_Direct._ III. Adventure not unnecessarily on things beyond your skill, but in difficult cases persuade your patients to use the help of abler physicians, if there be any to be had, though it be against your own commodity. So far should you be from envying the greater esteem and practice of abler men, and from all unworthy aspersions or detraction, that you should do your best to persuade all your patients to seek their counsels, whenever the danger of their lives or health requireth it. For their lives are of greater value than your gain. So abstruse and conjectural is the business of your profession, that it requireth very high accomplishments to be a physician indeed. If there concur not, 1. A natural strength of reason and sagacity; 2. And a great deal of study, reading, and acquaintance with the way of excellent men; 3. And considerable experience of your own, to ripen all this; you have cause to be very fearful and cautelous in your practice, lest you sacrifice men's lives to your ignorance and temerity. And one man that hath all these accomplishments in a high degree, may do more good than a hundred smatterers: and when you are conscious of a defect in any of these, should not reason and conscience command you to persuade the sick to seek out to those that are abler than yourselves? Should men's lives be hazarded, that you may get by it a little sordid gain? It is so great a doubt whether the ignorant, unexperienced sort of physicians, do cure or hurt more, that it hath brought the vulgar in many countries into a contempt of physicians.[121] _Direct._ IV. Depend on God for your direction and success. Earnestly crave his help and blessing in all your undertakings. Without this all your labour is in vain. How easy is it for you to overlook some one thing among a multitude that must be seen, about the causes and cure of diseases; unless God shall open it to you, and give you a clear discerning, and a universal observation! And when twenty considerable things are noted, a man's life may be lost, for want of your discerning one point more. What need have you of the help of God, to bring the fittest remedies to your memory! and much more to bless them when they are administered! as the experience of your daily practice may inform you (where atheism hath not made men fools).