you may venture without any danger." If you are ungodly, and teach not your families the fear of God, nor contradict the sins of the company you are in, nor turn the stream of their vain talking, nor deal with them plainly about their salvation, they will take it as if you preached to them that such things are needless, and that they may boldly do so as well as you. Nay, you do worse than all this, for you teach them to think evil of others, that are better than yourselves.

How many a faithful minister, and private Christian, is hated and reproached for the sake of such as you! What say the people to them ? " You are so precise, and tell us so much of sin, and duty, and make such a stir about these matters, while such or such a minister, that is as great a scholar as you, and as good a preacher, will be merry and jest with us, and let us alone, and never trouble himself or us with such discourse. You can never be quiet, but make more ado than needs; and love to frighten men with talk of damnation, when sober, learned, peaceable divines, are quiet, and live with us like other men." Such are the thoughts and talk of people, which your negligence doth occasion. They will give you leave to preach against their sins, and to talk as much as you will for godliness in the pulpit, if you will but let them alone afterwards, and be friendly and merry with them when you have done, and talk as they do, and live as they, and be indifferent with them in your conversation. For they take the pulpit to be but a stage; a place where preachers must show themselves, and play their parts;

where you have liberty for an hour to say what you list; and what you say they regard not, if you show them not, by saying it personally to their faces, that you were in good earnest, and did indeed mean them. Is that man then likely to do much good, or fit to be a minister of Christ, that will speak for him an hour on the sabbath, and, by his life, will preach against him all the week besides, yea, and give his public words the lie ?

And if any of the people be wiser than to follow the examples of such men, yet the loathsomeness of their lives will make their doctrine the less effectual. Though you know the meat to be good and wholesome, yet it may make a weak stomach rise against it, if the cook or the servant that carrieth it have leprous, or even dirty hands. Take heed therefore to yourselves, if ever you mean to do good to others.

Lastly, Consider whether the success of your labours depends not on the assistance and blessing of the Lord. And where hath he made any promise of his assistance and blessing to ungodly men? If he do promise his church a blessing even by such, yet doth he not promise them any blessing. To his faithful servants he hath promised that he will be with them, that he will put his Spirit upon them, and his word into their mouths, and that Satan shall fall before them as lightning from heaven. But where is there any such promise to ungodly ministers ? Nay, do you not, by your hypocrisy and your abuse of God, provoke him to forsake you, and to blast

all your endeavours, at least as to yourselves, though he may bless them to his chosen ? For I do not deny but that God may do good to his church by wicked men ; yet doth he it not so ordinarily, nor so eminently, as by his own

servants.

And what I have said of the wicked themselves, doth hold in part of the godly, while they are scandalous and backsliding, in proportion to the measure of their sin.

CHAPTER II.

THE OVERSIGHT OF THE FLOCK.

SECTION I.

THE NATURE OF THIS OVERSIGHT.

HAVING showed you, What it is to take heed to ourselves, I am to show you, next, What it is to take heed to all the flock.

It was first necessary to take into consideration, what we must be, and what we must do for our own souls, before we come to that which must be done for others: Ne quis aliorum vulnera medendo ad salutem, ipse per negligentiam suæ salutis intumescat; ne proximos juvando, se deserat; ne alios erigens, cadat.* Yea, lest all his labours come to naught, because his heart and life are naught that doth perform them. Nonnulli enim sunt qui solerti curâ spiritualia præcepta perscrutantur, sed quæ intelligendo penetrant, vivendo conculcant: repente docent quæ non opere sed meditatione dedicerunt: et quod verbis prædicant, moribus impugnant; unde fit ut cum pastor per abrupta graditur, ad præcipitium grex sequatur. † When we have led them to the

• Gregor. de Cura Pastor. lib. iv.

+ Ibid.

living waters, if we muddy it by our filthy lives, we may lose our labour, and they be never the better.

Before we speak of the work itself, we shall notice somewhat that is pre-supposed in the words before us.

1. It is here implied, that every flock should have its own pastor, and every pastor his own flock. As every troop or company in a regiment of soldiers must have its own captain and other officers, and every soldier knows his own commander and colours; so it is the will of God, that every church should have its own pastor, and that all Christ's disciples "should know their teachers that are over them in the Lord." Though a minister is an officer in the church universal, yet is he in a special manner the overseer of that particular church which is committed to his charge. When we are ordained ministers without a special charge, we are licensed and commanded to do our best for all, as we shall have opportunity for the exercise of our gifts: but, when we have undertaken a particular charge, we have restrained the exercise of our gifts so specially to that congregation, that we must allow others no more than it can spare of our time and help, except where the public good requireth it, which must, no doubt, be first regarded. From this relation of pastor and flock, arise all the duties which they mutually owe to each other.

2. When we are commanded to take heed to all the flock, it is plainly implied, that flocks must ordinarily be no greater than we are capable of