The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…

Seventhly, Formality and imagery choketh or excludeth the sense, life and power of the most necessary truths. They that teach youth the ••rds of the Catechism, do oft content themselves ⟨p. 320⟩with that much, as if they had made them understanding Christians; and leave them as ignorant & senseless of the importance of those words, as they were before ever they learnt them. The foresaid unacquaintedness with the people and their weaknesses, doth make many teachers lose their labour; while they measure the common people by themselves, and think that they can understand such words as they themselves can understand: When they little know how utterly ignorant abundance are of the matter, when they have learned to speak all the words by rote. Therefore experience hath oft constrained me to say▪ that after all their study and learning in the Universities, such Pastors as did never familiarly converse with the poor and vulgar of the flocks, and try the exercise of personal instruction and exhortation upon them, are no more to be regarded in many controversies about the Pastoral work and discipline, than an unexperienced Physician, or Chirurgeon, or Soldier or Pilot in many cases of their professions: Which maketh many learned self-conceited Doctors, become the plagues, while they think themselves the pillars of the Church.

Seventhly, Formality and imagery choaketh or excludeth the sense, life and power of the most necessary truths. They that teach youth the ••rds of the Catechism, do oft content themselves ⟨p. 320⟩with that much, as if they had made them understanding Christians; and leave them as ignorant & sensless of the importance of those words, as they were before ever they learnt them. The foresaid unacquaintedness with the people and their weaknesses, doth make many teachers lose their labour; while they measure the common people by themselves, and think that they can understand such words as they themselves can understand: When they little know how utterly ignorant abundance are of the matter, when they have learned to speak all the words by rote. Therfore experience hath oft constrained me to say▪ that after all their study and learning in the Universities, such Pastors as did never familiarly converse with the poor and vulgar of the flocks, and try the exercise of personal instruction and exhortation upon them, are no more to be regarded in many controversies about the Pastoral work and discipline, than an unexperienced Physician, or Chyrurgeon, or Soldier or Pilot in many cases of their professions: Which maketh many learned self-conceiced Doctors, become the plagues, while they think themselves the pillars of the Church.