The Christian in Complete Armour

What I present you with in this Treatise, is a dish from your own table, and so (I hope) will go down the better. You cannot despise it (though the fare be mean) except you will blame your selves who chose the Cook. I cannot be earnest with others, to bestow so much time as to read over these plain Sermons, lest it should be to their loss; it were but to call them from gathering sheaves in the more fruitful labours of others, to glean a few ears, and those but thin also in mine; yet with you, my people, I may be a little bold. Physicians say, the mothers milk though not so weighty as another's, if no noxious humour be tasted in it, because natural, is more proper for the child then a strangers. And, I think, it would not be an error, if I should say it held in the milk which the Minister gives to his flock. A people conscientiously lying at the breasts of their own Minister, (if the milk he gives be wholesome) may expect the blessing of God for their nourishment, though it has not so much lusciousness to please the curious taster as some others. Well, whatever these Sermons were, some of those few spirits which you found in hearing, will be missing in the reading of them. It is as easy to paint fire with the heat, as with pen and ink to ⟨image 4⟩commit that to paper, which occurs in preaching. There is as much difference between a Sermon in the Pulpit, and printed in a book, as between milk in the warm breast, and in a sucking bottle, yet what it loseth in the lively taste, is recompensed by the convenience of it. The book may be at hand when the Preacher cannot; and truly, that's the chief end of printing, that as the bottle and spoon is used when the mother is sick or out of the way; so the book, to quiet the Christian and stay his stomach in the absence of the Ordinance. He that readeth Sermons and good books at home to save his pains of going to hear, is a thief to his soul in a religious habit: he consults for his ease, but not for his profit; he eats cold meat when he may have hot: He hazards the losing the benefit of both by contemning of one. If the Spouse could have had her beloved at home, she needed not to have coursed the streets and waited on the public. O what need we offer sacrilege for sacrifice, rob God of one duty to pay him another?

What I present you with in this Treatise, is a dish from your own table, and so (I hope) will go down the better. You cannot despise it (though the fare be mean) except you will blame your selves who chose the Cook. I cannot be earnest with others, to bestow so much time as to read over these plain Sermons, lest it should be to their losse; it were but to call them from gathering sheaves in the more fruitful labours of others, to glean a few eares, and those but thin also in mine; yet with you, my people, I may be a little bold. Physicians say, the mothers milk though not so weighty as anothers, if no noxious humour be tasted in it, because natural, is more proper for the childe then a strangers. And, I think, it would not be an errour, if I should say it held in the milk which the Minister gives to his flock. A people conscienciously lying at the breasts of their own Minister, (if the milk he gives be wholesome) may expect the blessing of God for their nourishment, though it has not so much lusciousnesse to please the curious taster as some others. Well, whatever these Sermons were, some of those few spirits which you found in hearing, will be missing in the reading of them. It is as easie to paint fire with the heat, as with pen and ink to