_Direct._ VI. Furnish yourselves beforehand with matter for the most edifying discourse, and never go abroad empty. And let the matter be usually, 1. Things of weight, and not small matters. 2. Things of certainty, and not uncertain things. Particularly the fittest subjects for your ordinary discourse are these: 1. God himself, with his attributes, relations, and works. 2. The great mystery of man's redemption by Christ; his person, office, sufferings, doctrine, example, and work; his resurrection, ascension, glory, intercession, and all the privileges of his saints. 3. The covenant of grace, the promises, the duties, the conditions, and the threatenings. 4. The workings of the Spirit of Christ upon the soul, and every grace of the Spirit in us; with all the signs, and helps, and hinderances of it. 5. The ways and wiles of Satan, and all our spiritual enemies; the particular temptations which we are in danger of; what they are and how to avoid them, and what are the most powerful helps against them. 6. The corruption and deceitfulness of the heart; the nature and workings, effects, and signs of ignorance, unbelief, hypocrisy, pride, sensuality, worldliness, impiety, injustice, intemperance, uncharitableness, and every other sin; with all the helps against them all. 7. The many duties to God and man which we have to perform, both internal and external, and how to do them, and what are the chiefest hinderances and helps. (As in reading, hearing, meditating, prayer, giving alms, &c.) And the duties of our relations, and several places, with the contrary sins. 8. The vanity of the world, and deceitfulness of all earthly things. 9. The powerful reasons used by Christ to draw us to holiness, and the unreasonable madness of all that is brought against it, by the devil or by wicked men. 10. Of the sufferings which we must expect and be prepared for. 11. Of death, and the preparations that will then be found necessary; and how to make ready for so great a change. 12. Of the day of judgment, and who will then be justified, and who condemned. 13. Of the joys of heaven, the employment, the company, the nature, and duration. 14. Of the miseries of the damned, and the thoughts that they then will have of their former life on earth. 15. Of the state of the church on earth, and what we ought to do in our places for its welfare. Is there not matter enough in all these great and weighty points, for your hourly meditation and conference?
_Direct._ VII. Take heed of proud self-conceitedness in your conference. Speak not with supercilious, censorious confidence. Let not the weak take on them to be wiser than they are. Be readier to speak by way of question as learners, than as teachers of others, unless you are sure that they have much more need to be taught by you, than you by them. It is ordinary for novices in religion to cast all their discourse into a teaching strain, or to make themselves preachers before they understand. It is a most loathsome and pitiful hearing (and yet too ordinary) to hear a raw, self-conceited, ungrounded, unexperienced person to prate magisterially, and censure confidently the doctrine, or practices, or persons of those that are much better and wiser than themselves. If you meet with this proud, censorious spirit, rebuke it first, and read to them James iii.; and if they go on, turn away from them, and avoid them, for they know not what manner of spirit they are of: they serve not the Lord Jesus, whatever they pretend or think themselves, but are proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions, and making divisions in the church of God, and ready to fall into the condemnation of the devil, 1 Tim. iii. 6; vi. 3-5; Rom. xvi. 17; Luke ix. 55.
_Direct._ VIII. Let the wisest in the company, and not the weakest, have most of the discourse: but yet if any one that is of an abler tongue than the rest, do make any determinations in doubtful, controverted points, take heed of a hasty receiving his judgment, let his reasons seem never so plausible or probable; but put down all such opinions as doubts, and move them to your teachers, or some other impartial, able men, before you entertain them. Otherwise, he that hath most wit and tongue in the company, might carry away all the rest into what error or heresy he please, and subvert their faith when he stops their mouths.
_Direct._ IX. Let the matter of your speech be suitable to your end, even to the good of yourselves or others, which you seek. The same subject that is fit for one company is very unfit for others. Learned men and ignorant men, pious men and profane men, are not fit for the same kind of discourse. The medicine must be carefully fitted to the disease.