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

3. Knowledge will be greatly useful to you for your Profiting by ordinances. The better you understand the nature and use and ends of them, the more good you are like to get by them. The more you know of the word, the more you will still learn by it. If the foundation of Spiritual knowledge be well laid, Ordinances will more easily build you up. Not only the work of Ministers would be more easy; if their hearers were better Catechized, there would not be such danger of missing the mark, by shooting over peoples heads, they would not lose so much labour nor spend so much strength in vain, they should not need so much to study plainness, and be inculcating principles, and lisping out the first rudiments of Religion as to those that are but babes in knowledge: But hearers likewise would receive the word with more profit; they would more easily be brought down under convictions, feel the power of Exhortations, be quickened to duties, yield to reproofs, entertain admonitions, and taste the sweetness of God's consolations, and so more easily obtain the end of their hearing. To conclude, if your understandings were more enlightened, your affections would either be sooner warmed, or their heat be more regular; if more truth were known, more duty would be done; if our doctrine were better understood, our application would be more effectual.

3. Knowledg will be greatly useful to you for your Profiting by ordinances. The better you understand the nature and use and ends of them, the more good you are like to get by them. The more you know of the word, the more you will still learn by it. If the foundation of Spiritual knowledg be well laid, Ordinances will more easily build you up. Not only the work of Ministers would be more easie; if their hearers were better Catechized, there would not be such danger of missing the mark, by shooting over peoples heads, they would not lose so much labour nor spend so much strength in vain, they should not need so much to study plainness, and be inculcating principles, and lisping out the first rudiments of Religion as to those that are but babes in knowledg: But hearers likewise would receive the word with more profit; they would more easily be brought down under convictions, feel the power of Exhortations, be quickned to duties, yield to reproofs, entertain admonitions, and tast the sweetness of God's consolations, and so more easily obtain the end of their hearing. To conclude, if your understandings were more enlightned, your affections would either be sooner warmed, or their heat be more regular; if more truth were known, more duty would be done; if our doctrine were better understood, our application would be more effectual.