_Directions for the right Choice of Masters._
Seeing the happiness of a servant, the safety of his soul, and the comfort of his life, depend very much upon the family and place which he liveth in, it much concerneth every prudent servant to be very careful in what place or family he take up his abode, and to make the wisest choice he can.
_Direct._ I. Above all, be sure that you choose not for mere fleshly ease and sensuality, and take not that for the best place for you, where you may have most of your own carnal will and pleasure. I know that fleshly, graceless servants, will hear this direction with as ill a will, as a dog when he is forbidden his meat or carrion. I know I speak against their very nature, and therefore against their very hearts, and therefore they will think I speak against their interest and good; and therefore I may persuade them to this course a hundred times, before they will believe me, or obey my counsel. All ungodly, fleshly servants, do make these the only signs of a good place, or desirable service for them: 1. If they may do what work they will, and avoid that which they dislike; if they may do that which is easy, and not that which is hard; and that which is an honour to them, and not that which seemeth inferior and base. 2. If they may work when they will, and give over when they will. 3. If they may rise when they will, and go to bed when they will. 4. If they may eat and drink what they will, and fare well to the pleasing of their appetites. 5. If they may speak when they will, and what they have a mind to speak. 6. If they may have leave when they will to sport, and play, and be wanton and vain, and waste their time, which they call being merry. 7. If they may wear the best apparel and go fine. 8. If their masters will be liberal to them, to maintain all this, and will give them what they would have. 9. If their masters and fellow-servants carry it respectfully to them, and praise them, and make somebody of them, and do not dishonour them, nor give them any displeasing words. 10. And if they are not troubled with the precepts of godliness, nor set to learn the Scripture, or catechized, nor called to account about the state of their souls, or the ground of their hopes for the life to come, nor troubled with much praying, or repeating sermons, or religious exercise or discourse, or any thing that tendeth to their salvation; nor be restrained from any sin, which they have a mind to, nor reproved for it when they have done it. These are an ungodly, carnal person's conditions, or signs of a good service. Which is, in a word, to have their own wills and fleshly desires, and not to be crossed by their masters' wills, or the will of God: which in effect is, to have the greatest helps to do the devil's will, and to be damned.
_Direct._ II. See that it be your first and principal care, to live in such a place where you have the greatest helps and smallest hinderances to the pleasing of God, and the saving of your souls; and in such a place where you shall have no liberty to sin, nor have your fleshly will fulfilled, but shall be best instructed to know and do the will of God, and under him the will of your superiors. It is the mark of those whom God forsaketh, to be given up to their own wills, or "to their own hearts' lusts, to walk in their own counsels," Psal. lxxxi. 12. "To live after the flesh," is the certain way to endless misery, Rom. viii. 8, 13. To be most subject to the will of God, with the greatest mortification and denial of our own wills, is the mark of the most obedient, holy soul. Seeing then that holiness and self-denial, the loving of God, and the mortifying of the flesh, are the life of grace, and the health and rectitude of the soul, and the only way (under Christ) to our salvation; you have great reason to think that place the best for you, in which you have most helps for holiness and self-denial: and not only to bear patiently the strictness of your superiors, and the labour which they put you upon for your souls, but also to desire and seek after such helps, as the greatest mercies upon earth. "First seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness: labour not (first) for the food that perisheth, but for that which endureth to everlasting life," Matt. vi. 33; John vi. 27. Take care first that your souls be provided for, and take that for the best service which helpeth you most in the service of God, to your salvation.