2. AND for our people, we have as many Difficulties to encounter with in them. 1. Too many of them will be obstinately unwilling to be taught; and scorn to come at us, as being too good to be catechized, or too old to learn: unless we deal wisely with them in publike and private, by the force of Reasons, the power of Love to conquer their perversness; which we must carefully endea∣vour.

2. And so great is the dulness of many that are willing, that they can scarce learn a leaf of a Cate∣chism in a long time, and therefore will keep away, as ashamed of their ignorance, unless we are wise and diligent to encourage them.

3. And when they do come, so great is their igno∣rance and unapprehensiveness, that you will find it a wonderful hard matter to get them to understand Page  354 you, so that if you have not the skill of making things plain, you will leave them as strange to it, as before.

4. And yet harder will you find it to work things upon their hearts, and set them so close to the quick, as to make that saving change which is our end, and without which our labour is almost lost. Oh what a block, what a rock is a hardened carnal heart! How stiffly will it resist the most powerful perswasions! and hear of everlasting life or death as a thing of no∣thing! If you have not therefore great seriousness, and fervency, and working matter, and fitness of ex∣pression, what good can you expect? And when all is done, the spirit of Grace must do the work: But as God and men do use to choose instruments most suitable to the nature of the agent, work or end, so here the spirit of wisdom, life, and holiness, doth not use to work by foolish, dead or carnal instruments, but by such perswasions of Light, and Life, and Pu∣rity, as are likest to it self, and to the work that is to be wrought thereby.

5. And when you have made some desirable Im∣pressions on their hearts, if you look not after them, and have not a special care of them when they are gone, their hearts will soon return to their former hardness, and their old companions, and temptations will work off all again. I do but briefly hint these things which you so well know. All the difficulties of the work of conversion, which you use to acquaint the people with, are here before us in our present work; which I will forbear to enumerate, as suppo∣sing it unnecessary.