_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.