years, under the instruction of officers of the Church. During this time they were called catechumens (from Kateɣéw, to catechise, to instruct by word of mouth), and were gradually admitted to a larger portion of the worship of the Church. In the troubled times which followed the Lombard conquests this system fell into decay, and when Christianity was propagated not by persuasion but by the sword of the Frankish rulers, any spiritual preparation for Baptism was clearly impossible. It must not however be thought that the Church ceased to acknowledge the duty of teaching. The system of careful preparation for Baptism afforded admirable opportunities for instruction, but it clearly could also be given to disciples after baptism as well as before it. Still we cannot deny that instruction came in practice to be greatly neglected. Many instances of canons of Councils and of precepts of Bishops impressing on the parochial clergy the duty of teaching can be adduced, but their |