_Direct._ V. When the minister is weak, be the more watchful against prejudice and sluggishness of heart, lest you lose all. Mark that word of God which he readeth to you, and reverence, and love, and lay up that. It was the law, read and meditated on, which David saith the godly do delight in.[176] The sacred Scriptures are not so obscure and useless as the papists do pretend, but convert the soul, and are able to make us wise unto salvation. Christ went ordinarily to the synagogues, where even bad men did read Moses and the prophets every sabbath day. There are thousands that cannot read themselves, who must come to the assembly to hear that word read, which they cannot read or hear at home. Every sentence of Scripture hath a divine excellency, and therefore had we nothing but the reading of it, and that by a bad man, a holy soul may profit by it. _Direct._ VI. Mind not so much the case of others present as yourselves; and think not so much how bad such and such a one is, and unworthy to be there, as how bad you are yourselves, and unworthy of communion with the people of the Lord, and what a mercy it is that you have admittance, and are not cast out from those holy opportunities. _Direct._ VII. Take heed of a peevish, quarrelsome humour, that disposeth you to carp at all that is said and done, and to find fault with every mode and circumstance, and to affect a causeless singularity, as thinking that your own ways, and words, and orders, are far more excellent than other men's: think ill of nothing out of a quarrelsome disposition, but only as evidence constraineth you to dissent. And then remember that we are all imperfect, and faulty men must needs perform a faulty worship, if any, for it cannot be better than the agent. _Direct._ VIII. When you meet with a word in a sermon or prayer, which you do not like, let it not stop you, and hinder your fervent and peaceable proceeding in the rest; as if you must not join in that which is good, if there be any faulty mixture in it. But go on in that which you approve, and thank God that pardoneth the infirmities of others as well as your own. _Direct._ IX. Conform yourselves to all the lawful gestures and customs of the church with which you join. You come not hither proudly to show the congregation, that you are wiser in the circumstances of worship than they, nor needlessly to differ from them, much less to harden men into a scorn of strictness, by seeing you place religion in singularities in lawful and indifferent things. But you come to exercise love, peace, and concord, and with one mind and mouth to glorify God. Stand when the church standeth; sit when the church sitteth; kneel when the church kneeleth, in cases where God doth not forbid it.