Manuductio ad ministerium. Directions for a candidate of the ministry

And what a Ford has written on, The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption, is as fine as any thing I have seen for, the Experimental And, tho' a Doolittle may not pass for one of our Greatest Men, yet having in his Book on the Catechism, given us the Body of Divinity all in a Flame, I am willing that it should be, [what Zoroaster called his famous Book, Zundavesta, which, tho' written above two and twenty Hundred Years ago, we still have in our Hands,] a Fire Kindler for you, and put you in the Way after an Awakening Manner, to set Conscience about its Work, when you come to that Application, with which your Sermons are still to be enlivened. If you go further back, and even up to a Perkins, you will find in many Treatises, that Good old Puritan Divinity, which the Honours of, The old Way, belong unto: And, No Man having drunk that old Wine, and such Books, as the Christians Daily Walk, of a Scudder, will much desire the new, but he will say, The old is Better. If we mean to go to Heaven, we shall not miss our Way by having Isaac Ambrose in our Company. I say nothing of a Preston, and a Bolton, and a Capel, and a Fenner, and a Rogers, and a Sibbs, and an Hall: All highly Valuable. But I cannot forbear saying, the Writings of the Dyke's, (both ⟨p. 101⟩Daniel and Jeremiah) have a singular Flavour and Vigour in them. Every thing of an Arrowsmith, is admirable. A Gurnal will furnish you with a Magazine, of Good Things. Of an A. Burgess, I may say, He has written for thee Excellent Things. A Reinolds too must be taken into the List of them, who have written what none will Repent he Reading of. His Preparations are Fat things full Marrow, Wines from the Lees well refined. And some things of a Burroughs, especially his, Moses's Choice, will not make you complain, that you have lost your Time in Conversing with them.

And what a Ford has written on, The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption, is as fine as any thing I have seen for, the Experimental And, tho' a Doolittle may not pass for one of our Greatest Men, yet having in his Book on the Catechism, given us the Body of Divinity all in a Flame, I am willing that it should be, [what Zoroaster called his famous Book, Zundavesta, which, tho' written above two and twenty Hundred Years ago, we still have in our Hands,] a Fire Kindler for you, and put you in the Way after an Awakening Manner, to set Conscience about its Work, when you come to that Application, with which your Sermons are still to be enlivened. If you go further back, and even up to a Perkins, you will find in many Treatises, that Good old Puritan Divinity, which the Honours of, The old Way, belong unto: And, No Man having drunk that old Wine, and such Books, as the Christians Daily Walk, of a Scudder, will much desire the new, but he will say, The old is Better. If we mean to go to Heaven, we shall not miss our Way by having Isaac Ambrose in our Company. I say nothing of a Preston, and a Bolton, and a Capel, and a Fenner, and a Rogers, and a Sibbs, and an Hall: All highly Valuable. But I cannot forbear saying, the Writings of the Dyke's, (both