he has met with some divine warning, or with some divine
CHAP, yl] now to approach the catechumen. 277 mind in "wliicli he is, or of the causes which have induced him to come with the view of embracing religion. But if there is no other person available from whom we may gather such information, then, indeed, the man himself is to be interrogated, so that from what he says in reply we may draw tlie beginning of our discourse. Xow if he has come with a false heart, desirous only of human advantages or thinking to escape disadvantages, he will certainly speak what is untrue.
Nevertheless, the very untruth which he utters should be
3nade the point from which we start. This should not be done, however, with the (open) intention of confuting hi« falsehood, as if that were a settled matter with you ; but, taking it for granted that he has professed to have come with a purpose which is really worthy of approbation (whether that profession be true or false), it should rather be our aim to commend and praise such a purpose as that with which, in his reply, he has declared himself to have come ; so that we may make him feel it a pleasure to be the kind of man actually that he wishes to seem to be, On the other hand, supposing him to have given a declaration of his views other than what ought to be before the mind of one who is to be instructed in the Christian faith, then by reproving him with more than usual kindness and gentleness, as a person uninstructed and ignorant, by pointing out and commending, concisely and in a grave spirit, the end of Christian doctrine in its genuine reality, and by doing all this in such a manner as neither to anticipate the times of a narration, which should be given subsequently, nor to venture to impose that kind of statement upon a mind not previously set for it, you may bring him to desire that which, either in mistake or in dissimulation, he has not been desiring up to this stage.
CiiAr. VI. Of the way to commence the catechetical instruct'ton, and of the narration of facts from the history of the icorltVs creation on to the j^ resent times of the Church.
10. But if it happens that his answer is to the effect that he has met with some divine warning, or with some divine terror, prompting him to become a Christian, this opens up the way most satisfactorily for a commencement to our discourse, by suggesting the greatness of God's interest in us.
ON CATECHISING. [CHAP. VI.
His tlioughts, however, ought certainly to be turned away from this line of thint^^s, whether miracles or dreams, and directed to the more solid path and the surer oracles of the
Scriptures ; so that he may also come to understand how mercifully that warnincj ^vas administered to him in advance/ previous to his giving himself to the Holy Scriptures. And assuredly it ought to be pointed out to him, that the Lord Himself would neither thus have admonished him and urged him on to become a Christian, and to be incorporated into the Church, nor have taught him by such signs or revelations, had it not been His Avill that, for his greater safety and security, he should enter upon a pathway already prepared in the Holy
Scriptures, in which he should not seek after visible miracles, but learn the habit of hoping for things invisible, and in which also he should receive monitions not in sleep but in wakeful ness. At this point the narration ought now to be commenced, which should start with the fact that God made all things very good,^ and which should be continued, as we have said, on to the present times of the Church. This should be done in such a manner as to give, for each of the affairs and events which we relate, causes and reasons by which we may refer them severally to that end of love from which neither the eye of the man who is occupied in doing anything, nor that of the man who is engaged in speaking, ought to be turned away. For if, even in handling the fables of the poets, which are but fictitious creations and things devised for the pleasure^ of minds whose food is found in trifles, those gi-ammarians who have the reputation and the name of being good do nevertheless endeavour to bring them to bear upon some kind of (assumed) use, although that use itself may be only something vain and grossly bent upon the coarse nutriment of this world :* how much more careful does it become us to be, not to let those genuine verities which we narrate, in consequence of any want of a well-considered account of their causes, bo accepted either with a gratification which
^ Prcerogatn sit. ' Gen. i. 31.
' Rendiiifj ad voluptatem. V>\\i many Mss. give ad voluntatcm =z ftccoixling to the inclination, etc.
scccularis.