The Christian in Complete Armour

Use. 2 To the Ministers of the Gospel. Let this stir up your bowels of compassion towards those many ignorant souls in your respective Congregations, who know not the right hand from the left. This, this is the great destroyer of the country, which Ministers should come forth against with all their care and strength. More are swept to hell with this plague of spiritual darkness then any other. Where the light of knowledge and conviction is, there commonly is a sense and pain that accompanies the sinner when he doth evil, which forceth some now and then to enquire for a Physician, and come in the distress of their spirits to their Minister or others for counsel, but the ignorant soul feels no such smart; if the Minister stay till he sends for him to instruct him, he may sooner hear the bell go for him, then any messenger come for him; you must seek them out, and not expect that they will come to you. These are a sort of people that are afraid more of their remedy, then their disease, and study more to hide their ignorance, then how they may have it cured, which should make us pity them the more, because they can pity themselves so little. I confess, it is no small unhappiness to some of us, who have to do with a multitude, that we have neither time nor strength to make our addresses to every particular person in our Congregations, and attend on them as their needs require, and yet cannot well satisfy our consciences otherwise. But let us look to it, that though we cannot do to the height of what we would, we be not found wanting in what we may. Let not the difficulty of our Province make us like some, who when they see they have more work upon their hands then they can well dispatch, grow sick of it, and sit down out of a lazy despondency, and do just nothing. He that hath a great house running to ruin, and but a small purse; 'tis better for him to repair now a little, and then a little ⟨p. 236⟩then let all fall down, because he cannot do it all at once. Many Ministers may complain of their Predecessors, that they left them their people more out of repair then their houses, and this makes the work great indeed. As the Jews, who were to revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, before they could build the wall, yet it went up, because the people had a mind to work. Nehem. 4.

Ʋse. 2 To the Ministers of the Gospel. Let this stir up your bowels of compassion towards those many ignorant soules in your respective Congregations, who know not the right hand from the left. This, this is the great destroyer of the countrey, which Ministers should come forth against with all their care and strength. More are swept to hell with this plague of spiritual darknesse then any other. Where the light of knowledge and conviction is, there commonly is a sense and pain that accompanies the sinner when he doth evil, which forceth some now and then to enquire for a Physician, and come in the distresse of their spirits to their Minister or others for counsel, but the ignorant soul feels no such smart; if the Minister stay till he sends for him to instruct him, he may sooner hear the bell go for him, then any messenger come for him; you must seek them out, and not expect that they will come to you. These are a sort of people that are afraid more of their remedy, then their disease, and study more to hide their ignorance, then how they may have it cured, which should make us pity them the more, because they can pity themselves so little. I confesse, it is no small unhappinesse to some of us, who have to do with a multitude, that we have neither time nor strength to make our addresses to every particular person in our Congregations, and attend on them as their needs require, and yet cannot well satisfie our consciences otherwise. But let us look to it, that though we cannot do to the height of what we would, we be not found wanting in what we may. Let not the difficulty of our Province make us like some, who when they see they have more work upon their hands then they can well dispatch, grow sick of it, and sit down out of a lazy despondency, and do just nothing. He that hath a great house running to ruine, and but a small purse; 'tis better for him to repair now a little, and then a little