An education which is not wholly intent upon this, is as much beside the point, as an art of physic that had little or no regard to the restoration of health: or rather, it is like administering poison instead of physic.
For as the only end of the physician, is to restore nature to its own state; so the only end of education is, to restore our rational nature to its proper state. And as physic may justly be called the art of restoring health, so education should be considered in no other light, than as the art of recovering man to the use of reason and religion.
The youths that attended upon _Pythagoras_, _Socrates_, _Plato_, and _Epictetus_, were thus educated. And since christianity hath, as it were, new created the _moral_ and _religious world_, and set every thing that is reasonable, wise, holy, and desirable, in its true point of light; one may reasonably expect, that the education of youth should be as much bettered by christianity, as the faith and doctrines of religion are amended by it.
But since our modern education is not of this kind, a deficiency in such an essential point, may be justly assigned as _one great reason_ why many men find it so exceedingly difficult to devote themselves wholly unto GOD.