The saints dignity and duty· Together with the danger of ignorance and hardness. /…The saints dignitie and dutie· Together with the danger of ignorance and hardnesse. /…

But a man may ask, after what manner must I hearken? Hearkening I told you implieth attention and obedience, ⟨p. 128⟩therefore you may remember, that I put them both together in the Doctrine, that it was our duty, both to attend to the voice of Christ, and to yield obedience unto it. But how must I do this? For the opening hereof give me leave to discover unto you three particulars, which are specially to be considered, and are required of every soul that would make conscience of discharging this duty.

But a man may aske, after what manner must I hearken? Hearkning I told you implyeth attention and obedience, ⟨p. 128⟩therefore you may remember, that I put them both together in the Doctrine, that it was our duty, both to attend to the voice of Christ, and to yeeld obedience unto it. But how must I doe this? For the opening hereof give me leave to discover unto you three particulars, which are specially to be considered, and are required of every soule that would make conscience of discharging this duty.

First of all, we are then said to hearken to the voice of Christ as we should do, when we first seek to him, and depend wholly and only upon him for direction. I do not say, but we may use all good means and helps that God shall please to put in our hands: But this I say, howsoever we may use other means, yet we must depend upon no other but the Lord Jesus: first of all have recourse unto him, and withal resolve, that he only shall cast the scale, that his direction shall only stand with us, in whatsoever case it is we desire counsel. And then the soul is said indeed to depend upon Christ for direction, when it doth acknowledge a kind of sovereignty in him, and also an all-sufficiency to direct a man: so that howsoever we sometimes hear the counsel of others, and hearken to the voice of the Minister and of private friends, yet we ever use them, but as means to bring us to Christ, and to reveal his counsel unto us: and there being diversity of opinions, and variety of judgements in many matters of Religion, and that amongst godly and learned men, yet in all points, that which mainly casteth the scales with us, is not the learning or holiness of this, or that man, but the so veraignty and authority of Christ, what he saith, what his mind and his judgement is, and what he would have us to do, This is the depending of the soul upon Christ. You shall observe in the Old Testament, how this course was ever taken up by the Saints in any matter of difficulty, how they had always recourse to the counsel of God, and made their repair to his mouth. We may read how often David did this,