him early how to live and how to die and what to seek and what to shun You should have given him the Example of a holy and heavenly mind and life You should have watch'd over him for his safety and unweariedly instructed him for his Salvation But you led him the way to despise God's Word and set light by Christ and Holiness and Heaven to hate Instruction and Reproof to spend the Lords day in idleness or worldly vanity and to seek first the World and the prosperity of the Body and glut the Flesh with sinful pleasure What wonder if a Serpent breed a Serpent and quickly teach him to hiss and sting and if Swine teach their young to feed on dung and wallow in the mire This is part of the fruit of your worldliness fleshliness ungodliness and neglect of your own Salvation and your Childs Now he is as you are a slave of sin and an heir of Hell Was this it that you vowed him for to God in Baptism Was it to serve the Flesh the World and the Devil against our God our Saviour and our sanctifier Or did the mistake of the Liturgy deceive you to think that it was not you but the God-Fathers that were bound by Charge and Vow to bring him up in the Faith and Fear of God and teach him all that a Christian should know for his Soul's Health Was it not you that God bound to all this The sin and misery of your Child now is so far your curse as you are guilty of it and will add to your misery for ever Such are the sorrows that wicked Parents and wicked Children do prepare and heap on one another Such miseries will come but woe to those by whom they come it had been good for that man that he had never been born § 10. And it is no small grief to faithful Ministers to see their labour so much lost and to see so much evil among their flocks and such sad Prognosticks of worse to come He is no true Minister of Christ as to his own acceptance and Salvation whose heart is not set on the winning and sanctifying and saving of Souls What else do we study for preach for live for long for suffer for in our Work All faithful-Teachers can say with Paul that they are willing to spend and be spent for them and now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord. 2 Cor. 12.15 1 Thes. 3.8 He told them weeping of those that were Enemies to the Cross of Christ whose God was their Belly who glory in their shame and mind earthly things instead of a Conversation in Heaven Phil. 3.18 19. When God hath blessed us with the comfortable enjoyment of many ancient holy Christians who are the beauty and honour of the Assemblies and Death calls home one of them after another to Christ and the rest are ready to depart Alas Must a seed of Serpents come after them Must those take their places to our grief and shame who are bred up to the World and Flesh in Drunkenness Fornication and Enmity to God and a holy Life O what a woful change is this And if any be like to be the stain and Plague of the Church it is such as these If we preach holy truth to them Lust cannot love it If we tell them of Gods word the fleshly mind doth not savour it nor can be subject to it Rom. 8.5 6 7. If we reprove them sharply they smart and hate us If we call them to Confession and Repentance their Pride and Carnality cannot bear it If we excommunicate them for Impenitency as Christ requireth or but deny them the Sacrament as unmeet they rage against us as our fiercest Enemies If we neglect Discipline and admit Swine to the Communion of Saints we harden and deceive them and flatter them in their sin pollute the Church and endanger our Souls by displeasing the chief Pastor What then shall we do with these self-murthering ungodly men Many of them have so much Reverence of a Sacrament or so little regard of it that they never seek it but keep away themselves Perhaps they are afraid left they eat and drink damnation to themselves by the prophanation of holy things But do they think that it is safe to be out of the Church and Communion of Saints because it 's dangerous to abuse it Are Infidels safe because false hearted Christians perish What if breaking your Vows and Covenant be damnable Is it not so to be out of the holy Covenant What if God be a consuming fire to those that draw near him in unrepented heinous sin Is it therefore wise or safe to avoid him Neither those that come not to him nor those that come in their hypocrisie and reigning sin shall be saved And yet what to do with these self-suspenders we know not Are they still Members of the Churches or are they not If they are we are bound to call them to Repentance for forsaking the Communion of Saints in Christs commanded Ordinance If they are not we should make it known that Christians and no Christians may not be confounded and they themselves may understand their case And neither of these can they endure But for dwelling in the Parish and hearing the Liturgy and Sermons must still pass for Church Members lest Discipline should exasperate and further lose them This is that Discipline which is thought worthy the honour of Episcopal Dignity and Revennues and is supposed to make the Church of England the best in the world by the same men that would rage were Discipline exercised on them and must either be admitted to the Sacrament in a life of Fornication Drunkenness Sensuality and Prophaneness without any open Confession Repentance and Reformation or else must pass for Church Members without any exercise of Discipline while they shun the Sacramental Communion of the Church Such work doth wickedness make among us § 11. Indeed these are the men that are the trouble of Families the trouble of Neighbours the trouble of good Magistrates the shame of bad ones and the great danger of the Land All the foreign Enemies whom we talk so much against and fear are not so hurtful and dangerous to us as these These that spring out of your own bowels These that are bred up with care and tenderness and cost in your houses These that should succeed godly Ancestors in Wisdom and well doing and be their glory Who plot against us but home bred sinners Who more hate the good and persecute them Who are more malignant Enemies of Godliness and scorners of a holy Life and hinderers of the Word of God and Patrons of Prophaneness and of Ministers and People that are of the same mind If England be undone as the Eastern Churches and much of the Western are undone it will be by your own carnal ungodly Posterity He that is once a slave to Satan and his fleshly Lust is ready for preferment or a reward to be a slave
and most of Germany to what they are Such a Clergie have brought Ireland from the laudable State which it was in in the days of Malachias as Bernard described it into the barbarous briutish 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 Hen. 3. King Iohn c. the subject of Pryns History of the Treasons of Prelates And alas such a corrupt sort of Ministers keepeth 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 warres and cruelties between the former Episcopal parties and the Laudians or between them and the Presbyterians and Independents and all the silencings and woefull 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 conscionable Preachers and writing and preaching still for executing the Lawes 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 selfdenyal and knew what it is to seek the good of Church and souls When we yet continue under the same distractions and convulsions and all cry out that a flood of misery is breaking in on the Land and like to overwhelm us all and still it is the Clergy that 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 be soon healed in probability could the Nation but procure the Clergy to consent certainly there is some grievous disease in our selves which is like to pove 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 wil by any reason or humble importunity be intreated 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 Wo wo wo to that Church that hath Hypocrites Ungodly Unexperienced Proud Worldly Fleshly Unskilful unfaithful and Malignant Pastors and that hath Wolves instead of Shepherds wo to the Land that hath such Wo 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 hath sprung the greatest calamities of the Churches in all places to this very day § 11. But will such mens sins prove less woful to themselves than others No. 1. It is the sin and guilt it self 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 Aarons two Sons that were struck dead Lev. 10.2 3. For God will be sanctifyed in them that come nigh him and before all the people he will be glorifyed The examples of the Beth-shemites Vzza Vzziah the bad Priests and False Prophets of old are terrible 4. And it greatly addeth 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 Gods Name in vain for which he will not hold them guiltless To pretend that it is by Gods command that they set up that which he abhorreth 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 Anathema's and Interdicts of whole Kingdoms Excommunicating and Deposing Kings Absolving men from their Oaths of Allegiance Tormenting and Murdering Godly men as Hereticks Silencing Faithful Ministers Smiting the Shepherds and scattering the Flocks and then reviling them as Schismaticks and all this to uphold a worldly Kingdom of their own and keep up their Pride Domination and self-will 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 and as for the Church and Truth and Souls is a most heynous aggravation 5. Indeed while a poor blind Clergy man 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 saith is self-condemnation and that out of his own mouth he must be judged and that all the woes which he pronounceth against Hypocrites and impenitent carnal worldly men his own Tongue pronounceth them against himself § 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 farre 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. And 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 confesse sin and Errour but will sooner as Papists plead-infallibility or conclude as some Councils have done that a Lay man must not accuse a Clergy man be he never so bad Repentance is hard to all men of carnal interest but to few more than to an unhumbled Clergy man And 2. Whoever accuseth or reproveth them of sin will be represented as an Enemy to the Church a dishonourer of his Ghostly Fathers and one that openeth their nakedness which he should Cover and so their Ulcers are as a noli me tangere and fret as a Gangreen unremedied 3. And their Place Office Titles and Learning with many will give sin Reputation and Advantage If a Drunkard in the Alehouse deride Godly men as Hereticks Schismaticks Hypocrites or Puritanes 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 preacheth against preaching and against those that practise what he teacheth them at other times O how much of his work hath Satan done in the World by corrupting Sacred Offices and by getting HIS SERVANTS INTO RVLE 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 disswadeth him from speaking or sending to us in his own name Should one say in the Pulpit Thus saith the Devil hate Christs servants silence his Ministers call serious Godliness Hypocrisie which is the contrary to Hypocrisie I should not much fear his success with any but if he be a lying Spirit in the mouth of Ahabs Prophets and can get a Prophet to smite Michaiah 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 Devils prosperous way § 13. II. I have told you what Plagues bad Clergy men will be and still have been to themselves to the souls of men and to the publick 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 cheif 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 others in charity but Christs 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 Physitian differeth from every Neighbour 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 publick Office of the Pastors It may be expounded and applyed privately by any able Christian but the Pastors do it eminently by Office and to them especially though to all Christians commonly are committed the Oracles of God The Priests lips must preserve knowledge and men should enquire of the Law at his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts Mal. 2.7 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 O! what difference hath there been in their successes as they differed in ability piety and diligence And how great an honour 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 useth them as his special instruments for the Convincing Converting Edifying Comforting and Saving of Souls Others may be blest herein But the special blessing goeth along with those that are specially obliged to the work which is Parents in Families and Pastors in the Church O how many thousand Souls in Heaven will for ever rejoyce in the effects of the Labours of Faithful Ministers and bless God for them And what an honour what a comfort is it to have a hand in such a work He that Converteth a sinner from the Errour of his way doth save a Soul from death and cover a multitude of sins Jam. last 3. And in this they are Co-workers with Jesus Christ the great Saviour 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. 4.6 to 16. and when the Chief Shephard shall appear they shall receive a Crown of Glory that fadeth not away 1 Pet. 5.4 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. 10. 4. In a word Churches States and Christian Kingdoms are chiefly blest and preserved by the Labour of the faithful part of the Ministry For 1 If we have the rare blessing of a wise and holy and loving Magistracy it is usually by the success of the labours of the Ministry 2 And there is no better means to bring the Subjects to the Conscionable performance of their Duty to Superiours 3 And by the blessing of their Labour the sins of a Nation are prevented or healed which would else bring down Gods 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 counter-worketh them by labouring while others are idle and doing that wisely which others do foolishly and shewing 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 VVhen proud men tear the Church by the Engines of their domineering VVits and VVills these humble Pastors as the servants of all will labour to heal it by Christian meekness and condescension VVhen malignant Priests seek to strengthen themselves by the multitude of the ungodly and to bring serious piety into contempt which doth molest them these faithful Pastors open the just disgrace of sin and the great necessity and honour of holiness endeavouring that vile persons may be contemned and those may be honoured that fear the Lord Psal. 15.4 and distinguishing the precious from the vile the righteous from the wicked and him that sweareth from him that feareth an Oath and him that serveth God from him that serveth him not God saith They are as his mouth Jer. 15.19 Mal. 3.17 18. Eccl. 9.2 To be short as An Ignorant Worldly Carnal Proud Vnholy sort of Prelates and Priests are and have been the great Plague of the Churches these 1300 years at least so the Skilful 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 Errour Pride Oppression VVorldliness Sensuality
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 expell his Grace either wound or seare 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 § 22. Away therefore from idleness pamper not the Flesh with fulness or delights abhorre 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 poyson or leaping into a Coal-pit or willfully going among Murderers or Theives Presume not on your own strength he is safest that is furthest from the danger Gunpowder must not stand near the fire § 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 chooseth 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 Spiritual they will be drawing you towards God and setling you in the resolved hatred of sin and love of 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 carkass and formalities of piety as better than serious spiritual devotion and if they be hardned 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 Gods Servants and with scorn or contempt of such as you hear described falsly as Papists think of Protestants as Hereticks 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 our selves Ill company is a dangerous snare and God often tryeth 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 § 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 your selves 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 Domestick 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 those are but I 'le tell you are far as you are capable of discerning 1. Usually the common report of men that are sober and impartial commendeth worthy men above others for Knowledge and Goodness is like Light a self discovering thing 2. Choose not a Teacher that preferreth humane 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 ambitions mind and will teach you that which most conduceth to get preferment and worldly wealth and not that which best helpeth you to Heaven 4 Choose not one that is Factious and uncharitable violent for a Party either because it is uppermost or because it standeth for some odd opinion or causeless singularity but one that is of a Christian Catholick 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 § 25. VI 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. 3.18 19 20. A surprize in passion even of an ugly sin is less dangerous than such an 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 Governours it 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 Gods best Servants and cry up some notion or errour of their own and magnifie the worst that promote their worldly ends and hopes alas how doth this stream usually 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 honour have been set before them have lost vertue and wit before they were well aware And worldly interest hath secretly bribed and byassed their understandings to take the greatest Truth for Errour Duty for Sin and Errour for Truth and Sin for Duty and they have talkt and preacht 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 byass by the current of their course And if you
would commonly perish that knowledge that such get must be from themselves in their own thinking and observation only Where their minds are yet unfurnished with those Truths that must let in more and daily objects will occasion errour or confusion in their minds that are unprepared to improve them and their own lusts will pervert them and one errour draw in more whereas the help of those that by long and successful Study have rightly ordered and digested their conceptions might be an exceeding help to willing Learners 2. And such by Pride do forfeit the Grace of God which he giveth to the humble and resisteth the proud and are oft given up to the self-conceitedness which they so defend till their own Counsels and ways be their confusion 3. And the Devil hath advantage to set in and even possesse such proud prepared ignorant minds and become their Teacher and lead them almost to what he will against Truth and the Church and themselves and God 4. And self-conceit and hasty confidence maketh them continual lyers even while they rage for what they say as true For being usually mistaken for want of patient tryal they say what they think and are not to be much believed in their prefidence § 8. But seeing many old men are ignorant and erroneous and some young men have sounder understandings how shall I know when I am guilty of proud self-conceit and prefidence and refusing others judgment Answ. 1. When you rashly neglect their judgement and Counsel who have had as good helps and parts as you and far longer time and experience without so much as hearing what they have to say and taking time to trye the cause according to its weight especially if they be such as nature or relation obliged you to learn of 2. When you easilier suspect such than your own understandings 3. When your confidence of your understandings is so unproportionable to your Time and Studies that you must suppose you know by a miracle or some rare capacity and wit as if you had got more in a few years than the rest of mankind doth in many 4. When you judge suddenly before you take time to think and may know that you never heard what may be said against you 5. When you talk most in a bold asserting or a Teaching way as if you were Oracles to be heard and reverenced and not in a humble enquiring way with that necessary doubting which beseemeth Learners except ye become as Little Children in teachable humility you are not fit for the School of Christ Matth. 18.3 Even he that is a Teacher must be a Learner still as conscious of his remaining ignorance and not think himself above it nor set himself to dispute against all that he understands not but continue humbly to search and trie 6. When those Reasons of your own seem good and cogent which are sufficiently confuted and you cannot see it or which men of the most approved Learning fitness to judg do judg to be but folly when other mens soundest reasons seem light to you because you judg by a proud and selfish understanding confident and tenacious of all that is your own and contemning that which is against you 7. When you can too easily without certain cogent reason dissent from the judgment not only of those whose Light and Integrity hath by self-manifestation convinced the World but also from the generality of such as are commonly known to be the wise godly and impartial yea perhaps from all the Church of Christ. 8. When the most and wisest men that know you think you not so wise as you think your selves nor your reason so good but pity your self-conceitedness and yet this brings you not to suspect and trie 9. When you are hardly and rarely brought to an humble confession of your errours but in all debates you seem still what ever the cause be to be in the right and when you have once said it you will stand to it and justifie untruths or extenuate and excuse them 10. When you too much affect the esteem of wisdom and love to have your judgments a Rule to others and are unfit for true subjection In a word when instead of being swift to hear slow to speak and slow to wrath you are swift to speak and dictate slow to hear and learn and swift to wrathful censure of Dissenters § 9. So common and hurtful is this sin in mankind that you should still be duely fearful of it Errour I fear taketh up the greater half of the thoughts of men and most are rather deceived than in the right and mans mind in flesh is in great darkness and therefore PROVD IGNORANCE is a monstrous and pernicious vice and most of the confusions and miseries of the World of Kingdoms Churches and all Societies come from it Yea though it seems most contrary to Scepticism it tendeth at last to Infidelity or Atheism For when experience hath convinced such that their most confident rage was but a mistake they turn to think that there is nothing certain and deny the greatest Truths It is by this one sin of proud self-conceitedness in false thoughts that Kingdoms Churches and the World by obstinacy seems remediless and the wisest men that would cure them can do no good but on themselves and few § 10. But it is no where more unnatural than in Children against their Parents Counsel and Scholars against their Tutors and Ignorant persons against the common consent of the most able Godly Pastors What an odious thing is it to see an ignorant Lad run against all his Fathers words and think that he is wiser and always in the right and to hear ignorant persons magisterially judge and despise their wise and faithful Teachers before they are capable to understand them or the matter of which they talk Oh! how happily might Parents and Pastors and wise men promote knowledge and goodness in the world were it not for this selfish prefidence which shuts the door against their necessary helps CHAP. XV. The Conclusion to Ministers THere is another sort of Helpers on whom the wellfare of Youth much depends even the Ministers of Christ. But I presume not here to teach them In my Reformed Pastor I have spoken somewhat freely when I had leave I cannot expect that those that silence me should hear me nor will I think that able faithfull Ministers need my Counsell But all that I will now say is humbly to intreat those who take no great pains with the young persons in their Parishes and will not be admonished by such as I but to read Martin Bucer who had so great a hand in counselling our Reformers that made the Liturgy his Book de Regno Dei his Censure of the Liturgy especially of Baptism Confirmation Ordination and Discipline and his vehement pressing the necessity of Congregational Discipline and denying the Sacrament to the unmeet and the necessity of keeping Baptized Youths among the Catechumens till at