e year with "sundry intended ministers
for catechising, as also in teaching, or causing to be taught the
Companyes servants & their children, as also the salvages and their
children."[6-B] Parents, especially the mothers, were continually
exhorted in sermons preached for a century after the founding of the
colony, to catechize the children every day, "that," said Cotton Mather,
"you may be continually dropping something of the _Catechism_ upon them:
Some Honey out of the Rock"! Indeed, the learned divine seems to have
regarded it as a soothing and toothsome morsel, for he even imagined that
the children cried for it continuously, saying: _"O our dear Parents,
Acquaint us with the Great God.... Let us not go from your Tender Knees,
down to the Place of Dragons. Oh! not Parents, but Ostriches: Not
Parents, but Prodigies."_[6-C]

Much dissension soon arose among the ministers of the settlements as to
which catechism should be taught. As the result of the discussion the
"General Corte," which met in sixteen hundred and forty-one, "desired
that the elders would make a catechism for _the instruction of youth in
the grounds of religion_."[6-D]

To meet this request, several clergymen immediately responded. Among
them was John Cotton, who presumably prepared a small volume which was
entitled "_Milk for Babes_. Drawn out of the Breast of Both Testaments.
Chiefly for the spiritual nourishment of _Boston_ Babes in either
England: But may be of like use for any children." For the present
purpose the importance of this little book lies in the supposition that
it was printed at Cambridge, by Daye, between sixteen hundred and
forty-one and sixteen hundred and forty-five, and therefore was the
first book of any kind written and printed in America for children;--an
importance altogether different from that attached to it by the author's
grandson, Cotton Mather, when he asserted that "Milk for Babes" would be
"valued and studied and improved till New England cease to be New
England."[7-A]

To the little colonials this "Catechism of New England" was a great
improvement upon any predecessor, even upon the Westminster Shorter
Catechism, for it reduced the one hundred and seven questions of that
famous body of doctrine to sixty-seven, and the longest answer in "Milk
for Babes" contained only eighty-four words.[7-B]

As the century grew older other catechisms were printed. The number
produced before the eighteenth century bears witness to