A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

8. If you say this concerns your Children, rather than your selves, I add, be much in teaching others the things of God: that is the way to learn them more fully your selves. The communicating your knowledge is the way to increase it. You will get more than you give, and while you impart it, you will best retain it. While you instruct others, God will instruct you, and you may come to see more in his truths when you teach them others, than ever you did when you learned them first your selves: not that every professor of the Gospel is to be a public Preacher of the Gospel; Private persons are not to invade an office to which God never called them: but yet private Christians may be a kind of private teachers, they may read the Scriptures in their houses, ⟨p. 124⟩who yet may not take upon them to explain it in the public; they may catechize, and as Abraham, Gen. 18.19. teach their Children and their households to know the way of the Lord, who yet are not to instruct congregations; they may exhort one another and admonish one another, and teach one another, in Godly discourse and conference, communicating each others experiences, and solving each others doubts, who yet are not to usurp a work into their hands, for which Christ hath appointed a particular Office in his Church.

8. If you say this concerns your Children, rather than your selves, I add, be much in teaching others the things of God: that is the way to learn them more fully your selves. The communicating your knowledge is the way to encrease it. You will get more than you give, and while you impart it, you will best retain it. While you instruct others, God will instruct you, and you may come to see more in his truths when you teach them others, than ever you did when you learned them first your selves: not that every professor of the Gospel is to be a publick Preacher of the Gospel; Private persons are not to invade an office to which God never called them: but yet private Christians may be a kind of private teachers, they may read the Scriptures in their houses, ⟨p. 124⟩who yet may not take upon them to explain it in the publick; they may catechize, and as Abraham,