Martin Bucer on Education 335 service to the Church and state for which the Lord may signify that his children should be prepared and moulded, who, that was unwilling to give up Christ the Lord and all his benefits, would think it a grievous thing to give over his children for education, and to aid them with the greatest zeal? For no one can desire a more honorable and blessed condition of life for his children than that which our Maker and Saviour Christ designed for each one. Further, those of the children who have been taught reading, writing, and the catechism of our faith, and even those who have been for some time applied to the pursuit of liberal arts, and appear not to have been made by the Lord for obtaining further literary training, are to be assigned to other arts, each one to that for which his ability seems most suitable and apt. 49 In the next chapter, Bucer proceeds to point out some of the occupations to which children might be assigned: wool-work- ing, agriculture, linen-weaving, mining, working in metals, and the manufacture of paper. There is, however, no sugestion that children are to be taught any of these in school. The method of imparting the first is that artificers are to be brought from whence it will be possible ('unde licebit'), and to these are to be committed youths fit for the work. Agriculture is to be improved by distributing through the country skillful men, who may teach by example. We may assume, though Bucer does not expressly state it, that these men would instruct youths in agriculture. Having discussed these various kinds of work, he continues: Therefore if in this manner each of the citizens were devoted to some partic- ular branch of the arts, or of philosophy, or skilled labor, and those were thrust out into manual labor or into mean functions who could not be of good service to the state as ministers of religion, or in literary and philosophical matters, or in governing or defending the state, then impious sloth, the fecund root of all vices, being entirely cut out from the people there would result immense good to the state, with the best training and molding of morals to all virtue. 60 He concludes by expressing his hope that the nobles would prepare themselves to take an important part in this reforma- tion. In the next chapter he deals with abuses in the conduct of mercantile affairs, and declares that only those should be permitted to enter trade who had been approved by the pae- donomi as pious, loving the general good rather than their private gain, desirous of sobriety and temperance, and vigilant and industrious.
- 9 Scripta Anglicana, pp. 134-6.
BO /&., p. 138.
