Special Counsel to the Candidates for the Ministry
Special Counsel to the Candidates for the Ministry SECT. 1. It was the case of the London apprentices, who are nearest me, and I have oft to do with, which first provoked me to this work; and therefore which was the chief in my intention. But had I as near opportunity to be a counsellor to others, there are three sorts whom I should have preferred, for the sake of the church and kingdom, to which they are of greater signification:
1. Those in the schools and universities, who are bred up for the sacred ministry.
2. Those there, and in the inns of court, who are bred up to the knowledge of the law.
3. Those of noblemen, knights and others, who are bred up for some places of government in the kingdom, according to their several ranks. And of these it is the first that I shall most freely speak to.
Sect. 2. And, first I shall mention the importance of their case; and secondly the danger that they are in of miscarrying, and what they should do to escape it.
Sect. 3. I. And indeed their condition, as they prove good or bad, is of unspeakable importance.
1. To the church and the souls of men.
2. To the peace of the kingdom.
3. To themselves. And, 4. To their parents, above the common case of others.
Sect. 4. 1. Of how great importance the quality of the clergy is to the church and men's salvation, many thousands have found to their joy and happiness; and, I fear, many more thousands to their sorrow and destruction. And then of what importance the quality of scholars and young candidates is to the soundness of the clergy, I need not many words to make men of reason and experience know.
Sect. 5. 2. God, who hath instituted the sacred office, and by his Spirit qualifies men for the work doth usually work according to the fitness of their work and qualifications. As he doth the works of nature according to the fitness of natural second causes, (giving more light by the sun, than by a star or candle, &c.) so he doth the works of morality according to the fitness of moral causes. Holiness is the true morality, and usually wrought by holy means. And though it be so supernatural in several respects, (as it is wrought by the supernatural revelation or doctrine, or a supernatural teacher, Christ, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, a supernatural agent, commonly called infusion, and raising the soul to God, a supernatural object, and to a better state than that of corrupted nature,) yet we are natural
recipients and agents, and it is our natural faculties which grace renews; and, being renewed, exercise the acts of holiness. And God worketh on us according to our nature, and by causes suited to our capacities and to the work. As he useth not to give men the knowledge of languages, philosophy, or any art, by the teaching of the ignorant and unskillful, so much as by learned and skillful teachers, we must say the same of our teachers of sacred truth; and though grace be the gift of the Holy Ghost, experience constrains all sorts of Christians almost to acknowledge what I here assert. Why else do they so earnestly contend, that they may live under the teachers which they count the best? Will heretics teach men the truth as well as the orthodox? Why then is there such a stir made against heretics in the world? And why are the clergy so eager to silence such as preach down that which they approve? Will papists choose protestant teachers, or protestants choose papists?
And as men are unfit to teach others that which they know not themselves, so unbelieving men and unholy men are far less fit to persuade the hearers to faith and holiness, than believing, holy teachers are. Though some of them may be furnished with the same notions and words which serious, godly teachers use, yet usually, even in that, they are greatly wanting; because they have not so thoroughly studied saving truth, nor perceived its evidence, nor set their hearts upon it, nor deeply received and retained it. For serious affection quickens the mind to serious consideration and causes men
speedily and deeply to receive that truth which others receive but slowly, superficially, or not at all. How eagerly and prosperously do men study that which they strongly love! And how hardly do they learn that in which they have no delight, much more which they hate, and their very natures are against.
But if a hypocrite should have good notions and words, yet he will usually be greatly wanting in that serious delivery which is ordinarily needful to make the hearers serious Christians. It seldom reaches the heart of the hearer, which cometh not from the heart of the speaker. As light causes light, so heat causes heat; and the dead are unfit to generate life. The arrow will not go far or deep, if both the bow and arm be not strong that shoot it. Constant experience tells us undeniably of the different success of the reading or saying of a pulpit lesson, or a dull or a mere affected speech, and of the judicious, serious explication and application of well-chosen matter, which the experienced speaker well understands, and which he utters from the feeling of his soul. And the love of a benefice, no, nor of applause neither, will not make a man preach in that manner, as the love of God, and the lively belief of heaven and hell, and as the desire of saving souls will do. The means will be chosen and used, and the work done, agreeably to the principle and the end.
But if a stage hypocrite should learn the knack or art of preaching, with affected fervency and seeming zeal, yet art and paint will not reach the power and beauty of nature. Usually affectation betrays
itself; and, when it is discerned, the hypocrisy is loathed. And it fails ordinarily, in point of constancy: "Will the hypocrite pray always?"
Job xxvii. 10. Art will not hold out like nature: when the motives of gain (which is their godliness) ceases, the pleasure of applause, the means, will cease. Yea, it usually turns to a malignant reviling of the serious piety which they counterfeited before, or of the persons whose applause they did affect. For where the hypocrisy of the preacher is discovered by his contrary self-condemning words or life, and the people accordingly judge of him as he is, his proud heart cannot bear it, but he turns a malicious reproacher of these whose applause he sought, thinking by disgracing them, to defend his own esteem, by making their census of him incredible or contemptible.
And if the hypocrite should hold on his stage affection with plausible art, yet it will not reach to an answerable discharge of the rest of his ministerial work. It is from MEN that he expects his reward; and in the sight of men, on the public stage, that he appears in his borrowed glory. But in his family, or his conversation, or his ministerial duty to men in private, he answers not his public show.
He will not set himself to instruct and win the ignorant and impenitent, and zealously to save men from their sins, and to raise men's earthly minds to heaven, by praying with them, and by a heavenly discourse, and by a heavenly conversation; nor will he be at much cost or labor to do good.
Sect. 6. But, alas! the far greatest part of bad, unexperienced clergymen do prove so hurtful to the church, that they have not so much as the hypocrite's seeming zeal and holiness to cloak their sin or profit their people with. The sad case of the Christian world proclaims this; not only in the Southern and Eastern churches,
Abassia, Egypt, Syria Armenia, the Greeks, Muscovites, &c.; nor only the papist priests in the West; but too great a number in the reformed churches. And it is more lamentable than wonderful; for there goes so much to the general planting of a worthy, faithful ministry, that it is the great mercy of God that such are not more rare.
1. If they have not natural capacity, there is not matter for art and ordinary grace to elevate.
2. And if this capacity be not improved by diligent and long study, (which most will not undergo,) it is no wonder if it be useless, or much worse.
3. And if it be not directed by a sound and skillful teacher, but fall into the hands of an erroneous or bad guide, you may conjecture what the fruits will be.
4. And if that good parts and studies be not kept from the mischievous enmity of a worldly mind and fleshly lusts, how easily
are they corrupted, and turned against their use and end, to the great hurt of the church, and of themselves!
5. And if those that choose prelates or church governors, should be either of corrupted judgments, wicked hearts, or vicious lives, how probable is it that they will choose such as themselves, or, at least, such as will not much cross their lusts!
6. And if such worldly and wicked prelates be the ordainers, examiners, judges, and institutors of the inferior clergy, or be their rulers, it is easy to know what sort of men they will introduce and countenance, and what sort they will silence and discourage.
7. And if lay patrons have the choice of parish pastors, and most or many of them should be such as Christ tells us the rich most usually are, a worldly and sensual sort of men, or such as have no lively sense of heavenly things, we may easily conjecture what men such are likely to present.
8. And if the people have anywhere (as anciently) the choice, when most of them are bad, what men will they choose? Or if they have not the choice, yet they are so considerable, that their consent or dissent, love or hatred, will sway much with those that much live among them. But I must afterward say more of these impediments.
Sect. 7. And as all these impediments are like to make worthy pastors to be rare, so it is certain that the naughtiness of such is like to make them exceeding hurtful, which is easily gathered from,
1. What they will be.
2. What they will do.
3. In what manner they will do it. In all which, the effects may be probably foreseen. And, First, It is supposed, 1. That they will be worldly-minded men, that will take gain for godliness, and will judge that to be the best cause, and those the best persons, who most befriend their worldly interest.
They will love the fleece more than the safety of the flock; and their benefices more than the benefit of the people's souls; they will serve their bellies more than Christ, Phil. iii. 18; Rom. xvi. 17; and being lovers of the world, they will be real enemies to God. "The love of money in them will be the root of all evil." As Achan and Gehazi, they will think they have reason for what they do; and, if tempted, will with Judas betray their Master.
2. And their fleshly desires will have little restraints, but what one sin doth put upon another, or God's controlling providence give them. Their reputation may make them avoid that which would be their disgrace. But, secretly, they will serve their appetites and
fleshly lusts. For they will not have God's effectual grace, nor much tenderness of conscience, to restrain them.
3. And pride will be their very nature. Esteem and applause will be taken for their due, and seem as necessary to them, almost, as the air, and as water to a fish. Ambition will be their complexion and will actuate their thoughts. And all these voices will so corrupt their judgments, that there will want little more than worldly interest and temptations, to turn them to any heresy, or ill design.
And it is much to be feared that their profanation of holy things will make them worse and more impenitent than other men: partly, by the righteous judgment of God forsaking them; and partly, by the hardening of their own hearts, by long abuse of that truth which should have sanctified them. For when they have imprisoned it in unrighteousness, and long played, as hypocrites, with that which they preached and professed to believe, custom will so harden them, that their knowledge will have little power on their hearts.
Sect. 8. Secondly, and no wonder if the fruit be like the tree. These vices will not be idle, nor bring forth holy or just effects.
1. It is likely they will make it the chief care of their minds, to get that which they most love; and that they will study preferment
(which is the clergyman's nearest way to wealth).
2. And then they must be flatterers of those that can prefer them; or, at least, must not seriously call them to repentance, or tell them of their sin.
3. In all differences, of what consequence soever, they will usually pass their judgment on the side of such as can prefer or hurt them.
4. In religious controversies, they will usually be on the side that is for their worldly interest, be it right or wrong.
5. They will harden great men in their sins, by flattering them.
6. They will harden the profane, by pleasing them in their ignorance and ungodliness, to get them on their side.
7. They will be enemies to the serious, religious people, because they discern the vice and hypocrisy which they would conceal; and because they honor such as fear the Lord, while vile persons are contemned in their eyes, Psal. xv. 4.
8. They will turn their preaching against such, partly to vent their malignant spleen, and partly to overcome them as their enemies.
Hereupon they will describe their serious piety as faction, selfopinion, and hypocrisy, and will raise jealousies against them in the minds of rulers, and increase the rabble's malignity and rage, and will extenuate the sin and danger of the most ungodly sort who take their own part.
9. They will shame their office and profession by base mutability, turning with the time and tide as temptations from their worldly interest lead them.
10. They will, by their making light of godliness, and by the scandal or unholiness of their own conversations, make the vulgar believe that godliness is either a cheat, or a matter of mere words and outward observances, and to be of the religion of their rulers, and a thing to keep men in some awe and order in a worldly life.
11. Their ignorance oft makes them unfit for hard controversies; and yet their pride and malignity will make them forward to talk of what they understand not, and to take thence an occasion to revile those whom they dislike; and, speaking evil of what they never knew, they will make up their want of knowledge with outward titles, pretended authority, confident affirmation, censorious reproach, and violently oppressing by power the gainsayers.
12. And if any man's conscience be awakened, to call him to true repentance, they will either tell him it is needless, melancholy trouble, and give him an opiate of some flattering, false comfort, or preach him asleep again with unsuitable things, or a cold, dull, formal kind of managing holy things.
Sect. 9. Thirdly, and such are too often the plagues of the church and state, as well as injurious to individual souls.
1. Their ignorance or scandalous ambition, covetousness, and other sins, do render them so contemptible in the eyes of many, that it tends to make the church and all religion so. And when nobles, gentlemen, and people think basely of the ministry, church, and religion for their sakes, how sad is the case of such a people! The gospel is half taken away from a nation when it is taken out of their esteem and brought under their reproach and scorn. And a scorned clergy will prepare for the scorning of religion; and an ignorant, or worldly, ambitious, fleshly, scandalous clergy, will be a scorned clergy with too many. Erasmus much disgraced the German protestants, when he described some of them as having a bottle of wine at their girdle, and his translation of the New Testament in their hands, ready to dispute for it with blows. And so do many, that tell the world how many of the Lutheran ministers are given to excess of drink, and unpeaceable reviling of dissenters. And the same Erasmus much depreciated either bishops or Scotists, when, speaking of the Scotist bishop of London, who was Dr. Collett's adversary, he saith,
I have known some such whom I would not call knaves, but never one whom I could call a Christian. Not only drunkenness and brutish sins, but factiousness, envy, unpeaceableness, contentiousness, and especially a proud and worldly mind, will be, in most men's eyes, more ugly in a minister than others. For where there is a double dedication to God, that which is common will seem unclean; and when there should be a double holiness, sin will appear to be double sin.
2. And indeed a carnal, worldly clergy are oft the most powerful and obstinate hinderers of the peace and quietness of church and state.
(1.) By fitting themselves to be humors of those in whose power their preferments are, be it never so much to the injury of men's souls, bodies, or estates, or against the public good and safety or else, leading the people into error, for popular applause.
(2.) By a domineering humor in matters of religion; taking themselves lawgivers to others; and talking their wits and wills for uncontrollable; laying heaven and hell upon their own inventions or conceits, and the controversies which they endlessly make, but understand not; and hereticating or anathematizing such as take them not for oracles, or rabbies that must not be gainsaid.
(3.) And by corrupting the Christian religion and church, by departing from the Christian simplicity and purity; and forming doctrine, worship, and government, according to their own carnal, worldly minds and interest.
(4.) And then militating against the best that contradict them or stoop not to them, though it be to the distraction and division of the churches. And usually they are the hardest to be brought to peace and reconciliation, and do most against it whenever it is attempted by peace-makers, who pity the woeful case of such a self-disturbing people.
Sect. 10. All this hath been so long manifested to the sad experience of mankind, in most nations and ages of the Christian world, that it is not to be denied or concealed. And should we pretend the honor of the church and clergy for the denying or the hiding of such grievous sins, it would but make us partakers of the guilt, and displease the most holy God, who will have sin in whomsoever shamed, to warn others who are ready to imitate them. The holy Scriptures open and shame the sins even of Adam, of Noah, of Lot, of David, of Solomon, of Peter, and of God's chosen people the Jews: and this was not a faulty uncovering of their nakedness, but a necessary disgrace of sin, and manifestation of the holiness and justice of God, and a warning to others that we should not sin with such examples before our eyes, I Cor. x. 6-8.
I have written the history of the bishops and councils of former ages, in which, with their virtues, I have opened their miscarriages. Some blame it, as if it were uncovering their nakedness. But I have said nothing but what is openly proclaimed of them long ago, by their own greatest flatterers; and it was Christ himself that said,
"Remember Lot's wife." The pit which so many have fallen into must be uncovered; and God and holiness must be honored, rather than those that dishonor them by sin. Sin, confessed and forsaken, is not so dangerous, as sin denied and extenuated. He that hides it, shall not prosper. "Sin is a reproach to any people," Prov. xiv. 34; vi.
33. Even God that forgives it to the penitent, will shame it, to keep
others from committing it. He that minces or hides it, tempts others to imitate it.
Alas! what work have a worldly, proud, and ignorant clergy made in most Christian nations, these thirteen hundred years! Athanasius,
Chrysostom, Isidore-Pelusiota, &c. but especially, excellent Gregory Nazianzen have told it us, even of their flourishing times, more plainly than I now intend to do: They have loved this present world; some set themselves, by venting new and odd opinions, to draw disciples after them for applause; some furiously hereticating those that differed from them by ambiguous words, and making themselves lords of the faith of others, and making their ignorant dictates the oracles of the church; striving who should be thought wisest and best, but especially who should be greatest, as if Christ had never judged in that controversy; flattering emperors and princes, till they got wealth and power by them, and then overtopping them, and troubling the world by rebellions and wars; tearing the churches in pieces on pretense of union, killing and burning men on pretense of faith and charity, and cursing from Christ his faithful servants on pretense of using the keys of Christ's kingdom; setting up themselves and a worldly kingdom, on pretense of the spiritual government of Christ; making merchandise of souls, on pretense of feeding and ruling them; cherishing the people in ignorance, and sloth, and carnality, that they might be more obedient to their tyranny, and less capable of opposing it; hating and
destroying the most conscionable Christians, as heretics, or schismatics, because they are the greatest enemies to their sin, and desirous of reformation; provoking princes to become the bloody persecutors of such, for the upholding of their worldly state and dignity; yea, making them their lictors or executioners, to destroy such as they condemn.
Such work as this hath destroyed the Greeks, or Eastern churches, set up Turkish tyranny by dividing Christians, weakening and ruining the emperors, making religion a mere image of lifeless formality and ceremony, and a powerless, dying thing. Such a clergy have darkened and lamentably brought low the Christian churches in Muscovy, Armenia, Georgia, Mongrelia, Syria, Abassia, and extirpated them in Nubia, and brought them in Italy, Poland,
Hungary, Spain, France, and most of Germany, to what they are: such a clergy have brought Ireland from the laudable state in which it was in the days of Malachias, as Bernard described it, into the barbarous, brutish ignorance and bloody inhumanity at which it is now arrived; and had the chief hand in the murder of two hundred thousand persons in the late rebellious insurrection. Such a clergy had a chief hand in the civil wars in England in the reign of William
Rufus, King Stephen, Henry the Third, King John, &c. the subject of Pryn's History of the Treasons of Prelates. And, alas! such a corrupt sort of ministers keep up the division of the German protestants, under the name of Lutherans and Calvinists, about
consubstantiation, church images, and doctrines of predestination not understood. And had the Low Countries ever had the stirs between remonstrants and contra-remonstrants, or England and Scotland ever had the miserable contentions, wars, and cruelties between the former episcopal parties and the Laudians, or between them and the Presbyterians and independents, and all the silencings, and woeful contentions and schisms that have thence followed, if the vices of the clergy had not been the cause? And had we continued in this case these twenty years last, silencing, reviling, and prosecuting about two thousand conscientious preachers, and writing and preaching still for executing the laws against them, and the prosecuted people flying from such a clergy as ravening wolves, and some censuring the innocent with the guilty, could all this have been done by a wise, holy, and peaceable clergy, that served God in selfdenial, and knew what it is to seek the good of church and souls?
When we yet continue under the same distractions and confusions, and all cry out that a flood of misery is breaking in on the land and like to overwhelm us all, still it is the clergy who cannot or will not be reconciled, but animate rulers and people against each other, and cannot or will not find the way of peace. Yea, all would soon be healed, in probability, could the nation but procure the clergy to consent. Certainly there is some grievous disease in ourselves, which is like to prove mortal to such a kingdom, and that while so many pray and strive for peace. Those men that have no more skill or will to heal the wounds and stop the blood of a fainting church
and state, nor will by any reason or humble importunity be entreated to consent to the cheap and necessary cure, no, nor to hold their hands from continued tearing of us, do tell all the world that they are sadly wanting in fitness for their sacred office, and that this unfitness is like to cost an endangered nation dear.
Woe, woe, woe, to that church that hath hypocrites, ungodly, unexperienced, proud, worldly, fleshly, unskillful, unfaithful, and malignant pastors, and that hath wolves instead of shepherds! Woe to the land that hath such! Woe to the prince and states that have and follow such counsellors, and to the souls that are subverted by them!
Alas! from a bad clergy have sprung the greatest calamities of the churches, in all places, to this very day.
Sect. 11. But will such men's sins prove less woeful to themselves than others?
No. 1. It is the sin and guilt itself which is the greatest evil.
2. They aggravate their sin and guilt by a perfidious violating a double vow, their baptismal vow of Christianity, and their ordination vow to be faithful ministers of Christ.
3. They aggravate their guilt by their nearness to God in their office and works, as Aaron's two sons that were struck dead, Lev. x. 2, 3.
"For God will be sanctified in them that come nigh him, and before all the people he will be glorified." The examples of the
Bethshemites, Uzza, Uzziah, the bad priests and false prophets of old, are terrible.
4. And it greatly adds to the guilt, to do all this or much of it as in the name of God, or by his commission. This is a dreadful taking of God's name in vain, for which he will not hold them guiltless. To pretend, that it is by God's command that they set up that which he abhors; that they corrupt his doctrine, or worship, or church order; that they set up their own wills and sinful laws instead of and against his laws; that they tear his church by proud impositions and wicked anathemas, and interdicts of whole kingdoms, excommunicating and deposing kings, absolving men from their oaths of allegiance, tormenting and murdering godly men as heretics, silencing faithful ministers, smiting the shepherds and scattering the flocks, and then reviling them as schismatics, and all this to uphold a worldly kingdom of their own, and keep up their pride, domination, and selfwill, and to have riches for provision for fleshly lusts; I say, to do all this as in the name of Christ, with a Sic dicit Dominus, not as for the church, truth, and souls, is a most heinous aggravation.
5. Indeed, while a poor blind clergyman as his trade, for applause and gain, doth study and preach that word of God, which is against him, how dreadful is it to think how all that he doth and says is selfcondemnation, and that out of his own mouth he must be judged, and that all the woes which he pronounces against hypocrites and
impenitent, carnal, worldly men, his own tongue pronounces them against himself.
Sect. 12. And when Satan hath once got such instruments, how great an advantage hath he for the success against themselves, against the flock, and against the church and cause of Christ, above what he might expect by other servants!
1. They are far hardlier brought to repentance than others.
(1.) Because they have, by wit and study, bended that doctrine to defend their sin which should be used to bring them to repentance.
(2.) Because their aggravated sin against light doth most forfeit that help of grace which should work repentance in them.
(3.) And because, being taken for wise, learned men, and preachers of truth, and teachers of others, and reprovers of errors, their reputation is much concerned in it, and their unhumbled souls, which look all others should assent and consent to their prescripts, will hardly be brought to confess sin and error; but will sooner (as papists) plead infallibility, or conclude, as some councils have done, that a layman must not accuse a clergyman, be he never so bad.
Repentance is hard to all men of carnal interest, but to few more than to an unhumbled clergyman.
And, 2. Whoever accuses or reproves them of sin, will be represented as an enemy to the church, and a dishonorer of his ghostly fathers, and one that opens their nakedness which he should cover. And so their ulcers are as a noli me tangere; and fret as a gangrene unremedied.
3. And their place, office, titles, and learning with many will give sin reputation and advantage. It a drunkard in the alehouse deride godly men, as heretics, schismatics, hypocrites, or puritans, sober men will not much regard it; but they think they owe more belief and reverence to a learned, reverend preacher in the pulpit, even when he preaches against preaching, and against those that practice what he teaches them at other times. Oh how much of his work hath Satan done in the world by corrupting sacred offices, and by getting HIS
SERVANTS INTO RULE AND MINISTRY, TO DO HIS WORK
AS FOR CHRIST and his church, and by his authority and in his name! Our natural enmity with the serpent dissuades him from speaking or sending to us in his own name. Should one say in the pulpit, Thus saith the devil, Hate Christ's servants, silence his ministers, call serious godliness hypocrisy, (which is the contrary to hypocrisy,) I should not much fear his success with any. But if he be a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab's prophets and get a prophet to smite Micaiah for pretending to more of the Spirit than he had; or if he can get men in the sacred office to say, "Thus saith the Lord,"
when they speak for sin or against the Lord, this is the devil's prosperous way.
Sect. 13. II. I have told you what plagues bad clergymen will be, and still have been, to themselves, to the souls of men, and to the public state of churches and kingdoms; and, were it not lest my writing should be too large, I should tell you what blessings on the contrary able and faithful ministers are.
Briefly, 1. Christ maketh them the chief instruments for the propagating of his truth and kingdom in the world, for the gathering of churches, and preserving and defending contradicted truth. "They are the lights of the world, and the salt of the earth." All Christians are bound to teach or help each other in charity; but Christ's ministers are set in his church, (as parents in families,) to do it by office: and therefore must be qualified above others for it, and be wholly dedicated to it, and attend continually on it. As a physician differs from every neighbor, who may help you in your sores or sickness as they can, so do the pastors of the church differ from private helpers of your souls. The Scripture is preserved and delivered down by the private means of all the faithful, but, eminently, by the public office of the pastors. It may be expounded and applied privately by any able Christians, but the pastors do it, eminently, by office; and to them especially (though Christians commonly) are committed the oracles of God. "The priest's lips must preserve knowledge, and men should inquire of the law at his
mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts," Mal. ii. 7.
Never yet was the gospel well propagated nor continued in any country in the world, but by the means of the ministers of Christ.
And oh what difference hath there been in their successes as they differed in ability, piety, and diligence! And how great an honor is it to be such blessed instruments of building up the house of God and propagating the gospel and the kingdom of Christ, and the Christian faith and godliness in the world!
2. And thus God uses them as his special instruments for the convincing, converting, edifying, comforting, and saving of souls.
Others may be blest herein; but the special blessing goes along with those that are specially obliged to the work, which is parents in families, and pastors in the churches. Oh how many thousand souls in heaven will forever rejoice in the effects of the labor of faithful ministers, and bless God for them! And what an honor, what a comfort is it to have a hand in such a work! "He that converts a sinner from the error of his way, doth save a soul from death, and cover a multitude of sins," James v. 20.
3. And in this they are co-workers with Jesus Christ, the great Savior of souls, and with the Holy Spirit, the Regenerator and Sanctifier.
Yea, Christ doth very much of the work of his salvation by them: when he ascended on high, he gave gifts to men, for the edifying of his body, till they come to a perfect man, Eph. iv. 6-16; and "when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, they shall receive a crown of glory
that fades not away," 1 Pet. v. 4; and shall hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Hence are the streams of consolation, that make glad the city of God, and daily refresh many thousand precious souls. For "how shall men believe without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent" (qualified, obliged, and authorized by Christ)? Rom. x. 4. In a word, churches, states, and Christian kingdoms, are chiefly blessed and preserved by the labor of the faithful part of the ministry: for, (1.) If we have the rare blessing of a wise, holy, and loving magistracy, it is usually by the success of the labor of the ministry. (2.) And there is no better means to bring the subjects to the conscientious performance of their duty to superiors. (3.) And, by the blessing of their labor, the sins of a nation are prevented or healed, which would else bring down God's heavy judgments. (4.) They teach people to live in love and peace with one another; and to abhor contention, cruelty, oppression, injury, and revenge; and all to do their several duties to promote the common good. (5.) When the ignorant, and slothful, and scandalous sort of bad ministers betray souls and would bring the ministry and religion into contempt, it is a wise and holy ministry that counterworketh them, by laboring while others are idle, and doing that wisely which others do foolishly, and showing in their lives the power of that truth which others disgrace, and the reality of that holiness, love, justice, peace, and concord, which others would banish out of the world by making it seem but a name or image. (6.)
When proud men tear the church by the engines of their
domineering wits and wills, these humble pastors, as the servants of all, will labor to heal it, by Christian meekness and condescension.
When malignant priests seek to strengthen themselves by the multitude of the ungodly, and to bring serious piety (which doth molest them) into contempt, these faithful pastors open the just disgrace of sin, and the great necessity and honor of holiness, endeavoring that vile persons may be contemned, and those may be honored that fear the Lord, Psal. xv. 4; and distinguishing the precious from the vile, the righteous from the wicked, and him that swears from him that fears an oath, and him that serves God from him that serves him not, God saith, They are as his mouth, Jer. xv.
19; Mal. iii. 17, 18; Eccles. ix. 2.
To be short, as an ignorant, worldly, carnal, proud, unholy sort of prelates and priests, are and have been the great plague of the churches these thirteen hundred years at least, so the skillful, holy, humble, faithful, laborious, patient ministers of Christ, have been and still are, the great blessings of the world; for saving souls, promoting knowledge, faith, holiness, love, and peace; opposing error, pride, oppression, worldliness, sensuality, and contention; diverting God's judgments by faith and prayer; forsaking all for Christ, and patiently suffering for well-doing; and by doctrine and example teaching men to difference the Creator from the creature, holiness from sin, heaven from earth, the soul from the body, the spirit from the flesh, and helping men to prepare, by a mortified,
heavenly heart and life, for a comfortable death and endless happiness. Of such vast importance is it to the world whether the clergy be good or bad, skillful or unskillful, holy or worldly; and he is not a true Christian that is insensible of the difference or thinks it small.
And now, do I need to say any more, to show young men designed for the ministry of what importance it is that they be well prepared and qualified for it? God can and sometimes doth turn wolves into faithful shepherds, and convert those that, being unconverted, undertake the work that should convert others, and give wisdom and grace to ignorant and graceless preachers of wisdom and grace. But this is not ordinarily to be expected. But as youth are trained up and disposed, they commonly prove when they come to age. Their first notions lie deepest, and make way for their like, and resist all that is contrary, be it never so true, and good, and necessary. Experience tells this to all the world, those who in youth are trained in heathenism, Mahometanism, popery, or any distinct sect of Christians, they commonly continue such; especially if they live among those who are for it, and so make it their interest in reputation or wealth. And if the rulers and times should be but erroneous, heretical, or malignant, at enmity to truth and serious holiness, alas! how hard is it for ill-taught youth to resist the stream!
How hard is it to unteach them the errors which they first learned! A vomit may easily bring up that which was but lately eaten, but the
yellow and the green humors that lie deep, must cost heart-gripes before they will be cast up. False opinions, as well as truths, are usually linked together; and the chain is neither easily cast off nor broken. And they that have received errors, have received their defensatives: these are like the shellfish, that carry their house about them. They have studied what to say for it, but not what can be said against it; or, which is worse, by a slight and false consideration of the arguments for truth, they have disabled them from doing them any good.
And if they had never so true notions in their memories, if they come not in power on their hearts, and make them not new, spiritual, holy men, these will not master fleshly lusts, nor overcome ambitious and worldly inclinations, nor make men fit to propagate that faith and holiness which they never had.
And it is now that you must get those eminent qualifications of knowledge and holiness which you must after use. And how will you use that which you have not?
And yet proud hearts, how empty soever, will be desirous of esteem and reputation, and will hardly bear vilifying, contempt, or disregard. Whenas, though some few, prudent hearers will encourage such young as they think are hopeful, yet most will judge of things and persons as they find them; the ignorant, dry, and lifeless orations of unexperienced, carnal preachers, will not be
magnified by such as know what judgment and holy seriousness that place and sacred work require. Few will much praise or feed on unsavory or insipid food, merely to flatter and please the cook.
And then when you find that you are slighted for your slight and unskillful work, your stomachs will rise against those that slight you, and so by selfishness you will turn malignant, and become enemies to those that you take for enemies to you, because they are not contented with your unholy trifling. And all your enmity will turn against yourself, and be like Satan's against the members of Christ, which is but his own self-tormenting.
Sect. 15. II. The case being so important, I shall briefly conjoin your danger and your remedy, beseeching you (as you have any care for your souls, your country, or the church of God, or any thing which faith or reason should regard) that you will soberly weigh the counsel that I give you.
The first of your dangers which I shall mention, lieth in a too hasty resolving for the sacred ministry. Pious and prudent desires and purposes I would not discourage. But two sorts of parents in this prove greatly injurious to the church: First, Worldly men, that send their sons to the universities in order to their worldly maintenance and preferment, looking at the ministry merely as a profession or trade by which they may be able to live: Secondly, And many honest, godly parents ignorantly think it a good work to design their
children to the ministry, and call it a devoting them to God, without due considering whether they are like to be fit for it or not. And when they have been some years at the university, they think a parsonage or vicarage is their due; ordained they must be; what have they else studied for? It is too late now to change their purposes, when they have been at seven years' cost and labor to prepare for the ministry. They are too old and too proud to go apprentices or servants. Husbandmen they cannot be; they are used to an idler kind of life. To be lawyers will cost them more time and study than they can now afford, having lost so much; and there are more already than can have practice. Physicians are already so many that the younger sort know not how to live, though they would, for money, venture on their neighbors' lives, to their greater danger than I am willing to express. So that there is no way left but for a benefice, to become church mountebanks and quacks, and undertake the pastoral care of souls, before they well know what souls are, or what they are made for, or whither they are going, or how they must be conducted and prepared for their endless state. And it seems to some the glory of a nation, to have many thousand such lads at the universities,
(more than there be cures or churches in the land,) all expecting that their friends should procure them benefices. And they must be very ignorant and bad indeed, that cannot find some ministers so bad as to certify that they are sober and of good lives, and some patrons so bad as to like such as they, and, for favor, or somewhat worse, to present them; and some bishops' chaplain bad enough to be
favorable in examining them, and then some bishop bad enough to ordain and institute them. And by that time nine thousand such youths have got benefices, alas! what a case will the churches and the poor people's souls be in!
Sect. 16. I. And what remedy is there for this? That which I have now to propose is, first to tell you, who they be that should be devoted to the ministry; and next what both parents and you should do.
The work is so high, and requires such qualifications, and miscarrying in it is of such dreadful consequence, that no youth should be resolvedly devoted to the ministry, that hath not all these following endowments:
I. He must have a good natural wit and capacity. It should be somewhat above the ordinary degree; but it must needs be of the better rank of ordinary wits: for grace supposes nature, and, by sanctifying it, turns it the right way; but doth not use to make wise teachers of natural drones or weak-headed lads, that have not wit enough to learn. How many and how great things have they to learn and teach!
2. They must have some competent readiness of speech, to utter the knowledge they have got. One that cannot readily speak his mind in
common things, is not like to come to that ready utterance which will be necessary to a preacher.
3. He must be one that is so far hopeful for godliness, (1.) As to be captivated by no gross sin.
(2.) To have a love not only to learning, but to religion, to the word of God, and good company, and prayer, and good books; and a settled dislike of the things, words, and persons, that are against these.
(3.) And he must show some sense of the concerns of his soul, and regard of the life to come, and that his conscience is under some effectual convictions of the evil of sin, and the goodness and necessity of a godly life. The youth that hath not these three qualifications, should not be intended or devoted to the ministry. To devote an incapable person, an ungodly person, to such a holy state and work, is worse than of old to have offered God the unclean, which he abhorred, for a sacrifice. And to design a graceless lad for the ministry, on pretense of hoping that he may have grace hereafter, is a presumptuous profanation, and worse than to design a coward to be a soldier, a wicked, unsuitable person to be a husband or wife, in hope they may be fit hereafter.
Sect. 17. II. Therefore if your parents have been so unwise as to devote that to God which was unfit for his acceptance, it concerns
you quickly to look better to yourselves, and not to run into the consuming fire. You should be conscious of your own condition. If you may know that you want, 1. A competency of natural capacity and ingenuity,
2. Or of ready speech, 3. Or of serious piety, love to godliness, and heart-devotedness to God; do not meddle with that calling which requires all these.
Sect. 18. Obj. But, you may say, what shall we do? We have gone so far that we are fit for nothing else.
Answ. You are less fit for the ministry than for anything. That which requires the highest qualifications, will most shame you and condemn you if you them want. If you are not fit for physic or law, be some great man's servant; if not that, it is better that you turn to the basest trade or laborious employment, than to run into the sad case of Hophni and Phinehas, or Nadab and Abihu, to the utter undoing of yourselves and the loss and danger of many others! But if your unfitness be not in your DISABILITY, but your
UNGODLINESS, whether you be ministers or not, you will be forever miserable unless you consider well the great things that should change your hearts and lives and turn unfeignedly to God; and when that is done, I am no discourager of you. But I believe it is far better to be a cobbler or a chimneysweeper, or to beg your bread,
than to be an ungodly clergyman, with the greatest preferments, riches, and applause.
Sect. 19. Obj. But, parents may say, if we devote none to the ministry till godliness appear in them, how few will be so devoted!
Children seldom show much savor of religion, and some that seem young saints prove old devils.
Answ. 1. At the present we have so many supernumeraries, that we need not fear a want of number.
2. Children cannot be expected to show that understanding in religion which men must have. But if they show not a love to it, and a conscience regardful of God's authority and the life to come, and a dislike of ungodliness and sin, you have no reason to presume that they will be fit for the ministry. If they had never been baptized, you ought not to baptize them in such a state. They must credibly profess faith and repentance before they can be adult Christians, and so dedicated to God in baptism, much more before they are dedicated to him as the guides of the Christian churches.
3. And you can judge but according to probabilities; if they prove bad after a probable profession, it will not be charged upon you. But we all know that a hopeful youth is a great preparation to an honest age.
Sect. 20. II. My next advice to you is, Abhor sloth and idleness.
When you are at country schools, your masters drive you on by fear.
But when you are in the universities and at riper age, you are more trusted with yourselves; and then all the diligence which fear constrained will be left off; and if you be not carried on with constant pleasure and love of knowledge, the flesh will prefer its ease, and unwillingness and weariness will go so slow a pace, as will bring you to no high degree of wisdom. And when you have spent your appointed time and are void of that which you should have attained, your emptiness and ignorance will presently appear, when you are called out to the use of that knowledge which you have not. And it is not your canonical habit, nor seven or seventeen years spent in the university, nor the title of master of arts, bachelor of divinity, or doctor, no, nor bishop, that will pass with men in their right wits, instead of knowledge, diligence, humility, patience, and charity; nor that without these will do the work to which you are devoted. And then when you find that other men discern that weakness and badness which you are loath to know yourselves, it will be like to exasperate you into diabolical malignity. Believe it, the high and needful accomplishments of a true divine, are not easily or speedily attained.
Sect. 21. III. My next warning is, Fear and fly from sensuality, and fleshly lusts, and all the baits and temptations that may endanger you therein.
Sense and appetite is born with us, and it is inordinate in our corrupted nature, and the reason and will that should resist and rule it, are weakened and depraved. Laboring, poor countrymen are not in such danger in this as you are. Your bodies are not tired and tamed with labor, nor your thoughts taken up with wants and cares.
While your bodies are at ease, and your studies are arbitrary, fleshly lust and appetite hath time and room to solicit your fancies, and incline you to interrupt your studies, and think of the matters of sensual delight, either with what to please your appetite in eating, or of strong drinks or wine that also exhilarates, or of some needless or hurtful pastime called recreation, cards, dice, gaming, &c. or to think of women and filthy lusts, or to read romances, play-books, or other corrupting vanities. More idle scholars far, are strongly haunted with temptations to self-pollution and other filthy lusts, than the poor and afflicted sort of men.
And if these should prevail, alas! you are undone; they will offend God, expel his grace, either wound or scare your consciences, destroy all spiritual affections and delights, turn down your hearts from heaven and holiness to filth and folly; and beasts will be unfit for the pleasures or the work of saints.
Sect. 22. Away therefore from idleness! pamper not the flesh with fulness or delights; abhor all time-wasting, needless recreations.
Away from the baits of fleshly lust! Be no more indifferent herein and unresolved, than you would be about drinking poison, or leaping
into a coal-pit, or willfully going among murderers or thieves.
Presume not on your own strength: he is safest that is furthest from the danger. Gunpowder must not stand near the fire.
Sect. 23. IV. Be sure to make a prudent choice of your companions, especially of your bosom friends.
It is supposed that a man loveth the company which he chooses, though not which he constrainedly is cast upon. And love and familiarity will give them great advantage over you: if they be wise, they will teach you wisdom; if they be holy and spiritual, they will be drawing you towards God and settling you in the resolved hatred of sin and love or holiness. But if they be worldly and ambitious, they will be filling your heads with ambitious, worldly projects; and if they be ungodly hypocrites that have but the dead image and name of Christians, they will be opposing or deriding serious godliness and pleading for the carcass and formalities of piety as better than serious spiritual devotion; and if they be hardened malignants, they will be trying to make you such as they, by lies, revilings, or plausible cavils against the things and persons that are spiritually contrary to their fleshly minds and interests. And while you hear not what can be said on the other side, it will possess your minds (if God preserve you not) with false thoughts of God's servants, and with scorn or contempt of such as you hear described falsely. As papists think of protestants as heretics, you will take serious godliness for
fanatical self-conceit and think of the best Christians as you do of quakers or others, that are mad with fear or pride.
Wise and religious companions, and bosom friends, are an unspeakable blessing; but the merciful providence of God doth usually choose them for us, yet so as that usually we must also be faithful choosers for ourselves. Ill company is a dangerous snare, and God often trieth us by casting us where such are; but if we choose it not, and love it not, God will provide us of an antidote; and we may converse with him even in the presence of the ungodly; and he will teach us by the experience of their folly and sin, to dislike it more than if we had never seen it.
Sect. 24. V. Especially be most careful in the choice of your tutors and instructors.
Though it be first your parents' part to choose them for you, it is yours to do your best herein, to save yourselves, if your parents by ignorance or malignity do mischoose. And the rulers that allow not men to choose their own pastors, yet hitherto allow the parents or the sons to choose their own tutors and domestic instructors.
But this is the grand danger and misery of mankind, that the ignorant know not what teachers to choose; yea, the more they need the help of the best, the less they know who they are: but I will tell you as far as you are capable of discerning.
1. Usually the common report of men that are sober and impartial, commends worthy men above others; for knowledge and goodness is like light, a self-discovering thing.
2. Choose not a teacher that prefers human wisdom before divine, but one that maketh it his business to expound the Scripture, and teach you what is the will of God, and how to please him and to be saved.
3. Choose not one that is of a worldly and ambitious mind and will teach you that which most conduceth to get preferment and worldly wealth, and not that which best helps you to heaven.
4. Choose not one that is factious and uncharitable, violent for a party, either because it is uppermost, or because it stands for some odd opinion or causeless singularity; but one that is of a Christian, catholic charity, and loveth a godly man as such, even as himself, and is for wronging none, but doing good to all, and maintaining unity and peace.
Sect. 25. Vl. Watch with great fear against pride, ambition, and worldly ends, in your own hearts and lives.
The roots of these mortal sins are born in us and lie very deep; and they not only live, but damnably reign where they are little discerned, bewailed, or suspected: but woe to him that is conquered by them! "Ye cannot serve God and mammon. The love of the world
is enmity to God. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Paul spake, weeping, of such, "whose God was their belly, who gloried in their shame, who minded earthly things, being enemies to the cross of Christ, when their conversation should have been in heaven," Phil. iii. 18-20. A surprise in passion, even of an ugly sin, is less dangerous than such a habit of worldliness and pride. And, alas! how many that have escaped the temptations of sloth and sensuality, have been flattered and overcome by this!
Those that have had better wits than others, and got more learning, have thought now that preferment is their due. And if they fall into times (which have not been rare) when the malignity of church or state governors hath made it the way to preferment, to declaim against some truth, or the most religious men, that are against a carnal, sinful interest, and to revile God's best servants, and cry up some notion or error of their own, and magnify the worst that promote their worldly ends and hopes, alas! how doth this stream carry down the pregnantest wits into the gulf of perdition!
Yea, some that seemed very humble and mortified, when they had no great temptation, when wealth and honor have been set before them, have lost virtue and wit before they were well aware. And worldly interest hath secretly bribed and biased their understandings, to take the greatest truth for error, duty for sin, and error for truth, and sin for duty. And they have talked, and preached, and wrote for it, and seem to believe that indeed they are in the right; and cannot
discern that they are perverted by interest, when an impartial stander-by may easily see the bias by the current of their course.
And if you be servants of the flesh and the world, woe to you when your masters turn you off, and you must receive your wages!
Sect. 26. VIl. Above all, therefore, choose like real Christians, and take God and heaven for your hope, your all.
If you do not so, you are not Christians indeed, nor stand to your baptismal covenant; and if you be here fixed, by the grace of God, and your sober consideration and belief, you will then know what to choose and do. It will teach you to refer all worldly things to spiritual and heavenly ends and uses, and to count all things loss and dung for Christ, and "to choose the one thing needful, which shall never be taken from you," even that which will guide you in just and safe ways, and save you from the greatest evil, and give your minds continual peace, even that which passes understanding, and will be best at last, when sinners are forsaken.
Sect. 27. VIII. My next counsel, therefore, is for the order of your studies. Begin then with your catechism and practical divinity, to settle your own souls in a safe condition for life or death. And deal not so foolishly as to waste many years in inferior arts and sciences, before you have studied how to please God and to be saved. I unfeignedly thank God, that, by sickness and his grace, he called me early to learn how to die, and therefore to learn what I must be and
how to live, and thereby drew me to study the sacred Scriptures, and abundance of practical, spiritual English books, till I had somewhat settled the resolution and the peace of my own soul, before I had gone far in human learning. And then I found more leisure and more capacity to take in subservient knowledge in its proper time and place. And, indeed, I had lost most of my studies of philosophy, and difficult controversies in theology, if I had fallen on them too young, before I came to due capacity; and so had been prepossessed with crude or unsound notions, for they had kept out that which required a riper judgment to receive it. Such books as I before commended to the apprentices, contain the essentials of religion, plainly, affectionately, and practically delivered, in a manner tending to deep impression, renovation of the soul, and spiritual experience, without which you will be but "like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."
The art of theology, without the POWER, (consisting in holy life, and light, and love,) is the make of the hypocrite.
Yet before you come to lay exact systems of theology in due method in your minds, much help of subservient arts and sciences is necessary; however a council of ancient bishops once forbad the reading of the gentiles' books.
Sect. 28. IX. And here next I advise you, thoroughly to study the evidences and nature of the Christian faith; but not to hasten too soon over-confidently on hard controversies, as if your judgment of them at maturity must have no change; but still suppose, that greater
light, by longer study, may cause in you much different thoughts of such difficulties.
Sect. 29. Lastly, I advise you, that you begin not the exercise of your ministry too boldly, in public, great, or judicious authorities. Overmuch confidence signifies pride and ignorance of your imperfection, and of the greatness of the work, and the dreadfulness of the Most
Holy Majesty. But (if you can) at first settle a competent time in the house with some ancient experienced pastor, that hath some small country chapel, that needs your help. And,
1. There you may learn as well as teach, and learn by his practice that which you must practice; which, in a great house, as a chaplain, you will hardly do, but must cast yourself into a far different mold.
2. By preaching some years to a small, ignorant people, where you fear not critical judgments, you will get boldness of speech, and freedom of utterance, without that servile study of words, and learning your written notes without book, which will be tiresome, time-wasting, and lifeless. And when freedom and use hath brought you to a habit of ready speaking of the great and necessary things, and acquaintance with ignorant country people hath taught you to understand their case, you will have a better preparation for more public places, (when you are clearly called to them,) than you were ever like to get either in universities, among scholars, or in great men's houses.
Compassion to the church that is plagued with bad ministers, and by the weak undergo exceeding great loss; and the sense of the grand importance of the pastors' qualifications to the happiness or misery of souls and kingdoms, have drawn me to say more to young students that intend the ministry, than I at first intended. And therefore with the other two sorts I shall be very brief.
One earnest warning to you, and all young men, I add: Know that one of the most common and pernicious maladies of mankind, is an unhumbled understanding, rashly confident of its own apprehensions, through false, hasty judging and prefidence, the brat of ignorance and pride. Of a multitude of persons differing, how few are not obstinately confident that they are in the right, even lads that are past twenty years of age! O dread this vice and suspect your understanding. Be humble; take time, and try, and hear, before you judge. Labor for knowledge; but take not on you to be sure where you are not, but doubt and try till you are sure.