Use or Application

           Use First. Let this be for trial of thy spiritual state.  What entertainment finds Satan when he comes with these spirituals of wickedness, and solicits thee to dwell on them?  Canst thou dispense with the filthiness of thy spirit, so thy hands be clean? or dost thou wrestle against these heart sins as well as others? I do not ask, whether such guests come within thy door—for the worst of sins may be found, in the motions of them, not only passing by the door of a Christian, but looking in also, as holy motions may be found stirring in the bosom of wicked men—but I ask thee, whether thou canst find in thy heart to lodge these guests and bid them welcome?  It is like, thou wouldst not be seen to walk in the street with such company—not lead a whore by the hand through the town—not violently break open thy neighbour’s house to murder or rob him; but canst thou not under thy own roof, in the withdrawing room of thy soul, let thy thoughts hold up an unclean lust, while thy heart commits speculative folly with it? Canst thou not draw thy neighbour into thy den, and there rend him limb from limb by thy malice, and thy heart not so much as cry Murder, murder?  In a word, canst thou hide any one sin  in the vance-roof of thy heart, there to save the life of it when inquired after by the Word and Spirit, as Rahab hid the spies, and sent the king of Jericho's messengers to pursue them, as if they had been gone?  Perhaps thou canst say, ‘The adulterer, the murderer is not here,’ thou hast sent these sins away long ago; and all this while thou hidest them in the love of thy soul.  Know it, or thou shalt another day know it to thy cost, thou art stark nought.  If there were a spark of the life of God or the love of Christ in thy bosom, though thou couldst not hinder such motions in thy soul, yet thou wouldst not conceal them, much less nourish them in thy bosom; when overpowered by them, thou wouldst call in help from heaven against these destroyers of thy soul.

           Use Second. Show your loyalty, O ye saints, to God, by a vigorous resistance of, and wrestling against, these spirituals of wickedness.

1. Consider, Christian, heart sins are sins as well as any.  ‘The thought of foolishness is sin,’ Prov. 24:9. Mercury is poison in the water distilled, as well as in the gross body.  Uncleanness, covetousness, murder are such in the heart as well as in the outward act; every point of hell, is hell.
2. Consider, Thy spirit is the seat of the Holy Spirit.  He takes up the whole heart for his lodging, and it is time for him to be gone when he sees his house let over his head.  Defile not thy spirit till thou art weary of his company.
3. Consider, There may be more wickedness in a sin of the heart than of the hand and outward man; for the aggravation of these is taken from the behav­iour of the heart in the act.  The more of the heart and spirit [that] is let out, the more malignity is let in to any sinful act.  To backslide in heart, is more than to backslide.  It is the comfort of a poor soul, when tempted and troubled for his relapses, that though his foot slides back, yet his heart turns not back, but faceth heaven and Christ at the same time; so to err in the heart is worse than to have an error in the head.  Therefore God aggravates Israel’s sin with this, ‘They do always err in their heart,’ Heb. 3:10.  Their hearts run them upon the error; they liked idolatry, and so were soon made to believe what pleased them best.  As, on the contrary, the more of the heart and spirit is in any holy service, the more real goodness there is in it, though it fall short of others in the outward expression.  The widow’s two mites surpas­sed all the rest, Christ himself being judge; so in sin, though the internal acts of sin, in thoughts and affec­tions, seem light upon man’s balance, if compared with outward acts, yet these may be so circumstan­tiated that they may exceed the other in God’s ac­count.  Peter lays the accent of Magus’ sin on the wicked thought, which his words betrayed to be in his heart, ‘Pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee,’ Acts 8:22.  Saul’s sin in sparing Agag, and saving the best of the sheep and oxen, which he was commanded to destroy, was materially a far less sin than David’s adultery and murder, yet it is made equal with a greater than both, even witchcraft itself, I Sam. 15:23; and whence re­ceived his sin such a dye, but from the wickedness of his heart, that was worse than David’s when deepest in the temptation.
4. Consider, If Satan get into thy spirit and defile it, O how hard wilt thou find it to stay there? Thou hast already sipped of his broth, and now art more likely to be overcome at last to sit down and make thy full meal of that, which by tasting hath vitiated thy palate already.  It were strange, if, while thou art musing, and thy heart hot with the thought of lust, the fire should not break forth at thy lips, or worse.

Satan's Plot to Defile the Christian With Spiritual Wickedness

Satan's Plot to Defile the Christian With Spiritual Wickedness
  Doctrine Third. These wicked spirits do chiefly annoy the saints with, and provoke them to, spiritual wickedness.  Sins may be called spiritual upon a double account; either, First. From the subject wherein they are acted; or Second. From the object about which they are conversant.
First Sort of Spiritual Sins, So called from the subject wherein they are acted.
           First. Sins may be called spiritual, from the subject wherein they are acted.  When the spirit or heart is the stage whereon sin is acted, this is a spir­itual sin; such are all impure thoughts, vile affections and desires.  Though the object be fleshly lust, yet [they] are spiritual sins, because they are purely acts of the soul and spirit, and break not forth unto the outward man.
           [They are heart sins.]

           Satan labours what he can to provoke the Chris­tian to heart sins—to stir up and foment these inward motions of sin in the Christian’s bosom.  Hence it is, he can go about no duty, but these—his imps, I may call them—haunt him; one motion or other darts in to interrupt him, as Paul tells us of himself, ‘When he would do good, evil was present with him.’  If a Christian should turn back whenever these cross the way of him, he should never go on his journey to heaven.  It is the chief game the devil hath left to play against the children of God—now his field-army is broken, and his commanding power taken away which he had over them—to come out of these his holds where he lies skulking, and fall upon their rear with these suggestions.  He knows his credit now is not so great with the soul as when it was his slave.  Then no drudgery work was so base that it would not do at his command; but now the soul is out of his bondage, and he must not think to command another's servant as his own.  No, all he can do is to watch the fittest season—when the Christian least suspects—and then to present some sinful motion, handsomely dressed up, to the eye of the soul, that the Christian may, before he is aware, take this brat up and dandle it in his thoughts, till at last he makes it his own by embracing it; and this he knows will defile the soul; and, may be, this boy sent in at the window, may open the door to let in a greater thief.  Or if he should not so prevail, yet the guilt of these heart sins, yea, their very neighbourhood will be a sad vexation to a gracious heart, whose nature is so pure that it abhors all filthiness—so that to be haunted with such notions, is as if a living man should be chained to a stinking carcase, that wherever he goes he must draw that after him; and whose love is so dear to Christ, that it cannot bear the company of those thoughts without amazement and horror, which are so contrary and abusive to his beloved.  This makes Satan so de­sirous to be ever raking in the unregenerate part, that as a dunghill stirred, it may offend them both with the noisome streams which arise from it.

Application - Against The Rulers of Darkness of This World

           Use First. This may help us conceive more fully what the desperate wickedness of man’s nature is, which is so hard to be known, because it can never be seen at once—it being a fountain whose immensity consists not in the stream of actual sin—that is visible, and may seem little—but in the spring that incessantly feeds this.  But here is a glass that will give us the shape of our hearts truly like themselves.  Seest thou the monstrous pitch and height of wickedness that is in the devil?  All this there is in the heart of every man.  There is no less wickedness potentially in the tamest sinner on earth, than in the devils themselves, and that one day thou, whoever thou art, wilt show to purpose, if God prevent thee not by his renewing grace.  Thou art not yet fledged, thy wings are not grown to make thee a flying dragon; but thou art of the same brood, the seed of this ser­pent is in thee, and the devil begets a child like him­self.  Thou yet standest in a soil not so proper for the ripening of sin—which will not come to its fulness till transplanted unto hell.  Thou who art here so maid­enly and modest, as to blush at some sins out of shame, and [to] forbear the acting of others out of fear, when there thou shalt see thy case as desperate as the devil doth his, then thou wilt spit out thy blas­phemies, with which thy nature is stuffed, with the same malice that he doth.  The Indians have a con­ceit, that when they die they shall be transformed into the deformed likeness of the devil; therefore in their language they have the same word for a dead man and the devil.  Sin makes the wicked like him before they come there, but indeed they will come to their coun­tenance more fully there, when those flames shall wash off that paint which here hides their com­plexion.  The saints in heaven shall be like angels, in their alacrity, love, and constancy to serve God; and the damned like the devils, in sin as well as pun­ishment.  This one consideration might be of excel­lent use to unbottom a sinner, and abase him, so as never to have high thought of himself.  It is easy to run down a person whose life is wicked, and convince him of the evil of his actions, and make him confess what he doth is evil, but here is the thicket we lose him in.  He will say, ‘It is true, I am overseen, I do what I should not, God forgive me, but my heart is good.’  Thy heart good, sinner? and so is the devil’s. His nature is wicked, and thine [is] as bad as his.  These pimples in thy face show the heat of thy cor­rupt nature within, and without gospel physic—the blood of Christ applied to thee—thou wilt die a leper. None but Christ can give thee a new heart, till which, thou wilt every day grow worse and worse.  Sin is an hereditary disease that increaseth with age.  A young sinner will be an old devil.

           Use Second. Again, it would be of use to the saints; especially to those in whom God by his timely call forestalled the devil’s market; as sometimes the Spirit of God takes sin in its quarters before it comes into the field, in the sins of youth.  Now such a one not finding those daring sins committed by him that others have been left unto, may possibly not be so affected with his own sin or God's mercy.  O let such a one behold here the wickedness of his heart in the glass of the devil’s nature, and he will see himself as a great debtor to the mercy of God as Manasseh, or the worst of sinners—as in pardoning, so in prevent­ing the same cursed nature with theirs, before it gave fire on God with those bloody sins which they com­mitted.  That thou didst not act such outrageous sins, thou art beholden to God’s gracious surprise, and not to the goodness of thy nature, which hath the devil’s stamp on it, [and] for which God might have crushed thee, as we do the brood of serpents before they sting, knowing what they will do in time.  Who will say that Fawkes suffered unjustly, because the parliament was not blown up?  It is enough that the materials for that massacre were provided, and he taken there with match and fire about him ready to lay the train.  And canst thou say, when God first took hold on thee, that thou hadst not those weapons of rebellion about thee—a nature full charged with enmity against God, which in time would have made its own report of what for [the] present lay like unfired powder silent in thy bosom?  O Christian, think of this, and be humbled for thy villanous nature, and say, blessed be God that sent his Spirit and grace so timely to stay thy hand—as Abigail to David—while thy nature meditated nothing but war against God and his laws.

           Use Third. Again, are the devils so wickedly malicious against God himself?  O sirs, take the right notion, of sin, and you will hate it.  The reason why we are so easily persuaded to sin is, because we un­derstand not the bottom of his design in drawing a creature to sin.  It is with men in sinning as it is with armies in fighting.  Captains beat their drums for vol­unteers, and promise all that list, pay and plunder; and this makes them come trowling in.  But few con­sider what the ground of the war is, against whom, or for what.  Satan enticeth to sin, and gives golden promises [of] what they shall have in his service, with which silly souls are one.  But how few ask their souls, Whom do I sin against?  What is the devil’s design in drawing me to sin?  Shall I tell thee?  Dost thou think it is thy pleasure or profit he desires in thy sinning?  Alas, he means nothing less, he hath greater plots in his head than so.  He hath, by his apostasy, proclaimed war against God, and he brings thee, by sinning, to espouse his quarrel, and to jeopardy the life of thy soul in defence of his pride and lust; which that he may do, he cares no more for the damnation of thy soul, than the great Turk doth to see a com­pany of his slaves cut off for the carrying on of his design in a siege.  And darest thou venture to go into the field upon his quarrel against God?  O earth, tremble thou at the presence of the Lord.  This bloody Joab sets thee where never came any off alive.  O stand not where God’s bullets fly.  Throw down thy arms, or thou art a dead man.  Whatever others do, O ye saints, abhor the thoughts of sinning willingly; which when you do, you help the devil against God.  And what more unnatural than for a child to be seen in arms against his father?

The Extreme Wickedness of The Devils

 Doctrine Second. The devils are spirits extremely wicked; wicked in the abstract, as in the text, and called by way of eminency is sin, ‘the wicked one,’ Matt. 13:19.  As God is called the Holy One, because none [is] holy as the Lord; so the devil, the wicked one, because he is a none-such in sin.  In a few particulars let us endeavour to take the height of the devil’s sin, and rather that we may judge of the degrees of sins and [of] sinners among the sons of men: the nearer God in holiness, the more holy; the liker the devil, the more wicked.

           Particular First. These apostate angels are the in­ventors of sin—the first that sounded the trumpet of rebellion against their Maker, and led the dance to all that sin which since hath filled the world.  Now, what tongue can accent this sin to its full? for such a noble creature whom God hath set on the top, as it were, of all the creation, nearest to himself, [and] from whom God had kept nothing but his own royal diadem; for this peer and favourite of the court, without any cause or solicitation from any other, to make this bold and blasphemous attempt to snatch at God’s own crown, this paints the devil blacker than the thoughts of men and angels can conceive.  He is called ‘the father of lies,’ as those who found out any art are the father of it.  Jubal ‘the father of all such as handle the harp and organ,’ he invented music.  And this is a dreadful aggravation, because they sinned without a tempter.  And though man is not in such a degree capable of this aggravation, yet some men sin after the very similitude of the devil's transgression in this respect; who, as St. Paul styles them, are ‘in­ventors of evil things,’ Rom. 1:30.  Indeed sin is an old trade, found out to our hand; but as in other trades and arts, some famous men arise, who add to the in­ventions of others, and make trades and arts, as it were, new; so, there ever are some infamous in their generation,  that make old sins new by superadding to the wickedness of others.  Uncleanness is an old sin from the beginning; but the Sodomites will be filthy in a new way, and therefore it carries their name to this day.  Some invent new errors; others new oaths —such as are of their own coining—hot out of the mint; they scorn to swear after the old fashion. Others [invent] new devices of persecuting, as Julian, [who] had a way by himself different from all before him; and to the end of the world every age will exceed other in the degrees of sinning.  Ishmael and the mockers of the old world were but children and bunglers to the scoffers and cruel mockers of the last time.  Well, take heed of showing thy wit in inventing new sins, lest thou stir up God in inventing new pun­ishments.  ‘Is not destruction to the wicked? and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity?’ Job 31:3.  Sodom sinned after a new mode, and God destroys them after a new way—sends hell from above upon them.  Some have invented new opinions, mon­strous errors, and God hath suited their monstrous errors with births as monstrous of their own body.

           Particular Second. They were not only the in­ventors of sin, but are still the chief tempters to, and promoters of sin in the world.  [They are] therefore called Ò B,4DV.T, the tempter, and sin [is] called ‘the work of the devil,’ whoever commits it; as the house goes by the name of the master-workman, though he useth his servant’s hands to build it.  O take heed of soliciting others to sin.  Thou takest the devil’s office, as I may say, out of his hand.  Let him do it himself if he will.  Make not thyself so like him. To tempt another is worse than to sin thyself.  It speaks sin to be of great growth in that man, that doth it knowingly and willingly.  Herbs and flowers shed not their seed till ripe, creatures propagate not till of stature and age.  What do these that tempt others, but diffuse their wicked opinions and prac­tices, and, as it were, raise up seed to the devil, there­by to keep up the name of their infernal father in the world?  This shows sin is mighty in them indeed. Many a man, though so cruel to his own soul as to be drunk or swear, yet will not like this in a child or servant.  What are they then but devils incarnate, who teach their children the devil’s catechism, to swear and lie, drink and drab?  If you meet such, be not afraid to call them, as Paul did Elymas, when he would have perverted the deputy, children of the devil, full of all subtilty and mischief, and enemies of all righteousness.  O do you not know what you do when you tempt?  I will tell you.  You do that which you cannot undo by your own repentance.  Thou poisonest one with error, initiatest another in the devil’s school—alehouse I mean; but afterwards may be, thou seest thy mistake, and recantest thy error, thy folly, and givest over thy drunken trade.  Art thou sure now to rectify and convert them with thyself? Alas, poor creatures! this is out of thy power.  They, may be, will say, as he—though he did it on a better account—that was solicited to turn back to Popery by him who had persuaded him to renounce the same: ‘You have given me one turn, but shall not give me another.’  And what a grief to thy spirit will it be, to see those going to hell on thy errand, and thou not able to call them back!  Thou mayest cry out as Lamech, ‘I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.’  Nay, when thou art asleep in thy grave, he whom thou seduced may have drawn in others, and thy name may be quoted to commend the opinion and practice to others; by which, as it is said, though in another sense, Abel being dead yet speak­eth.  Thou mayest, though dead, sin in those that are alive, generation after generation.  A little spark kin­dled by the error of one, hath cost the pains of many ages to quench it, and when thought to be out, hath broken forth again.

           Particular Third. They are not barely wicked, but maliciously wicked.  The devil hath his name Ò B@<,DÎH, to denote his spiteful nature—his desire to vex and mischief others.  When he draws souls to sin, it is not because he tastes any sweetness or finds any profit therein—he hath too much light to have any joy or peace in sin.  He knows his doom, and trem­bles at the thought of it; and yet his spiteful nature makes him vehemently desire and incessantly endeav­our the damnation of souls.  As you shall see a mad dog run after a flock of sheep, kill one, then another, though when dead [he is] not able to eat of their flesh, but kills to kill; so Satan is carried out with a boundless rage against man, especially the saints, and would not, if he could, leave one of Christ’s flock alive.  Such is the height of his malice against God, whom he hates with a perfect hatred; and, because he cannot reach him with a direct blow, therefore he strikes him at the second-hand through his saints; that wicked arm which reacheth not to God, is extended against these excellent on the earth—well knowing the life of God is in a manner bound up in theirs.  God cannot outlive his honour, and his hon­our speeds as his mercy is exalted or depressed; this being the attribute God means to honour in their sal­vation so highly, and therefore maligned above the rest by Satan.  And this is the worst that can be said of these wicked spirits, that they maliciously spite God, and in God the glory of his mercy.

PS: THERE ARE TWO WEIRD WORDS, I LEFT THEM THERE BECAUSE THEY ARE WRITTEN IN GREEK  BUT, COULD NOT TRANSLATE THEM OR COPY THEM PROPERLY.... I TRIED. SORRY.

What a Dreadful Enemy We Have to Grapple With

           First. As spirits, they are of vast intellectual abilities.  Sorry man, while in this dark prison of the body, hath not light enough to know what angelical perfections are.  That they excel in knowledge all other creatures, we know because, as spirits, they come nearest by creation to the nature of God who made them.  The heavens are not lift higher from the earth, than angels, by knowledge, from man while on earth.  Man, by art, hath learned to take the height of the stars of heaven, but where is he that can tell how far in knowledge angels exceed man?  It is true they have lost much of that knowledge they had, even all their knowledge as holy angels; what now they know of God hath lost its savour, and they have no power to use it for their own good.  What Jude saith of wicked men, may be said of them: What they know naturally, in these things they corrupt themselves. They know the holiness of God, but love him not for it, as the elect angels do, and themselves by creation did.  They know the evil of sin, and love it not the less; but though they are such fools for themselves, yet [they] have subtilty too much for all the saints on earth, if we had not a God to play our game for us.

           Second. As spirits, they are invisible, and their approaches also.  They come, and you see not your enemy.  Indeed, this makes him so little feared by the ignorant world, whereas it is his greatest advantage, if rightly weighed.  O, if men have an apparition of the devil, or hear a noise in the night, they cry, ‘The devil! the devil!’ and are ready to run out of their wits for fear; but they carry him in their hearts, and walk all the day long in his company, and fear him not. When thy proud heart is clambering up to the pin­nacle of honour in thy ambitious thoughts, who sets thee there but the devil?  When thy adulterous heart is big with all manner of uncleanness and filthiness, who but Satan hath been there, begetting these brats on thy whorish spirit?  When thou art raging in thy passion, throwing burning coals of wrath and fury about with thy inflamed tongue, where was it set on fire, but of hell?  When thou art hurried like the swine into the precipice, and even choked with thy own drunken vomit, who but the devil rides thee?

           Third. As spirits, they are immortal.  Of other enemies you may hear news at last, that ‘they are which sought thy life,’ as the angel told Joseph of Herod.  Persecuting men walk a turn or two upon the stage, and are called off by death, and there is an end of all their plots; but devils die not, they will hunt thee to thy grave, and when thou diest they will meet thee in another world, to accuse and torment thee there also.

           Fourth. As spirits, they are unwearied in their motions.  When the fight is over among men, the conqueror must sit down and breathe, and so loseth the chase because not able to pursue it in time.  Yea, some have given over their empires, as glutted with the blood of men, and weary of the work, when they cannot have their will as they desired.  Thus Dio­cletian, because he saw he did but mow a meadow, that grew the thicker for cutting down—as Tertullian speaks of the Christians martyred—he throws away his sceptre in a pet.  Charles V. did the like, some say, upon the same reason, because he could not root out the Lutherans.  But the devil’s spirit is never cowed, nor he weary of doing mischief, though he hath never stood still since first began his walk to and fro the world.  O what would become of us, if a God were not at our back, who is infinitely more the devil’s odds than he ours.

Against Spiritual Wickedness

           These words are the fourth branch in the des­cription, spiritual wickedness, and our contest or combat with them as such [is] expressed by the adversative particle ‘against.’   against the spirituals of wickedness, which is, say some, ‘against wicked spirits;’ that is true, but not all.  I conceive, with many interpreters, not only the spiritual nature of the devil, and the wickedness thereof, to be intended, but also, yea chiefly, the nature and kind of those sins which these wicked spirits do most usually and vigorously provoke the saints unto; and they are the spirituals of wickedness, not those gross fleshly sins, which the heard of beastly sinners, like swine, wallow in, but sin spiritualized, and this because it is not spirits, but spirituals.  The words present us with these three doctrinal conclusions.  First. The devils are spirits.  Second. the devils are spirits extremely wicked.  Third. These wicked spirits do chiefly annoy the saints with, and provoke them to, spiritual wickednesses.

[The spirituality of the devil’s nature.]

           Doctrine First. The devils are spirits.  Spirit is a word of various acceptation in Scripture. Amongst others, [it is] used often to set forth the essence and nature of angels, good and evil, both which are called spirits.  the holy angles, ‘Are they not all ministering spirits?’ Heb. 1:14.  The evil ‘And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him,’ I Kings 22:21; that spirit was a devil. How oft is the devil called the unclean spirit, foul spirit, lying spirit, &c.!  Sin did not alter their sub­stance, for then, as one saith well, that nature and substance which transgressed could not be punished.

           First. The devil is a spirit; that is, his essence is immaterial and simple, not compounded, as corporal beings are, of matter and form: ‘Handle me and see,’ saith Christ to his disciples, that thought they had seen a spirit, ‘for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,’ Luke 24:39.  If they were not thus im­material, how could they enter into bodies and pos­sess them, as the Scripture tells us they have [done], even a legion into one man? Luke 8:30.  One body cannot thus enter into another.

           Second. The devils are spiritual substances, not qualities, or evil motions, arising from us, as some have absurdly conceived.  So the Sadducees, and others following them, deny any such being as angel, good or evil; but this is so fond a conceit, that to maintain it, we must both forfeit our reason and deny the Scriptures.  There we find their creation related, Col. 1:16; the fall of some from their first estate, Jude 6, and the standing of others, called the elect angels; the happiness of the one [class], who behold God’s face, and their employment—sent out to attend on the saints, as servants on their master’s heirs, Heb. 1:14; the misery of the other, reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgement of the great day; and their present work, which is to do mischief to the souls and bodies of men, as far as they are permitted; all which show their subsistence plain enough.  But so immersed is sorry man in flesh, that he will not easily believe what he sees not with his fleshly eyes.  Upon the same account we may deny the being of God himself, being invisible.

           Third. They are entire spiritual substances, which have, every one, proper existence.  And thus they are distinguished from the souls of men, which are made to subsist in a human body, and together with it make one perfect man;  so that the soul, though, when separated from the body, it doth exist, yet hath a tendency to union with its body again.

           Fourth. They are, though entire spiritual substances, yet finite, being but creatures.  God only is the uncreated, infinite, and absolutely simple Spirit, yea, Father of all other spirits.  Now from this spiritual nature of the devil, we may further see...

APPLICATION - Against The Rulers of The Darkness of This World 6/6

Answer Fifth. If thou wouldst attain to divine knowledge, wait on the ministry of the word.  As for those who neglect this, and come not where the word is preached, they do like that one should turn his back on the sun that he may see it.  If thou wouldst know God, come where he hath appointed thee to learn.  Indeed, where the means is not, God hath extraordinary ways, as a father, if [there is] no school in town, will teach his child at home, but if there be a public school, thither he sends him.  God maketh manifest, saith Paul, the savour of his knowledge by us in every place, II Cor. 2:14.  Let men talk of the Spirit what they please.  He will at last be found a quencher of the Spirit, that is, a despiser of prophecy; they both stand close together, I Thes. 5:19,20, Quench not the Spirit.  Despise not prophesying.  But it is not enough to sit under the means.  Woeful experience teacheth us this.  There are some no sun will tan, they keep their old complexion under the most shin­ing and burning light of the word preached, as ig­norant and profane as those that never saw gospel-day; and therefore if thou wilt receive any spiritual advantage by the word, take heed how thou hearest.

1. Look thou beest a wakeful hearer.Is it any wonder he should go away from the sermon no wiser than he came, that sleeps the greatest part of it away, or hears betwixt sleeping and waking?  It must be in a dream sure, if God reveals anything to his mind to him.  So indeed God did to the fathers of old, but it was not as they profanely slept under an ordinance.  O take heed of such irreverence.  He that composeth himself to sleep, as some do, at such a time, or he that is not humbled for it, and that deeply, both of them betray the base and low esteem they have of the ordinance.  Surely thou thinkest but meanly of what is delivered, if it will not keep thee awake, yea, of God himself, whose message it is.  See how thou art reproved by the awful carriage of a heathen, and that a king.  Ehud did but say to Eglon, I have a message from God unto thee, and he arose out of his seat, Judges 3:20.  And thou clappest down on thy seat to sleep.  O how darest thou put such an affront upon the great God?  How oft did you fall asleep at dinner, or telling your money?  And is not the word of God worth more than these?  I should wonder if such sermon-sleepers do dream of anything but hell-fire.  It is dangerous, you know, to fall asleep with a candle burning by our side—some have been so burned in their beds; but more dangerous to sleep while the candle of the word is shining so near us.  What if you should sink down dead like Eutychus? here is no Paul to raise you as he had; and that you shall not, where is your security?
2. Thou must be an attentive hearer.He that is awake, but wanders with his eye or heart, what doth he but sleep with his eyes open?  It were as good the servant should be asleep in his bed, as when up, not to mind his master’s business.  When God intends a soul good by the word, he draws such a one to listen and hearken heedfully to what is delivered, as we see in Lydia, who, it is said, attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul; and those, Luke 19:48, ‘The people were attentive to hear him.’ They did hang on him, as you shall see bees on some sweet flower, or as young birds on the bills of their dams as they feed them, that is, the soul which shall get light and life by the word.  Hear ye children, and attend to know understanding, Prov. 4:1.  Labour therefore in hearing the word to fix thy quicksilver mind, and set thyself to hear, as it is said Jehoshaphat did to pray; and that thou mayest, before thou goest, get thy heart into some deep sense of thy spiritual wants, especially of thy ignorance of the things of God, and thy de­plored condition by reason of it: till the heart be touched, the mind will not be fixed.  Therefore you may observe, it is said, God opened the heart of Lydia, that she attend, Acts 16:14.  The mind goes of the will’s errand; we spend our thoughts on what our hearts propose.  If the heart hath no sense of its ig­norance, or no desires after God, no wonder such a one listens not [to] what the preacher saith, his heart sends his mind another way.  They sit before me as my people, saith God, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.  They do not come out of such an in­tent or desire to hear for any good to their souls; then they would apply themselves wholly to the work.  No, it is their covetousness that hath their hearts, and therefore as some idle servant, when he hath waited on his master [and] brought him to his pew, then he goes out to his good fellows at the alehouse, and comes no more till sermon be almost done.  So do the thoughts of most when they go to the ordinance; they slip out in the street, market, or shop; you may find them anywhere but about the duty before them, and all because these have their hearts more than God and his word.
3. Thou must be a retentive hearer.Without this the work will ever be to begin again.  Truths to a forgetful hearer are as a seal set on water, the impression lasts no longer than the seal is on; the ser­mon once done, and all is undone.  Be therefore very careful to fasten what thou hearest on thy memory, which that thou mayest do,

(1.) Receive the truth in the love of it.  An affec­tionate hearer will not be a forgetful hearer.  Love helps the memory.  ‘Can a woman forget a child, or a maid her ornaments, or a bride her attire?’  No, they love them too well.  Were the truths of God thus pre­cious to thee, thou wouldst with David think of them day and night.  Even when the Christian, through weakness of memory, cannot remember the very words he hears, to repeat them, yet then he keeps the power and savour of them in his spirit.  As when sugar is dissolved in wine, you cannot see it, but you may taste it; when meat is eaten and digested it is not to be found as it was received, but the man is cheered and strengthened by it, more able to walk and work than before, by which you may know it is not lost; so you may taste the truths the Christian heard in his spirit [and] see them in his life.  Perhaps if you ask him what the particulars were the minister had about faith, mortification, repentance, and the like, he cannot tell you; yet this you may find, his heart is more broken for sin, more enabled to rely on the promises, and now weaned from the world.  As that good woman answered one, that coming from ser­mon, asked her what she remembered of the sermon; [she] said she could not recall much, but she heard that which should make her reform some things as soon as she came home.

(2.) Meditate on what thou hearest.  By this David got more wisdom than his teachers.  Observe what truth, what Scripture is cleared to thee in the sermon more than before, take some time in secret to converse with it, and make it thereby familiar to thy understanding.  Meditation to the sermon in what the harrow is to the seed, it covers those truths, which else might have been picked or washed away.  I am afraid there are many proofs turned down at a ser­mon, that are hardly turned up, and looked on any more, when the sermon is done; and if so, you make others believe you are greater traders for your souls, than you are indeed.  It is as if one should come to a shop and lay by a great deal of rich ware, and when he hath done goes away, and never calls for it.  O take heed of such doings.  The hypocrite cheats himself worst at last.

(3.) Discharge thy memory of what is sinful.  We wipe our table-book and deface what is there scrib­bled, before they can write anew.  There is such a contrariety betwixt the truths of God, and all that is frothy and sinful, that one puts out the other.  If you would retain the one, you must let the other go.

APPLICATION - Against The Rulers of The Darkness of This World 5/6

Question.  But how may an ignorant soul attain to knowledge?

Answer First. Be deeply affected with thy ignor­ance.  Some are blind, as Laodicea, and know it not, Rev. 3:17.  As ignorance blinds the mind, so pride is a blind before their ignorance, that they know it not. These have such a high opinion of themselves that they take it ill that any should suspect them as such. These of all men are most out of the way to knowl­edge; they are too good to learn of man, as they think, and too bad to be taught of God.  The gate into Christ's school is low, and these cannot stoop. The Master himself is so humble and lowly, that he will not teach a proud scholar.  Therefore first become a fool in thine own eye.  A wiser man than thyself hath confessed as much: ‘I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man.  I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowl­edge of the holy,’ Prov. 30:2, 3.  When thou art come to thyself to own and blush at the brutish ignorance of thy mind, thou art fit to be admitted into Christ’s school.  If they be ashamed, then show them the pattern of the house, Eze. 43:10.

Answer Second. Be faithful with that little knowledge thou hast.  Art thou convinced this is a sin, and that is a duty?  Follow the light close, you know not what this little may grow to.  We use to set up our children with a little stock at first, and as they use it, so we add.  The kingdom of God comes of small beginnings.  God complains of Israel, they were brutish in their knowledge, Jer. 10:14.  He doth not say, brutish in their ignorance; had they sinned be­cause they did not know better, this would have excused à tanto [by so much], but they did that which was brutish and unreasonable, as their worshipping graven images, notwithstanding they knew to the con­trary.  That man shall not excel in knowledge who prostitutes it to sin: ‘If they obey not, they shall perish by the sword, and they shall die without knowledge,’ Job 36:12.  A candle pent up close in a dark lantern, sweals out apace; and so doth light shut up in the conscience, and not suffered to come forth in the conversation.  Those heathens that are charged for holding ‘the truth in unrighteousness,’ Rom. 1:18, the next news you hear from them is, that they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, ver. 21.

Answer Third.  Ply the throne of grace.  He is the best student in divinity that studies most upon his knees .  Knowledge is a divine gift; all light is from heaven.  God is the Father of light, and prayer puts the soul under the pupilage of God.  If anyone lack wisdom, let him ask it of God.  This is more than naked knowledge; wisdom how to use it.  Study may make one a great scholar in the Scriptures, but prayer makes a wise Christian, as it obtains sanctified knowledge, without which it is no perfect gift, but—a gift and no gift.  Pray then with an humble boldness.  God gives it all to ask, and that—candidly, liberally; not like proud man, who will rather put one to shame, who is weak for his ignorance, than take the pains to teach him.  Thy petition is very pleasing to God.  Remember how Sol­omon sped upon the like occasion, and promise thy­self the same success.  Christ's school is a free school; he denies none that come to him, so they will submit to the orders of the school; and though all have not an answer in the same degree of knowledge—it is not needful that all should be Solomons in knowledge, except all were to be Solomons in place; yet the meanest disciple that Christ sends forth, shall be furnished with saving knowledge enough to fir him for his admittance into heaven's academy.  Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and after bring me to glory.

Answer Fourth.  Thou must bestow some time for thy diligent search after truth.  Truth lies deep, and must be digged for.  Since man was turned out of paradise, he can do nothing without labour except sin (this follows his hand indeed), but this treasure of knowledge calls for spade and mattock.  We are bid ‘search the Scriptures.’  Again, it is said that ‘many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be in­creased,’ Dan. 12:4—a metaphor from merchants, who bestir themselves to get an estate, run to and fro, first in one land, then in another; wherever they hear of anything to be got, thither they post, though to the ends of the earth.  Thus must the soul run from one duty to another, one while read, and anon meditate of what he hath read, then pray over his meditations, and ask counsel after all.  What is the meaning of this, and how understand you that?  [Not the school of Epicurus, but intercourse with him, made great men. There is more light got sometimes by a short conference with the preacher, than by his whole sermon.  Be sure thou compass all the means for knowledge within the walk of thy endeavour.  In this thy search for knowledge observe three things.

1. The end thou proposest, that it be pure and holy; not merely to know, as some do, who labour for knowledge, as many for estates, and when they have got it, look on their notions, as they on their bags of money, but have not a heart to use their knowledge for their own or others’ good; this is a sore evil. Speculative knowledge, like Rachel, is fair, but bar­ren.  Not to be known and admired by others for thy stature in knowledge above thy brethren, verily, it is too base an end to aim at, in seeking knowledge, especially such as is the knowledge of God in Christ. To see a heathen study for knowledge in philosophy, and then carry all his labour to this market, and think himself rewarded with obtaining the name for a wise man, is, though base, yet more tolerable; but for one that knows God, and what it is to enjoy him, for such a one to content himself with a blast or two of sorry man's vain breath, this is folly with a witness.  Look thou fliest higher in thy end than so.  Labour for knowledge, that thou mayest fear God whom thou knowest.  Thus David, ‘Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end,’ Ps. 119:33.  The Word of God is called a light unto our feet, not to our tongues, merely to talk of, but [to our] feet to walk by.  Endeavour for it, not that thou mayest spread thy own name, but celebrate God’s.  As David promiseth, when he understands the precepts of God, then he will talk of his wondrous works, he will trumpet the fame of them, and thereby awaken others to inquire after God.
2. When thy end is right set, then thou must be constant in thy endeavour after it.  The mysteries of Christ are not learned in a day.  Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord, Hosea 6:3.  Some are in a good mood, may be, and they will look into the Bible, and read a chapter or two, and away they go for a week, and never practice it more, like some boys [who] if at school one day, truant all the week after; is it any wonder such thrive not in knowledge?  It is a good speech of Bernard: The study of the word, and the reading of it differ as much as the friendship of such who every day converse lovingly together, doth from the acquaintance one hath with a stranger at an inn, or whom he salutes as he passeth by in the street.’  If you will get knowledge indeed, you must not only salute the word now and then, but walk with it, and enter into daily converse with it.  The three men, who were indeed angels, that stood by Abraham, as he sat at his tent door, were reserved and strange, till Abraham invited them into his tent, and enter­tained them friendly, Gen. 18:2; and then Christ, who was one among them—as appears by the name Jehovah, given him in several verses, and also by what he promised he would do for Sarah, ver. 10, not what God would do, which if a created angel, he would —begins to discover himself to Abraham, and [to] reveal his secrets to him.  That soul above others shall be acquainted with the secrets of God in his word, that doth not slightly read the word, and as it were compliment with it, at his tent-door, but desires more intimacy with it, and therefore entertains it within his soul by frequent meditating of it.  David compares the word for sweetness to the honey and the honey-comb.  Indeed it is so full, that at first reading some sweetness will now and then drop from it, but he that doth not press it by meditation, leaves the most behind.
3. Be sure thou takest the right order and meth­od.  Arts and sciences have their rudiments, and also their more abstruse and deep notions, and sure the right end to begin at is first to learn the principles.  He, we say, is not likely to make a good scholar in the university, that never was a good grammar-scholar.  And they cannot be solid Christians, that are not in­structed in the grounds of Christianity.  The want of this is the cause why many are so unsteadfast.  First of this way and then of that, blown like glasses into any shape, as false teachers please to breathe.  Alas! they have no center to draw their lines from.  Think it no disgrace you who have run into error, and lost yourselves in the labyrinths of deep points, which now are the great discourse of the weakest professors, to be set back to learn the first principles of the oracles of God better.  Too many are, as Tertullian saith in another case, more tender of their reputation than their salvation: who are more ashamed to be thought ignorant, than careful to have it cured.

APPLICATION - Against The Rulers of The Darkness of This World 4/6

Perhaps, when the physician gives them over for dead, then we must come and close up those eyes with comfort, which were never opened to see Christ in his truth, or be counted cruel, because we will not sprinkle them with this holy water, and anoint them for the kingdom of heaven, though they know not a step of the way which leads to it.  Ah, poor wretches! what comfort would you have us speak to those, to whom God himself speaks terror?  Is heaven ours to give to whom we please? or is it in our power to alter the laws of the Most High, and save those whom he condemns?  Do you not re­member the curse that is to fall upon his head ‘that maketh the blind to wander out of the way?’ Deut. 27:18.  What curse, then, would be our portion, if we should confirm such blind souls, that are quite out of the way to heaven, encouraging you to go on and ex­pect to reach heaven at last, when, God knows, your feet stand in those paths that lead to eternal death? No, it is written, we cannot, and God will not reverse it; you may read your very names among those damned souls which Christ comes in flaming fire to take vengeance on, who, the apostle tells us, are such ‘that know not God, and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ II Thes. 1:8.  And therefore, in the fear of God, let this provoke you, of what age or sex, rank or condition soever in the world, to labour for the saving knowledge of God in Christ, whom to know is life eternal.

Are you young?  Inquire after God betimes, while your parts are fresh, and memory strong, before the throng of worldly cares divert you, or lusts of youth debauch you.  The feet of those lusts which have buried millions of others in perdition, stand ready to carry you the same way, if preventing grace come not and deliver you out of their hands, by seasoning your minds with the knowledge of God. This morning's draught may prevent thy being in­fected with the ill savours thou mayest receive from the corrupt examples of others.  Nay, how long thy stay may be in the world thou knowest not—see whether thou canst not find graves of thy length in the burial-place; and if thou shouldst die ignorant of God and his law, what would then become of thee?  The small brush and the old logs, young sinners and those that are withered with age, meet and burn to­gether; or if thou shouldst stay a while longer here, may be because thou wilt not learn now, God will not teach thee then; or if thou shouldst in thy old age get acquaintance with God, yet it is sad to be sowing thy seed, when thou shouldst be reaping thy sheaves; learning to know God, when thou mightest be com­forting thyself from the old acquaintance thou hast enjoyed with him.

Are you old and ignorant?  Alas, poor creatures! your life in the socket, and this candle of the Lord not set up and lighted in your understanding! your body bowing to the dust, and nature tolling the pass­ing bell, as it were, and you, like one going into the dark, know not whither death will lead you or leave you.  It is like the infirmities of age make you wish your bones were even laid at rest in the grave; but if you should die in this condition, your poor souls would even wish they were here again with their old burdens on their back.  Aches and diseases of old age are grievous, but damned souls would thank God if he would bless them with such a heaven as to lie in these pains, to escape the torments of the other.  O bethink you before you go hence!  The less time you have, the more diligence you must use to gain knowl­edge.  We need not be earnest, one would think, to bid the poor prisoner learn his book, that cannot read, when he knows he shall be hanged if he read not his neck-verse.  It is not, indeed, the bare know­ing the truths of the gospel saves; but the gross ignorance of them, to be sure, will damn souls.

Are you poor?  It is not your poverty is your sin or misery, but your ignorance where the true treasure lies.  Were you God’s poor, rich in knowledge and faith, you were happy—‘Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished,’ Ecc. 4:13—yea, so happy, that did the princes of the world understand themselves aright, they would wish themselves in your clothes, how rag­ged soever they are, rather than be in their own robes. There are better making for you in heaven, which you shall put on, when theirs shall be pulled off to their shame.  It will not then trouble you that you were, while in the world, poor; but it will torment them they were so rich and great, and so poor to God and beggarly in their souls.

Are you rich?  Labour for the knowledge of the Most High.  Solomon had more of the world’s trea­sure than a thousand of you have, and yet we find him hard at prayer, tugging with God for knowledge, II Chr. 1:10.  All these outward enjoyments are but vaginœ bonorum[the shells of blessings], as afflic­tions are vaginœ malorum [the shells of evils].  I am afraid that many men think themselves privileged by their worldly greatness from this duty, as if God were bound to save them because rich.  Alas, sirs, there are not so many of you like to come there.  I must confess, it would make one tremble to think what a small number those among the great ones that shall be saved, are summed up into, Not many great, not many rich.  Why so few saved?  Because so few have saving knowledge.  O the atheism, the ignorance, the sottish barbarism that is to be found even in those that the world applaud, and even worship, because of their lands and estates, who yet are not able to give any account of their faith?  A poor leather-coat Chris­tian will shame and catechize a hundred of them.  If heaven were to be purchased with house and lands, then these would carry it away from the poor disciples of Jesus Christ—they have their hundreds and thousands lying by them for a purchase always, but this money is not current in heaven’s exchange.  ‘This is life eternal, to know thee, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’

APPLICATION - Against The Rulers of The Darkness of This World 3/6

Now a minister may be accessory to the ignorance of his people

           First. By his own ignorance.  Knowledge is so fundamental to the work and calling of a minister, that he cannot be one without it.  ‘Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. Hosea 4:6.  The want of knowledge in a minister can be such a defect, as cannot be supplied by anything else.  Be he never so meek, patient, bountiful, unblamable, if he hath not skill to divide the word aright, he is not cut out for a minister.  Everything is good, as it is good for the end it is appointed to.  A knife, though it had a haft of diamonds, yet if it will not cut, it is no knife.  A bell, if not sound, is no bell.  The great work of a minister is to teach others, his lips are to preserve knowledge, he should be as conversant in the things of God as others in their particular trades.  Ministers are called lights.  If the light then be darkness, how great is the darkness of that people like to be?  I know these stars in Christ’s hands are not all of the same magnitude.  There is a greater glory of gifts and graces shining in some than [in] others; yet so much light is necessary to every minister, as was in the star the wise men saw at Christ's birth, to be able out of the word to direct sinners the safe and true way to Christ and salvation.  O sirs, it is a sad way of getting a living by killing of men, as some unskilful physi­cians do; but much more to get a temporal livelihood by ruining souls through our ignorance.  He is a cruel man to the poor passengers, who will undertake to be pilot, when he never so much as learned his compass.

           Second. By his negligence.  It is all one if the nurse hath no milk in her breasts, or having [it], draws it not forth to her child.  There is a woe to the idle shepherd, Zech. 11:17; such as have mouths, but speak not; lips, but not to feed the people with knowledge.  It shall be the people's sin, if they feed not when bread is before them, but woe to us if we give them not meat in due season.  O sirs, what shall we say to our Lord that trusts us, if those abilities which he hath given us as market-money to buy bread for our people, be found wrapped up in a napkin of sloth? if that time wherein we should have been teaching and instructing them, shall appear to be wasted in our pleasures, or employed about our car­nal profits.  That servant shall have but a sad wel­come of his master when he comes home, that shall be found out of the way with the key, and the family starving in meantime for want of provision.

           Third. By his unedifying preaching; when he preacheth unsound doctrine, which doth not perfect the understanding, but corrupt it.  Better he did leave them in simple ignorance, than colour their minds with a false dye; or when that he preacheth is frothy and flashy, no more fit to feed their souls, than husks the prodigal’s belly, which, when they know, they are little the wiser for their soul’s good.  Or, when his discourses are so high flown, that the poor people stand gazing, as those who have lost the sight of their preacher, and at the end of the sermon cannot tell what he would have.  Or, those who preach only truths that are for the higher form of professors, who have their senses well exercised; excellent, may be, for the building up three or four eminent saints in the congregation; but in the meantime, the weak ones in the family—who should indeed chiefly be thought on, because least able to guide themselves, or carve for themselves—these are forgotten.  He, sure, is an unwise builder that makes a scaffold as high as Paul’s steeple, when his work is at the bottom, and he is to lay the foundation, whereas the scaffold should rise as the building goes up.  So Paul advanceth in his doc­trine, as his hearers do in knowledge: ‘Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection,’ Heb. 6:1.  ‘Let us;’ it is well, in­deed, when the people can keep pace with the preacher.  To preach truths and notions above the hearer’s capacity, is like a nurse that should go to feed the child with a spoon too big to go into its mouth.  We may by such preaching please ourselves and some of higher attainments, but what shall poor ignorant ones do in the meantime?  He is the faithful steward that considers both.  The preacher is, as Paul saith of himself, a ‘debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise,’ Rom. 1:14.  [He is] to prepare truths suitable to the de­gree of his hearers.  Let the wise have their portion, but let them be patient to see the weaker in the family served also.

   Fourth. A minister may be accessory to the igno­rance of his people, when through the scandal of his life he prejudiceth his doctrine; as a cook, who, by his nastiness, makes others afraid to eat what comes out of his foul fingers.  Or he may be so, when, through his supercilious carriage, his poor people dare not come to him.  He that will do any good in the min­ister’s calling, must be as careful as the fisher, that he doth nothing to scare souls away from him, but all to allure and invite, that they may be toled  within the compass of his net.

           Use Third. [To the ignorant.]  Is the ignorant soul such a slave to Satan?  Let this stir you up that are ignorant from your seats of sloth whereon, like the blind Egyptians, you sit in darkness, speedily come out of this darkness, or resolve to go down to utter darkness.  The covering of Haman’s face did tell him that he should not stay in the king's presence.  If thou livest in ignorance, it shows thou art in God’s black bill.  He puts this cover before their eyes in wrath, whom he means to turn off into hell: ‘If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost,’ II Cor. 4:3.  In one place sinners are threatened, ‘they shall die without knowledge,’ Job 36:12; in another place, they shall die in their sins, John 8:21.  He, indeed, that dies without knowledge, dies in his sins; and what more fearful doom can the great God pass upon a creature than this?  Better die in a prison, die in a ditch, than die in one’s sins.  If thou die in thy sins, thou shalt rise in thy sins; as thou fallest asleep in the dust, so thou awakest in the morning of the resur­rection; if an ignorant Christless wretch, as such thou shalt be arraigned and judged.  That God whom sin­ners now bid depart from them will then be worth their acquaintance—themselves being judges—but alas! then he will throw their own words in their teeth, and bid them depart from him, he desires not the knowledge of them.  O sinners, you shall see at last, God can better be without your company in heaven, than you could be without his knowledge on earth.  Yet, yet it is day, draw your curtains, and be­hold Christ shining upon your face with gospel-light. Hear wisdom crying in the streets, and Christ piping in your window in the voice of his Spirit and messen­gers, ‘How long, ye simple ones, will ye love sim­plicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?  Turn you at my reproof: be­hold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you,’ Prov. 1:21-23.  What can you say, sinners, for your sottish ignorance?  Where is your cloak for this sin?  The time hath been when the word of the Lord was precious, and there was no open vision, not a Bible to be found in town or coun­try; when the tree of knowledge was forbidden fruit, and none might taste thereof without license from the pope.  Happy he that could get a leaf or two of the Testament into a corner, afraid to tell the wife of his bosom!  O how sweet were these waters, when they were forced to steal them! but you have the word, or may, in your houses; you have those that open them every Sabbath in your assemblies; many of you, at least, have the offers of your ministers, to take any pains with you in private, passionately  beseeching you to pity your souls, and receive instruction; yea, it is the lamentation they generally take up, [that] you will not come unto them that you may receive light. How long may a poor minister sit in his study, before any of the ignorant sort will come upon such an errand?  Lawyers have their clients, and physicians their patients; these are sought after, and called up at midnight for counsel; but alas! the soul, which is more worth than raiment and body too, that is neg­lected, and the minister seldom thought on, till both these be sent away.