_Direct._ IV. Suffer not vain thoughts or drowsy negligence to hinder your attention. If you mark not what is taught you, how should you understand and learn? Set yourselves to it, as for your lives: be as earnest and diligent in attending and learning, as you would have the preacher be in teaching.[45] If a drowsy, careless preacher be bad, a drowsy, careless hearer is not good. Saith Moses, Deut. xxxii. 46, 47, "Set your hearts to all the words which I testify among you this day.--For it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life." You would have God attentive to your prayers in your distresses; and why will you not then be attentive to his words, when "the prayers of him are abominable to God, that turneth away his ear from hearing the law?" Luke xix. 48, "All the people were very attentive to hear Christ." Neh. viii. 3, when Ezra read the law "from morning till mid-day, the ears of all the people were attentive to it." When Paul continued his Lord's-day exercise and speech until midnight, one young man that fell asleep, did fall down dead as a warning to them that will sleep, when they should hear the message of Christ, Acts xx. 9. Therefore you are excused that day from worldly business, "that you may attend on the Lord without distraction," 1 Cor. vii. 35. Lydia's attending to the words of Paul, accompanied the opening of her heart and her conversion, Acts xvi. 14. _Direct._ V. Mark especially the design and drift, and principal doctrine of the sermon. Both because that is the chief thing that the preacher would have marked; and because the understanding of that will much help you to understand all the rest, which dependeth on it, and relateth to it. _Direct._ VI. Mark most those things which are of greatest weight and concernment to your souls. And do not fix upon some little sayings, and by-discourses, or witty sentences; like children that bring home some scraps and words which they do but play with. _Direct._ VII. Learn first your catechisms at home, and the great essential points of religion, contained in the creed, the Lord's prayer, and the ten commandments. And in your hearing, first labour to get a clearer understanding of these; and then the lesser branches which grow out of these will be the better understood. You can scarce bestow too much care and pains in learning these great essential points. It is the fruitfullest of all your studies. Two things further I here advise you to avoid. 1. The hasty climbing up to smaller points (which some call higher) before you have well received these; and the receiving of those higher points, independently, without their due respect, to these which they depend upon. 2. The feeding upon dry and barren controversies, and delighting in the chaff of jingling words, and impertinent, unedifying things, or discourses about formalities and circumstances. _Direct._ VIII. Meditate on what you hear when you come home, till you better understand it, Psal. i. 2.