CHAPTER XIX.
DIRECTIONS FOR PROFITABLE HEARING THE WORD PREACHED.
Omitting those directions which concern the external modes of worship, (for the reasons mentioned part. iii. and known to all that know me and the time and place I live in,) I shall give you such directions about the personal, internal management of your duty, as I think most necessary to your edification. And seeing that your duty and benefit lieth in these four general points: 1. That you hear with understanding. 2. That you remember what you hear. 3. That you be duly affected with it. 4. And that you sincerely practise it: I shall more particularly direct you in order to all these ends and duties.
Tit. 1. Directions for the Understanding the Word which you hear.
Direct. I. Read and meditate on the holy Scriptures much in private, and then you will be the better able to understand what is preached on it in public, and to try the doctrine, whether it be of God. Whereas if you are unacquainted with the Scriptures, all that is treated of or alleged from them, will be so strange to you, that you will be but little edified by it, Psal. i. 2; cxix.; Deut. vi. 11, 12.
Direct. II. Live under the clearest, distinct, convincing teaching that possibly you can procure. There is an unspeakable difference as to the edification of the hearers, between a judicious, clear, distinct, and skilful preacher, and one that is ignorant, confused, general, dry, and only scrapeth together a cento or mingle-mangle of some undigested sayings to fill up the hour with. If in philosophy, physics, grammar, law, and every art and science, there be so great a difference between one teacher and another, it must needs be so in divinity also. Ignorant teachers, that understand not what they say themselves, are unlike to make you men of understanding; as erroneous teachers are unlike to make you orthodox and sound.
Direct. III. Come not to hear with a careless heart, as if you were to hear a matter that little concerned you, but come with a sense of the unspeakable weight, necessity, and consequence of the holy word which you are to hear: and when you understand how much you are concerned in it, and truly love it, as the word of life, it will greatly help your understanding of every particular truth. That which a man loveth not, and perceiveth no necessity of, he will hear with so little regard and heed, that it will make no considerable impression on his mind. But a good understanding of the excellency and necessity, exciting love and serious attention, would make the particulars easy to be understood; when else you will be like a stopped or narrow-mouthed bottle, that keepeth out that which you desire to put in. I know that understanding must go before affections; but yet the understanding of the concernments and worth of your own souls, must first procure such a serious care of your salvation, and a general regard to the word of God, as is needful to your further understanding of the particular instructions, which you shall after hear.
Direct. IV. Suffer not vain thoughts or drowsy negligence to hinder your attention. If you mark not what is taught you, how should you understand and learn? Set yourselves to it, as for your lives: be as earnest and diligent in attending and learning, as you would have the preacher be in teaching.[45] If a drowsy, careless preacher be bad, a drowsy, careless hearer is not good. Saith Moses, Deut. xxxii. 46, 47, "Set your hearts to all the words which I testify among you this day.—For it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life." You would have God attentive to your prayers in your distresses; and why will you not then be attentive to his words, when "the prayers of him are abominable to God, that turneth away his ear from hearing the law?" Luke xix. 48, "All the people were very attentive to hear Christ." Neh. viii. 3, when Ezra read the law "from morning till mid-day, the ears of all the people were attentive to it." When Paul continued his Lord's-day exercise and speech until midnight, one young man that fell asleep, did fall down dead as a warning to them that will sleep, when they should hear the message of Christ, Acts xx. 9. Therefore you are excused that day from worldly business, "that you may attend on the Lord without distraction," 1 Cor. vii. 35. Lydia's attending to the words of Paul, accompanied the opening of her heart and her conversion, Acts xvi. 14.
Direct. V. Mark especially the design and drift, and principal doctrine of the sermon. Both because that is the chief thing that the preacher would have marked; and because the understanding of that will much help you to understand all the rest, which dependeth on it, and relateth to it.
Direct. VI. Mark most those things which are of greatest weight and concernment to your souls. And do not fix upon some little sayings, and by-discourses, or witty sentences; like children that bring home some scraps and words which they do but play with.