Five disputations of church-government and worship

§. 3. Answ. 1. Remember that I grant you also the Presidency ⟨p. 317⟩of Associations, &c. which you may call an Archbishopric if you please. 2. Is it honour that you contend for, or labour and service to the Church? If honour, you must get it by being the servants of others,¹ and not by being Lords of the Clergy or heritage of God. If you are seeking honour of men, and founding office• in the Church, by such directors as ambition, you are not the men that we can hope for Peace or Holiness from, and therefore can have little treaty with you, but to lay by your wickedness. But if it be service that you contend for, in order to the Churches good, try first whether a Parish will not find you work enough. I have tried it, and find that if I were ten men, I could find as much as I am able to do, in this one Parish. Though I do as much as I am well able night and day, and have so many helpers, yet it is so great a trouble to me, that my work and charge is quite too great for me, that I have been often tempted to desert it, and go to a smaller place: And nothing stays me but this consideration, that God requireth no more then I can do, and that its better do what I can then nothing: and that if I leave them, the next is like to do no more. Could I but speak with each man in my Parish by personal Instruction, once a month, or once a quarter, or half year, it would put me into high expectations of making a very great change among them, by this means: But when I am not able to speak to them past once a year, or two years, I must needs fear lest the force of former words will be lost before I come again. And yet must you needs have more work and service, and more souls to answer for? To deal plainly and faithfully with you, Brethren, impartial standers by conceive that its time for you rather to be more diligent in a smaller charge, and to lament your negligence in your Parishes, and publicly to bewail that you have by your idleness betrayed so many souls: letting them alone in their ignorance and ungodliness, and commonly doing little in your charges, but what you do at Church in public. Overseers think that most of you are fitter for smaller charges rather then for greater. I doubt this will offend many. But you were better use it to your Repentance and Reformation, then your offence.