_Direct._ XIV. Take the measure of your accidental duties more from the good or hurt of the church, or of many, than from the immediate good or hurt that cometh to yourself. You are not to take that for the station of your duty, which you feel to be most to the commodity of your souls; but that in which you may do God most service. If the service of God for the good of many, require you to stay with a weaker minister, and defective administrations, you will find in the end that this was not only the place of your duty, but also of your benefit: for your life is in God's hands, and all your comforts; and that is the best way to your peace and happiness, in which you are most pleasing unto God, and have his promise of most acceptance and grace. I know the least advantage to the soul must be preferred before all earthly riches; but not before the public good. Yea, that way will prove most advantageous to us, in which we exercise most obedience.
_Direct._ XV. Take heed of suffering prejudice and fancy to go for reason, and raise in your minds unjustifiable distastes of any way or mode of worship. It is wonderful to see what fancy and prejudice can do! Get once a hard opinion of a thing, and your judgments will make light of all that is said for it, and will see nothing that should reconcile you to it. Partiality will carry you away from equity and truth. Abundance of things appear now false and evil, to men that once imagine them to be so, which would seem harmless, if not laudable, if they were tried by a mind that is clear from prejudice.
_Direct._ XVI. Judge not of doctrines and worship by persons, but rather of persons by their doctrine and worship (together with their lives). The world is all prone to be carried by respect to persons. I confess where any thing is to be taken upon trust, we must rather trust the intelligent, experienced, honest, and credible, than the ignorant and incredible; but where the word of God must be our rule, it is perverse to judge of things by the persons that hold them or oppose them: sometimes a bad man may be in the right, and a good man in the wrong. Try the way of the worst men before you reject it (in disputable things). And try the opinions and way of the best and wisest before you venture to receive them.
_Direct._ XVII. Enslave not yourselves to any party of men, so as to be over-desirous to please them, nor over-fearful of their censure. Have a respect to all the rest of the world as well as them. Most men that once engage themselves in a party, do think their honour and interest is involved with them, and that they stand or fall with the favour of their party, and therefore make them (before they are aware) the masters of their consciences.
_Direct._ XVIII. Regard more the judgment of aged, ripe, experienced men, that have seen the fruits of the various courses of professors of religion, than of the young, unripe, unexperienced, hot-headed sort. Zeal is of great use to execute the resolutions of a well-informed man: and the zeal of others is very useful to warm the hearts of such as do converse with them. But when it comes to matter of judgment once, to decide a case of difficulty, aged experience hath far the advantage; and in no cases more, than in those where peace and concord are concerned, where rash, hot-headed youth is very prone to precipitant courses, which must be afterwards repented of.