_Direct._ IV. Though the sacraments and other ministerial offices are valid, when a minister is qualified (in his abilities and call) but with so much as is essential to the office, though he be defective in degree of parts and faithfulness, and have personal faults which prove his own destruction; yet so great is the difference between a holy, heavenly, learned, judicious, experienced, skilful, zealous, laborious, faithful minister, and an ignorant, ungodly, idle, unskilful one, and so highly should every wise man value the best means and advantages to his eternal happiness, that he should use all lawful means in his power to enjoy and live under such an able, godly, powerful ministry, though he part with his worldly wealth and pleasure to attain it.[110] I know no evil must be done for the attainment of the greatest helps; (for we cannot expect that God should bless a sinful course, or that our sin should tend to the saving of our souls;) and I know God can bless the weakest means, when they are such as he appointeth us to use; and can teach us by angels when he denieth us the help of men: but Scripture, reason, and experience tell us, that ordinarily he worketh morally by means, and fitteth the means to the work which he will do by them: and as he doth not use to light men by a clod or stone, but by a candle, nor by a rotten post or glow-worm so much as by a torch or luminary; so he doth not use to work as much by an ignorant, drunken, idle person, who despiseth the God, the heaven, the Christ, the Spirit, the grace, the sacred word which he preacheth, and vilifieth both his own and other men's souls, as he doth by an able and compassionate minister. And the soul is of so much more worth than the body, and eternal things than temporal, that a little commodity to the soul in order to the securing of our salvation, must be preferred before a great deal of worldly riches: he that knoweth what his soul, his Saviour, and heaven is worth, will not easily sit down contented, under such a dark, and dull, and starving minister, as he feeleth he can but little profit by, if better may be had on lawful terms. He that feeleth no difference between the ministry of these two sorts of men, it is because he is a stranger to the work of the gospel on the soul: and "if the gospel (in its truth, or worth, or use) be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, the god of this world having blinded their minds."[111] It must be no small matter that must satisfy a serious christian to cast his soul upon any hurtful or dangerous disadvantage. Though Daniel and his companions may live well on pulse, yea, and Ezekiel upon bread baked with dung, when God will have it so, yet no wise man will choose such a diet: especially if his diseases require the exactest diet, or his weakness the most restorative, and all too little; which, alas, is the common case. Yet this caution you must here take with you, 1. That you