where the public good requireth it: so is it betwixt a pastor and his special flock. When we are ordained ministers. without a special charge, we are licensed and commanded to do our best for all, as we shall have a call for the particular exercise: but when we have undertaken a particular charge, we have restrained the exercise of our gifts and guidance so especially to that, that we may allow others no more than they can spare, of our time and help, except where the public good requireth it, which must be first regarded. From this relation of pastor and flock, arise all the duties which mutually we owe. As we must be true to our trust, so must our people be faithful to us, and obey the just directions that we give them from the word of God.

2. When we are commanded "to take heed to all the flock;" it is plainly implied, that flocks must be no greater regularly and ordinarily than we are capable of overseeing or taking heed of. That particular churches should be no greater, or ministers no fewer, than may consist with a taking heed to all; for God will not lay upon us natural impossibilities. He will not bind men on so strict account as we are bound, to leap up to the moon, to touch the stars, to number the sands of the sea. If it be the pastoral work to oversee and take heed to all the flock, then surely there must be such a proportion of pastors assigned to each flock, or such a number of souls in the care of each pastor, as he is able to take such heed to as is here required. Will God require of one Bishop to take the charge of a whole county, or of so many parishes or thousands of souls, as he is not able to know or to oversee? Yea, and to take the sole government of them, while the particular teachers of them are free from that undertaking? Will God require the blood of many parishes at one man's hands, if he do not that which ten or twenty, or a hundred, or three hundred men can no more do than I can move a mountain? Then woe to poor prelates! This were to impose on them a natural or unavoidable necessity of being damned. Is it not therefore a most doleful case that learned, sober men should plead for this as a desirable privilege; or draw such a burden wilfully on themselves; and that they tremble not rather at the thoughts of so great an undertaking? O happy had it been for the church, and happy for the bishops themselves, if this measure that is intimated by the apostle here had been still observed. And the

diocese had been no greater than the elders or bishops could oversee and rule, so that they might have taken heed to all the flock! Or that pastors had been multiplied as churches multiplied, and the number of overseers proportioned so far to the number of souls, that they might not have let the work be undone, while they assumed the empty titles, and undertook impossibilities! And that they had rather prayed the Lord of the harvest to send forth more labourers, even so many as had been proportioned to the work; and not to have undertaken all themselves. I should scarcely commend the prudence or humility of that labourer (let his parts in all other respects be never so great) that would not only undertake to gather in all the harvest in this county himself, and that upon pain of death, yea of damnation, but would also earnestly contend for this prerogative.

Object. But there are others to teach, though one only have had the rule.'

Answ. Blessed be God it was so; and no thanks to some of them. But is not government of great concernment to the good of souls, as well as preaching? If not, then what matter is it for church-governors? If it be, then they that nullify it by undertaking impossibilities, do go about to ruin the churches, and themselves. If only preaching be necessary, let us have none but mere preachers: what needs there then such a stir about government? But if discipline (in its place) be necessary too, what is it but enmity to men's salvation to exclude it, and it is unavoidably excluded when it is made to be his work that is naturally incapable of performing it! He that will command an army alone, may as well say, It shall be destroyed for want of command: and the schoolmaster that will oversee or govern all the schools in the county alone, may as well say plainly, they shall be all ungoverned and the physician who will undertake the guidance of all the sick people in a whole nation or county, when he is not able to visit or direct the hundredth man of them, may as well say, Let them perish!

:

Object. But though they cannot rule them by themselves, they may do it by others.'

Answ. The nature of the pastoral work is such as must be done by the pastor himself. He may not delegate a man that is no pastor to baptize, or administer the Lord's-supper,

or to be the teacher of the church: no more may he commit the government of it to another. Otherwise by so doing he makes that man the bishop, if he make him the immediate ruler and guide of the church: and if a bishop may make each presbyter a bishop, so he do but derive the power from him, then let it no more be held unlawful for them to govern, or to be bishops. And if a prelate may do it, it is likely Christ or his apostles might, and have done it; for as we are to preach in Christ's name, and not in any man's; so it is likely that we must rule in his name. But of this somewhat more

anon.

Yet still, it must be acknowledged, that in case of necessity, where there are not more to be had, one man may undertake the charge of more souls than he is able well to oversee particularly. But then he must only undertake to do what he can for them, and not to do all that a pastor ordinarily ought to do. And this is the case of some of us that have greater parishes than we are able to take that special heed to as their state requireth. I must profess for my own part, I am so far from their boldness that dare venture on the sole government of a county, that I would not for all England, have undertaken to have been one of the two that should do all the pastoral work that God enjoineth to that one parish where I live, had I not this to satisfy my conscience, that through the church's necessities more cannot be had, and therefore I must rather do what I can, than leave all undone, because I cannot do all. But cases of unavoidable necessity, are not to be the standing condition of the church; or at least, it is not desirable that it should so be. O happy Church of Christ, were the labourers but able and faithful, and proportioned in number to the number of souls; so that the pastors were so many, or the particular flocks or churches so small, that we might be able to take heed to all the flocks.

Having told you these two things that are here implied; I come next to the duty itself that is expressed. And this taking heed to all the flock in general is, a very great care of the whole and every part, with great watchfulness and diligence in the use of all those holy actions and ordinances which God hath required us to use for their salvation.

More particularly: this work may be considered,-(1.) In respect to the subject matter of it.-(2.) Its object.-(3.)

The work itself, or the actions which we must perform.(4.) The end which we must intend.

I shall begin with the last, as being first in our intention, though last attained.

I. The ultimate end of our pastoral oversight, is that which is the ultimate end of our whole lives; even the pleasing and glorifying of God, to which is connexed the glory of the human nature also of Christ, and the glorification of his church, and of ourselves in particular: and the nearer ends of our office, are the sanctification and holy obedience of the people of our charge; their unity, order, beauty, strength, preservation and increase; and the right worshipping of God, especially in the solemn assemblies. By which it is manifest, that before a man is capable of being a true pastor of a church, according to the mind of Christ, he must have so high an estimation of these things, as to make them the great and only end of his life.

1. That man therefore, that is not himself taken up with the predominant love of God, and is not himself devoted to him, and doth not devote to him all that he hath, and can do ; that man that is not in the habit of pleasing God, and making him the centre of all his actions, and living to him as his God and happiness: that is, that man that is not a sincere Christian himself, is utterly unfit to be a pastor of a church. And if we be not in a case of desperate necessity, the church should not admit such, so far as they can discover them. Though to inferior common works (as to teach the languages, and some philosophy, to translate Scriptures, &c.) they may be admitted. A man that is not heartily devoted to God, and attached to his service and honour, will never set heartily about the pastoral work: nor indeed can he possibly (while he remaineth such) do one part of that work, no, nor of any other, nor speak one word in Christian sincerity; for no man can be sincere in the means, that is not so in his intentions of the end. A man must heartily love God above all, before he can heartily serve him before all.

2. No man is fit to be a Minister of Christ that is not of a public spirit as to the Church, and delighteth not in its beauty, and longeth not for its felicity: as the good of the Commonwealth must be the end of the magistrate, (his nearer end,) so must the felicity of the Church be the end of the

pastors of it. So that we must rejoice in her welfare, and be willing to spend and be spent for her sake.

3. No man is fit to be a pastor of a church that doth not set his heart on the life to come, and regard the matters of everlasting life, above all the matters of this present life; and that is not sensible in some measure how much the inestimable riches of glory are to be preferred to the trifles of the world. For he will never set his heart on the work of men's salvation, that doth not heartily believe and value that salvation.

4. He that delighteth not in holiness, hateth not iniquity, loveth not the unity and purity of the church, and abhorreth not discord and divisions; and taketh not pleasure in the communion of saints, and the public worship of God with his people, is not fit to be a pastor of a church: for none of all these can have the true ends of a pastor, and therefore cannot do the work. For of what necessity the end is to the means, and in relations, is easily known.

II. The subject matter of the Ministerial work, is in general, spiritual things, or matters that concern the pleasing of God, and the salvation of our people. It is not about temporal and transitory things. It is a vile usurpation of the pope, and his prelates to assume the management of the temporal sword, and immerse themselves in the businesses of the world; to exercise the violent coercion of the magistrate, when they should use only the spiritual weapons of Christ. Our business is not to dispose of commonwealths, nor to touch men's purses or persons by our penalties; but it consisteth only in these two things:

(1.) In revealing to men that happiness, or chief good, which must be their ultimate end. (2.) In acquainting them with the right means for the attainment of this end, and helping them to use them, and hindering them from thecontrary.

1. It is the first and great work of the Ministers of Christ to acquaint men with that God that made them, and is their happiness to open to them the treasures of his goodness, and tell them of the glory that is in his presence, which all his chosen people shall enjoy: that so by shewing men the certainty and the excellency of the promised felicity, and the perfect blessedness in the life to come, compared with the vanities of this present life, we may turn the stream of