There is abundance of difference between a weak, unskilful, unexperienced, dead-hearted, formal teacher, and such a one as is described in the direction. Some that are senseless or indifferent in such matters as these themselves, would persuade you to be so too, and look first in your settlement to your bodily conveniences, and be content with such a teacher as accidentally you are cast upon. And they will tell you, that the work of grace dependeth not on the preachers' gifts, but on the gift and blessing of the Spirit of God: the formalists and the enthusiasts concur in this, though from different principles: but though God can frustrate the fittest means, and can work without means, or by that which is least fitted to the end, yet it is his ordinary way to work by means, and that for the soul as well as for the body; and to work most by the aptest means. And I am sure it is the duty of every teacher, to preach in the fittest manner that he can for the people's edification; and not to do God's work deceitfully, and ineptly, because God can bless the unfittest means: and it is the people's duty to attend upon the best they can enjoy, though God can equally work by the weakest or by none. As that pretence will not excuse the contemners of God's ordinances, that upon every little business stay at home, and attend upon no ministry at all; no more will it excuse them, that refuse that help which is most suited to their edification, and take up with a worse, when they might have better. We are not to neglect duty upon a presumptuous expectation of miraculous or extraordinary works: when we can have no better, we may hope for the greater benefit from the weakest; but not when it is the choice of our own presumptuous, irreligious hearts. God can make Daniel and his companions to thrive better by eating pulse, than others that fed at the table of the king: and rather than sin against God, we must cast ourselves on him for unusual supplies, or leave all to his will. But few would therefore be persuaded causelessly to live on pulse, when they may have better. And one would think this truth should have no contradiction, especially from those men, that are apt to obscure and extenuate the Spirit's operations on the soul, and to confess no grace, but what consisteth in a congruous ordination of means and circumstances. When their doctrine layeth all a man's hopes of salvation upon this congruity of means and circumstances, should they afterwards teach men to undervalue or neglect the fittest, and wilfully cast their souls upon the most unfit and unlikely means? But ungodliness first resolveth what to speak against, before it resolveth what to say; and will contradict God's word, though it contradict its own; and will oppose holiness, though by a self-opposing.
But the spiritual relish and experience of the godly, is a very great preservative to them against such deluding reasonings as these. It is harder for a sophister of greatest subtilty or authority, to persuade him that hath tasted them, that sugar is bitter, or wormwood sweet, than to persuade him to believe it, that never tasted them: and it is hard to make a healthful man believe it is best for him to eat but once a week, or best to live on grass or snow. I doubt not but those that now I speak to, have such experience and perception of the benefit of a judicious and lively ministry, in comparison of the ignorant, cold, and lifeless, that no words will make them indifferent herein. Have you not found the ministry of one sort enlighten, and warm, and quicken, and comfort, and strengthen you, much more than of the other? I am sure I have the common sense and experience of the faithful on my side in this, which were enough of itself against more than can be said against it. Even new-born babes in Christ have in their new natures a desire (not to senseless or malicious pratings, but) to the rational sincere milk, (το λογικον αδολον γαλα,) that they may grow by it, and to perform to God a rational service, Rom. xii. 1.