A Christian Directory

§. 4. Direct. 4. Depend on God for your direction and success. Earnestly crave his help and blessing in ¹all your undertakings. Without this all your labour is in vain. How easy is it for you, to overlook some one thing, among a multitude that must be seen, about the Causes and Cure of diseases; unless God shall open it to you, and give you a clear discerning, and an universal observation? And when twenty considerable things are noted, a mans life may be lost, for want of your discerning one point more. What need have you of the help of God, to bring the fittest remedies to your memory? And much more to bless them when they are administered? as the experience of your daily practice may inform you (where Atheism hath not made men fools).

§. 4. Direct. 4. Depend on God for your direction and success. Earnestly crave his help and blessing in ¹all your undertakings. Without this all your labour is in vain. How easie is it for you, to overlook some one thing, among a multitude that must be seen, about the Causes and Cure of diseases; unless God shall open it to you, and give you a clear discerning, and an universal observation? And when twenty considerable things are noted, a mans life may be lost, for want of your discerning one point more. What need have you of the help of God, to bring the fittest remedies to your memory? And much more to bless them when they are administred? as the experience of your daily practice may inform you (where Atheism hath not made men fools).

1. 1Direct. 4.

§. 5 Direct. 5. Let your continual observation of the fragility of the flesh, and of mans mortality, ¹make you more spiritual than other men, and more industrious in preparing for the life to come, and greater contemners of the vanities of this world. He that is so frequently among the sick, and a spectator of the dead and dying, is utterly unexcusable if he be himself unprepared, for his sickness or for death. If the heart be not made better, when you almost dwell in the house of mourning, it is a bad and deplorate heart indeed. It is strange that Physicians should be so much suspected of Atheism as commonly they are; and Religio medici should be a word that signifieth irreligiousness: Sure this conceit was taken up in some more irreligious Age or Country: For I have oft been very thankful to God, in observing the contrary, even how many excellent pious Physicians there have been in most Countries where the purity of Religion hath appeared, and how much they promoted the work of Reformation, (such as Crato, Platerus, Erastus, and abundance more that I might name): And in this Land and Age, I must needs bear witness, that I have known as many Physicians Religious proportionably as of any one profession, except the Preachers of the Gospel. But as no men are more desperately wicked, than those that are wicked after pious education, and under the most powerful means of their reformation; so it is very like that those Physicians that are not truly good are very bad; because they are bad against so much light, and so many warnings: And from some of these it's like this censorious Proverb came. And indeed mans nature is so apt to be affected with things that are unusual, and to lose all sense of things that are grown common, that no men have more need to watch their hearts, and be afraid of being hardened, than those that are continually under the most quickening helps and warnings. For it is very easy to grow customary and senseless under them; and then the danger is, that there are no better means remaining, to quicken such a stupid hardened heart. Whereas those that enjoy such helps but seldom, are not so apt to lose the sense and benefit of them. The sight of a sick or dying man, doth usually much awaken those that have such sights but seldom: But who are more hardened than Soldiers and Sea men, that live continually as among the dead?