Your work is, to call every one home to himself, and help every heart to know its own state, to seek and find, and feel his inward life and death, which have their birth, and growth, and strife, against one another, in every son of _Adam_. And as this is the one good way of preaching, so it is, of all others, the most powerful and penetrating into the hearts of all men, let their condition be what it will. Their _hearing ears_, though ever so sunk into dullness, will be forced more or less, to feel the power of that voice which speaks nothing but what is, and must be in some sort within themselves. And this is the great end of outward preaching, to give loud notice of the call of God in their souls, which though unheard, or neglected by them, is yet always subsisting within them. It is to make such outward sounds, as may reach and stir up the inward hearing of the heart. It is so to strike all the outward senses of the soul, that from sleeping in an inward insensibility of its own life and death, it may be brought into an awakened perception of itself, and be forced to know, that the evil of death which is in it, will be its eternal master, unless it seeks for victory in the name, and power, and mediation of Christ, the only Prince of life, and Lord of glory, and who only hath the keys of heaven, of death and hell, in his hands. Hence you will be qualified, to open in your hearers, a right knowledge of the reality of every virtue and vice you are discoursing upon. For since all that is good and evil, is only so to them, because it lives in their heart; they may easily be taught, that no virtue, whether it be humility, or charity, has any goodness in it, but as it springs in, and from the heart, nor any vice, whether it be pride, or wrath, is any farther renounced, than as its power, and place in the heart is destroyed. And thus the insignificancy and vanity of an outward formality of a virtuous behaviour, and every thing short of a new heart, and new spirit in, and through the power of Christ, dwelling in them, may be fully shewn to be self-delusion, and self-destruction. Your next great point, as a preacher, should be to bring men to an entire faith in, and absolute dependance upon, the continual power and operation of the Spirit of God in them. All churches, even down to the Socinians, are forced, in obedience to the letter of scripture, to hold _something_ of this doctrine. But as all churches, for many ages, have had as much recourse to learning, art, and science to qualify ministers for the preaching of the gospel, as if it was _merely_ a work of man’s wisdom, so ecclesiastics, for the most part, come forth in the power of human qualifications, and more or less trust to their own ability, according as they are more or less proficients in science and literature, languages and rhetoric.