Know as much as you can know of the works of God, and of the languages and customs of the world; but still remember, that to know God in Christ better, is the growth which you must daily study: and when you know them most, you have still much more need to know better these great things which you know already, than to know more things which you never knew. The roots of faith may still increase, and the branches and fruits of love may be still greater and sweeter! As long as you live, you may still know better the reasons of your religion, (though not better reasons,) and you may know better how to use your knowledge. And whatever you know, let it be that you may be led up to know God more, or love him more, or serve him better.
_Direct._ V. With fear and detestation watch and resolve against all carnal, worldly ends; and see that your hearts be not captivated by your fleshly interest; nor grow to a high esteem of the pleasures, or profits, or honours of this world, nor to relish any fleshly accommodations, as very pleasant and desirable: but that you take up with God and the hopes of glory as your satisfying portion, and follow Christ as cross-bearers, denying yourselves, and dead to the world, and resolved and prepared to forsake all for his sake.
These are words that you can easily say yourselves; but these are things that are so hardly learned, that many of the most learned and reverend perish for want of being better acquainted with them (and I shall never take that man to be wisely learned, that hath not learned to escape damnation). Christ's cross is to be learned before your alphabet. To impose the cross is quickly learned, but to learn to bear it is the difficulty. To lay the cross on others is to be the followers of Pilate; but to bear it when it is laid on us, is to be the followers of Christ. If you grow corrupted with a love of honour, and riches, and preferment, and come to the study of divinity with a fleshly, worldly mind and end, you will but serve Satan while you seem to be seeking after God, and damn your souls among the doctrines and means of salvation, and go to God for materials to chain you faster to the devil, and steal a nail from divinity to fasten your ears unto his door. And you little know how Judas's gain will gripe and torment the awakened conscience! and how the rust will witness against you, and how it will eat your flesh as fire, James v. 3.
_Direct._ VI. Digest all that you know, and turn it into holy habits, and expect that success first on yourselves, which if you were to preach you would expect in others. Remembering that knowing is not the end of knowing; but it is as eating to the body, where health, and strength, and service are the end.[318]
Every truth of God is his candle which he sets up for you to work by; it is as food that is for life and action. You lose all the knowledge which ends in knowing. To fill your head and common-place book is not all that you have to do. But to fortify, and quicken, and inflame your hearts. Good habits are the best provision for a preacher. The habits of mind are better than the best library. But if the habits of heavenly love, and life in the heart, do not concur, the heart and life of a preacher and a scholar are wanting still, for all your knowledge. Study Paul's words, 1 Cor. viii. 1, "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth." If he had said that knowledge edifieth others, and charity saveth ourselves, he would have said nothing that is strange. But even as to edification charity hath the precedency.
_Direct._ VII. Yea, see that you excel the unlearned as much in holiness as you do in knowledge: unless you will persuade them that your knowledge is a useless, worthless thing; and unless you would be judged as unprofitable servants.
Every degree of knowledge is for a further degree of holiness: ten talents must be improved to ten more. They that know and do not, are beaten with many stripes. The devil's scholars look on the godly that are unlearned with hatred and disdain, and preach to their discouragement and disgrace, and strive to set and keep true godliness in the stocks. But Christ's ministers love holiness wherever they see it, and are ashamed to think that the unlearned should be more holy and heavenly than they; and strive to go beyond them as much in the use and ends of knowledge, as in knowledge itself; and with Austin lament, that while the unlearned take heaven by violence, the learned are thrust out into hell, as thinking it is their part to know and teach, and other men's to practise.
_Direct._ VIII. Cast not away a moment of your precious time in idleness, or impertinencies; but follow your work diligently, and with all your might.