RULES FOR HEARING THE Word of God With certain and saving Benefit.  
The Second Edition.  
By DANIEL BURGESS, Minister of the Gospel.  
Published by an Hearer of them, at the Request of many others.  
London, Printed for Andrew Bell and Ionas Luntley, at the Pestle and Mortar, over against the Horse-shoe-Tavern in Chancery-Lane. MDCXCIII.  
Price Three Pence.   

Rules for hearing the Word of God, with certain saving Benefit.  

BEFORE you Hear.  

DIrection I. Pray for a Blessing. Ask and you shall receive it. Sincere hearty Prayer is still a Prevailer; and then most, when it is for Gifts that be best. But by not ask a Blessing, you deserve a Curse: because you do virtually tell God, either that you need not his Spirit, or that you desire not the saving Efficacy of his Word. Neglect of Prayer will ruin the best Hearer; holy Use of it will save the worst Hearer.   

Direct. II. Use Forecast against Distractions in Hearing. Wrath, and Lust, and sinful Passions will take away your Heart at Sermons; but a constant cordial Watch and Fight against them, will destroy those Destroyer's. God will let no Soul be devoured by them, that is diligent to keep from them: Though on the other hand, Souls that do little to prevent them, shall be plagued with them. Divine Grace will not encourage your sinful Negligence: No, but the Temptations which overtake you wilfully, shall overcome you woefully. Believe sad Experience, others and your own.   

Direct. III. Value the Word, and the Preaching of it, and thank God for them both. Honour them for God's sake, and God will honour and bless you for his Son's sake, and for his Promise sake: God is so free of his Blessing on both, that he lets no Man who highly prizeth it, go without it. You may highly prise Gold and Silver, and go without them: but the richer Treasure of the Gospel is certainly your own, if you can but supremely value it. If you do despise it, blame yourselves that you are not enriched by it. God will not throw his inestimable Pearl unto ungrateful Swine: Swine that will not give so much as Thanks for the Pearl of greatest Price.   

Direct. iv Acquaint yourselves well with the Ends and Uses of the Word. Read Books, and ask Ministers, and know as well as they, to what Purposes God sendeth his Oracles: The four comprehensive Ends are, to convince of Sin, to convert unto Jesus Christ, to confirm in Grace, to direct and comfort in Obedience: Understand these, and muse much on them. Come to Sermons for these, and you shall not go from Sermons without them: But God hath not Pleasure in Fools: and if you come to hear for you know not what, it's no marvel if you come away Fools as you went.   

Direct. V. Never forget God's Promise of Blessing on dutiful Hearing. He cannot lie; and he has told you, Hear and your Souls shall live. Keep you that Promise of his as the Apple of your Eye. It will do your Heart good to think, God hath not left himself at Liberty to bless or not bless your Hearing: No, but that his FREE Grace is also Bound Grace; bound by Word and Oath. This will give you holy Boldness, to which God always giveth happy Welcome. But the want of this in your Mind, will keep it full of cursed and malignant Doubts and Fears. Without a Miracle of Grace it will hold you fearful, and hold you unbelieving; that is, perishing.   

Direct. VI Honourably use your Advocates. All the Week long honour the Son of God, as he in whom alone you can ever have Acceptance with God: and honour the holy Spirit of God, by whom alone you can ever have effectual Assistance to any Good. No Man ever thus honoured the Son and Spirit, and went without the full Blessing of the Word. Without our Intercessor in Heaven, and our Intercessor in our Hearts, we can profitably do nothing; but with them we may do every thing prosperously: Therefore be Sermons  so lost, because this Dependence on Christ and on his Spirit are scarce any where found. O that this Word might be well weighed!   

Direct. VII. Conclude upon it, the Word will be the Savour of Life or Death unto you. It will cure you, or further kill you; and give Life to Life, or Death to Death. Give yourselves this preparatory Sermon before you come to hear mine. Minister's Sermons soften or harden Hearers Souls; they never leave you (in degrees of Good or Evil) as they find you. Such Fore-thoughts are ordinary Antecedents, and direct Causes of no small Good.    

IN Hearing the Word.  

DIrection I. Approve Plainness and Power. Not only excuse and endure, but approve and prefer them. You like best the Physician that heals best; and the Counsellor at Law that best brings you to Peace, and quiet Possession of your Inheritance; though neither of them do compliment you at all, but reprove you much, and chastise your mischievous Folly with needful Severity. Be as wise for your Souls as for your Bodies and Estates. God heals the sick Souls that prefer and use his own prescribed plain Medicines: But nice and peevish Ones, that loath his Manna, and must have Quails; that disgust his sharp Word, and must be treated with men's smooth Words; such must die in their Pride and Folly. Where Preachers be but Musicians, Churches be but Golgotha's.   

Direct. II. Receive the faithful Minister's Words as God's own: for so they are; they are God's Words originally; his Sermon as well as his Text, is all of it so. They are God's Words materially, as to the Matter and Sense of them. They are God's Words to you institutively; by God's Command they be spoken unto you. They are God's Words given advantageously; Words of God, by the Kindness of God, delivered with more Advantage for your Minds and Hearts than in the Holy Scripture barely read: Words of God, with a Comment of his Appointment: Words of God, to which he hath made a special Promise of highest Blessing: for Faith (eminently) comes by hearing these Words: He that heareth you, heareth me, said Christ to the Preachers that he sent. Receive every Gospel-Sermon as by Christ preached, and doubt not but it shall be by Christ blessed: But if you take the Words as well as the Breath of a Sermon, for ours, the Mistake will be a deadly Loss of yours.   

Direct. III. Mix abundance of Prayer with your Hearing. Souls are Spirits, their Motions are swifter than the Sun's; they can, and they ought to do two things at once: Ejaculation helps Attention, and not hinders it: Bread and Salt must be in every Meal, and short warm Prayer in every Duty. Let your Hearts cry out at every Truth delivered, O Lord, fix this Truth on my Soul! At every Precept and Promise, Good God, help me to obey this Command, and to rely on this Promise! At every Reproof, Glorious Spirit, convince and humble me for this Sin, and lead me to Christ for Pardon, etc. Such praying Hearers never lose their Labours. But woe to them, who though at Sermon-time they be not deaf Adders, yet they be dumb Dogs, whose Hearts do not to this Purpose speak, while their Ears hear. I do not well hearken to the Ambassador, when I pray not much to the King.   

Direct. iv Apply to your own Souls what the Preacher saith to all. To know for one's good, the Hebrews call to know for one's self: And do not all the World so do? Ministers be Nurses, Sermons be Breasts, God's Word is Milk, Hearers be the Children, and right Hearing is their sucking the Milk into each one's own Soul. What another sucks and applies, will not nourish thee. Say thou then of every Doctrine, This is my Lesson, I will learn it: Of every Command, This is my Duty, I will do it: Of every Promise, This is my Encouragement, and I will make Meat and Drink of it; my Soul shall rely and feed hereon. Who ever miss of Life by the Word of Life, that so took it to themselves? Who did ever thus suck, and not grow by the Gospel's Milk? Blessed are they that thus monopolise a Sermon: While, to be sure, all are starved that do not thus feed, whatever Dainties are set before them. And they are the most miserable of all the Damned, who starve themselves where they might have feasted.   

Direct. V Express your Reverence of God in a Sermon, unto all the Congregation. God is specially present in Heaven, and at a Sermon: Do you believe it? Then show that Faith of yours: Show it to your God, and to your Conscience, by holy Thoughts and holy Affections: Yea, and show it to all the Church by your well-composed Countenances, and becoming Gestures. Your Bodies are God's as well as your Souls: If you do not glorify him with both, you glorify him with neither. God lays no hard Impositions on Aged, Sickly, Weak Bodies: But he requites others to give him reverend Postures. Heads unnecessarily covered in Hearing, are sinfully covered, and scandalously. Gadding Eyes are impudent Publishers of profane rambling Hearts; and of those Fools, whereof one makes many. Put off your Shoes, and keep them off while you are on holy Ground: That is, be Reverend in Soul and Body. So honour God before all the People, and then he shall make it seen before all the People, how he honoureth and blesseth you. Irreverence at a Sermon, is a public Call to God for Damnation: A constructive bidding God to damn you, where Hundreds may be Witnesses to it; and, without God's great Grace, be poisoned by it. [There are who say, that all Dissenters are irreverent in Worship: See you that they slander us not with a matter of Truth.]   

Direct. VI Honour the Preacher as a Man of God, and no more. God styles a Minister by that Name; and God's Names be the most proper and instructive. A Minister is but a Man; do not therefore adore him as a God. Let him be so thy Minister, that Christ may still be thy only supreme Shepherd and Bishop. He is but a Man; expect therefore and bear with his Infirmities, and pray God for his Assistances to him. He is but a Man; therefore pin not thy Faith on his Sleeve, but exercise thy own Sense, and beg the Guidance of God's holy Spirit. Yet nevertheless, he is a Man of God, remember: If not, do not hear him: If so, consider while thou art hearing, he is one that hath received the Holy Ghost; he is one that Christ hath qualified and commissioned, under himself, to be a Saviour of thee, and of all that hear him. Wherefore do not despise him, as not adore him. Thou shalt profit by him, if thou hearest him as he is, an Ambassador of God, a Messenger of Christ, an Overseer made by the Holy Ghost. But woe is thine, if thou followest him either as a God, or as a common Man. The Gospel pronounceth no Blessing upon the Superstitious, or upon the Profane.   

Direct. VII. Project to retain as much as may be of what you hear. All along your hearing, design and do what you can for remembering. Say over to yourselves the Doctrine many times: and, if you can, repeat to yourselves all the Heads of the Discourse: But lay fast hold of the main Drift of every Sermon. However Nature, Sickness or Age may have incurably wounded your Memories, God is gracious, remember. He will accept an unfeigned  for the very Deed. His Spirit shall be a never-failing Remembrancer, to such as against their Wills, and against their Endeavours, be forgetful. He will not call them forgetful Hearers, that strain and strive, and do their best to be tenacious ones. But he will so call, and will curse those, who like not and list not to retain his Word, as well as to receive it. Hearers so wilfully dull, must look to remain among the Dead. As they are slothful, they are wicked Servants. And let them expect Christ's foretold Word, Depart ye Cursed. Heaven is no Hive for Drones. Ignorance is a Curse; and if it be your Choice, it will as surely be your Destruction as your Option.    

AFTER Hearing God's Word.  

DIrection I. Take the most earnest heed that you do not let slip what you have received. Your Memories be the great Servants of your Faith, Hope and Obedience; and they are but imperfectly sanctified: they be too much like the Grates that let go clean Water, and hold filthy Mud. If you take little Pains about them, you will have but sorry Service from them. The best Ground will never hold the good Seed, if no care be had to drive off the Fowls that will be coming and catching it away, and if Labour be not bestown to harrow it in. This Labour for the Word is Labour in the Lord; and it shall not be in vain. Thus do, you shall surely prosper, and do well. But if this be too much in your Conceits; if you are lame, and will not use Crutches; if you cannot otherwise remember, and you will not talk with yourselves and Families of a Sermon; nor go forth unto a Repetition; nor ask the holy Spirit to be your Remembrancer; you must take to your Sorrow, what you get by your Sloth. The Devil cannot rob you of a Sermon against your Will: and God will not keep a Sermon in your Mind without your William.   

Direct. II. Let your Thanks be returned after every Sermon heard. Thanks and Praise are God's dearly beloved; the End of all his Works; of your Being's, your Redemption, your Gospel-Calls, all Ordinances and Providences. It is Hell where no Praise and Thanks are; and it is Heaven where there is nothing besides. Nothing delighteth God so much as these; and for nothing on this Earth doth God expect these, more than for his Gospel preached. When it is said, He giveth his Word, 'tis presently added, Praise ye the Lord. And this Praise we are told, shall please the Lord better than an Ox or Bullock, than any external Sacrifice. If unprofitableness by the Word do not drive away Thankfulness, Thankfulness for the Word shall be sure to drive away unprofitableness. Let your Thanks be more than verbal, your Profit shall be real: It shall appear to all Men. But as long as you hear unthankfully, you must be and appear unholy. Ingratitude doth, of any Sin to be named, turn Honey into Gall, and Physic to Poison. It is the same thing, to call a Man unthankful, and to say he is a Samaritan, and hath a Devil.   

Direct. III. Lament your Sins in hearing, and go act Faith on Christ for your Pardon. Abundance of Dross is in all our Gold. Iniquity abounds in our holy Things. The holiest of them all need a thousand Pardons, and deserve our deepest Blushes. And let us not flatter ourselves, Repenting and Believing be not Things indifferent, or Acts of mere Christian Liberty, but indispensable Duty. They must go before the Seal of our Pardon, in our Conscience or in Heaven. And believe it, God is incensed with Sin, whoever it be that sinneth, and in whatever. He delighteth to be kind, but he hateth to be fond. As ever you would profit by a Sermon, follow it with the Tears of Repentance, and with the Prayers of Faith. Then will God give you Profit, with Measure pressed down and running over. If you are too proud for this; in God's Name I tell you, that Pride of yours shall have a shameful Fall. The best thing proud, is worse than the worst that is truly humble.   

Direct. iv Examine with humble Diligence, what in hearing appeared to you as doubtful. Suspect your own Understandings more than your Minister's: But lean not rashly on your own, or idolatrously on his. If Error be in his Doctrine, it turns to Poison in thy Soul. Wherefore do not swallow what thou dost suspect. The most noble Hearers try all Doctrine by the holy Scriptures. Good Children ask their Parent's Advice; wise Women ask their Husbands; the Wise of all Sorts go ask their Ministers, and entreat them to clear up by God's written Word the Truth of their preached Word. Thus do; and whoever be barren Hearers, you shall be fruitful ones. God never fails to teach Souls so careful to imbibe nothing but Truth. O happy Church where Mal. 2.7. is wisely and duly observed! where Minister's Lips preserve Knowledge, and People seek it at their Mouths. But it is no more than is to be expected, if stupid Drones and contentious Cavillers, live Idiots, and die without saving Wisdom. God's Curse rests on the Idle, and he resisteth the Proud.   

Direct. V Prove your State and Condition by every Gospel-Sermon. You cannot try too often, things whereof you can never be sufficiently certain: I mean so much certain, but that you will still need to be more certain. You are true Believers and alive to God, or unbelievers and dead in Sin and Misery. You are strong in the Grace that is in Christ, or Babes weak in the same. It is a sorry Sermon by which no Help is given you, to form a Judgement of yourselves touching these things. God's Blessing upon your conscientious Care to make use of the Help, you need not to distrust. His Command on you to prove yourselves, is not without a Promise of Blessing made to it. He ever enricheth those Hearers, who use Sermons as Scales to weigh, and Touchstones to try their Souls. But as for the Presumptuous, who dream themselves to be as good as they need to be; and the Despairing, who conclude that they shall remedilessly abide as bad as they are, and therefore never put the Word of God so close unto them; What Hope of these! God will condemn those by his Word, who will not judge themselves by it. If you will not make it a Light unto you, he will make it Fire to you.   

Direct. VI Carry on your Knowledge, Memory, and every good Purpose, unto Practice. Christian Divinity is an Art of doing more than knowing God's Will, remembering it, and temporarily purposing to do it: It teacheth living unto God. Word and Sacraments, yea Faith and Repentance, all are for Obedience. God gave his Son, and sent down his Spirit, to get him a People zealous of good Works as well as Words. Much Fruit it is (and not your fair Leaves) that glorifieth God. And it is the Hearer, rich in good Works, that God will glorify: The Hearer, to whose Feet the Word is a Light, to walk by it; as well as a Light to his Head, to talk by it. I have Warrant from our Saviour to tell you; If you hear his Word and so keep it, you shall have greater Honour than the Virgin Mary had in being his Mother. And do you but still do the Word of his that you know, you shall never fail to be made know the Word that he would have you to do. Use well your Hands and Feet, and he will make every Sermon a Royal Salve to your Eyes. But from him that practiseth not what he knows, from him shall be taken the Light that he hath: To him is promised no more Light; unto him is threatened the darkest Fire, Luke 28.29. Heathen Moralists hold no Man to be so very bad, as he who acts Evil, and no more than talks of Good. Christian ones must needs pronounce them the worst Monsters, that speak as with cloven Tongues, and yet, as Negroes, are not where white but in the Mouth.   

Direct. VII. Teach your Relations what God teacheth you at Sermons. God will never forfeit his Name of Love; nor fail to reward Charity, and specially Soul-Charity. It is the Devil's Proverb, The Free shall not be fat. God's Proverb is, The liberal Soul shall be made fat, and he that waters others shall be watered. God will hid nothing from an Abraham, for this very reason, because he will instruct all his Family with it. Go you now and instruct yours; so shall you be taught of God as you have never been in past Days: Drop Divine Truths on them, and God shall make Sermons rain down rich Showers on you. But vain are your idle Moans, while you are uncharitable to your Relations. If I know the Mind of God, He will starve you if you will not feed them. God is a great lover of Children; and our Children are his more than ours. Nor can you easily incense God more, than by neglect of these his Children. I wonder not that many hear and understand not; because what they understand, they teach not. You may be ever learning, but you shall never come to the saving Knowledge of the Truth, until you make conscience of communicating the Truth you know. Thus, spend, and God will send. Teach others, and God shall teach you; comfort them, and God shall increase and multiply Comfort to you.    

When these Rules shall be observed, Ministers shall be joyful (both) Fathers and Nurses: The Bed of Christ shall be green in our Assemblies. It shall be no more querulously said, that our Sermons have miscarrying Wombs and dry Breasts. Joy shall be made in Heaven, and in the midst of us. Fear shall come on every Soul of our Scorners. We shall praise God as the Primitive Christians, and have Favour with all the People. The Word of God shall so run and be glorified; and God, even our own God shall so bless us. Amen.   
FINIS.