A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

2. If this fear and jealousy must hinder Catechising of Children, who knows how long it will be hindered for even Children well grown up, being not before Catechized, are not likely at their first Teaching so to understand what is said to them, as to repeat it with due reverence. Do we not find Christ himself instructing Nicodemus in the great Mystery of Regeneration. when he was able to return him no more than that childish Answer, How can a Man be born again when he is old? ¹Can he enter the second time into his Mothers Womb? We find our Saviour delivering a Divine Truth to those that were known to be his Disciples, who still accompanied ⟨p. 216⟩him, and repeated themselves what he spake to them, in the very same words wherein he delivered it, and yet when all was done confessed they could not tell what he said. ²May we therefore say, that by reason of their Ignorance they took that Name of God, his Word, in vain? No, this was not a vain business, for in this way they understood the words of Christ at last, the meaning whereof they knew not at first.

2. If this fear and jealousie must hinder Catechising of Children, who knows how long it will be hindered for even Children well grown up, being not before Catechized, are not likely at their first Teaching so to understand what is said to them, as to repeat it with due reverence. Do we not find Christ himself instructing Nicodemus in the great Mystery of Regeneration. when he was able to return him no more than that childish Answer, How can a Man be born again when he is old? ¹Can he enter the second time into his Mothers Womb? We find our Saviour delivering a Divine Truth to those that were known to be his Disciples, who still accompanied ⟨p. 216⟩him, and repeated themselves what he spake to them, in the very same words wherein he delivered it, and yet when all was done confessed they could not tell what he said. ²