Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/341

 Martin Bucer on Education 337 service, and the skillful use of arms. Therefore youths should exercise them- selves in running, leaping, wrestling, the management of horses and all the use of weapons, with which they should fight at long range and hand to hand; in the drawing up of battle-arraies, and the placing of camps. To these the nobles may add the sport of hunting. These exercises which are connected with military training ought so to be taught, and so seriously to be carried on as to approach as closely as possible to the actual operations of war, as Plato also laid down. By this, the youth may be able to learn military science and practice at home among their own countrymen, under pious and good laws and magistrates, and there should be no need to send them into military service abroad, which (even when the wars carried on in this age are just) is so given over to evils, and loosed from all discipline which is required from Christian soldiers, that into this service those who hope from God a fortunate campaign and victory cannot send their young men. In these sports, then, as in those of a higher order, men ought always to be in charge who are both unusually accomplished in the sports, and who in all things are truly wise and very desirous of all piety and virtue, so as to be respected for their grave authority, by which, when they desire, they may be able to bend and modify all the sports of the youth to the desire and practice of virtue, which with Christians is the one end of all sports. 52 This ends the section on the 'civil education of youth, the banishing of idleness, and the introduction and developing of worthy arts and occupations.' As Bucer indicates by frequent references to Plato, this is the plan of the Republic adapted by a Reformer of the sixteenth century to the England of his day. The similarities are too obvious to need remark. Bucer's plan for bringing the Kingdom of Christ to earth, like that of Plato for his ideal state, is Utopian, yet a man who wished Englishmen to attend to the manufacture of cloth and to metal-working was not a seer of false dreams. One of the striking differences between Bucer's plan and that of Plato is that Bucer's was designed from the beginning for all the people, as equally the redeemed of Christ. Plato, indeed, does not absolutely close his ruling classes to the common people, but the gulf is much greater than with the Christian, who, though he does not suggest the abolition of the hereditary aristocracy, 53 makes preparation for the highest functions free to all, of every rank, who show themselves able to serve the public. Thus, as the Reformers characteristically did, he shows himself a genuine champion of universal freedom. 52 Ib., pp. 145-6. 68 Yet he makes their part hi public affairs depend on their qualifications for it; Scripta Anglicana, p. 139.