_Direct._ VII. Especially it belongeth to you, to repress the heats, and dividing, contentious, and censorious disposition of the younger sorts of professors of godliness. They are in the heat of their blood, and want the knowledge and experience of the aged to guide their zeal: they have not their senses yet exercised in discerning good and evil, Heb. v. 12: they are not able to try the spirits: they are yet but as children, apt to be tossed to and fro, and "carried up and down with every wind of doctrine, after the craft and subtlety of deceivers," Eph. iv. 14. The novices are apt to be puffed up with pride, and "fall into the condemnation of the devil," 1 Tim. iii. 6. They never saw the issue of errors, and sects, and parties, and what divisions and contentions tend to, as you have done. And therefore it belongeth to your gravity and experience to call them unto unity, charity, and peace, and to keep them from proving firebrands in the church, and rashly overrunning their understandings and the truth.
_Direct._ VIII. Of all men you must live in the greatest contempt of earthly things, and least entangle yourselves in the love or needless troubles of the world: you are like to need it and use it but a little while; a little may serve one that is so near his journey's end: you have had the greatest experience of its vanity: you are so near the great things of another world, that methinks you should have no leisure to remember this, or room for any unnecessary thoughts or speeches of it. As your bodies are less able for worldly employment than others, so accordingly you are allowed to retire from it more than others, for your more serious thoughts of the life to come. It is a sign of the bewitching power of the world, and of the folly and unreasonableness of sin, to see the aged usually as covetous as the young; and men that are going out of the world, to love it as fondly, and scrape for it as eagerly, as if they never looked to leave it. You should rather give warning to the younger sort, to take heed of covetousness, and of being insnared by the world, and while they labour in it faithfully with their hands, to keep their hearts entirely for God.
_Direct._ IX. You should highly esteem every minute of your time, and lose none in idleness or unnecessary things; but be always doing or getting some good; and do what you do with all your might. For you are sure now that your time will not be long: how little have you left to make all the rest of your preparation in for eternity! The young may die quickly, but the old know that their time will be but short. Though nature decay, yet grace can grow in life and strength; and when "your outward man perisheth, the inner man may be renewed day by day," 2 Cor. iv. 16. Time is a most precious commodity to all; but especially to them that have but a little more to determine the question in, Whether they must live in heaven or hell for ever. Though you cannot do your worldly businesses as heretofore, yet you have variety of holy exercises to be employed in; bodily ease may beseem you, but idleness is worse in you than in any.
_Direct._ X. When the decay of your strength, or memory, or parts, doth make you unable to read, or pray, or meditate by yourselves, so much or so well as heretofore, make the more use of the more lively gifts and help of others. Be the more in hearing others, and in joining with them in prayer; that their memory, and zeal, and utterance may help to lift you up and carry you on.
_Direct._ XI. Take not a decay of nature, and of those gifts and works which depend thereon, for a decay of grace. Though your memory, and utterance, and fervour of affection, abate as your natural heat abateth, yet be not discouraged; but remember, that you may for all this grow in grace. If you do but grow in holy wisdom and judgment, and a higher esteem of God and holiness, and a greater disesteem of all the vanities of the world, and a firmer resolution to cleave to God and trust on Christ, and never to turn to the world and sin; this is your growth in grace.
_Direct._ XII. Be patient under all the infirmities and inconveniencies of old age. Be not discontented at them, repine not, nor grow peevish and froward to those about you. This is a common temptation which the aged should carefully resist. You knew at first that you had a body that must decay: if you would not have had it till a decaying age, why were you so unwilling to die? If you would, why do you repine? Bless God for the days of youth, and strength, and health, and ease which you have had already! and grudge not that corruptible flesh decayeth.