"O brethren! Write this on your study doors - set it in capital letters as your copy, that it may be set ever before your eyes. Could we but learn two or three lines of it, what preachers should we be!
1. Our General Business - [b]Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears.
2. Our Special Work - [b]Take heed to yourselves and to all your flock.
3. Our Doctrine - [b]Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
4. The Place and Manner of Teaching - [b]I have taught you publically, and from house to house.
5. Our Diligence, Earnestness, and Affection - [b]I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears
6. Our Faithfulness - [b]I kept nothing back that was profitable unto you, and have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
7. Our Self-Denial for the Sake of the Gospel - [b]I have coveted no man's silver or gold or apparel: yea, these hands have ministered unto mine own necessities, and to them that were with me, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'
8. Our Patience and Perseverence - [b]None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto me, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus.
9. Our Prayerfulness - [b]I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.
10. Our Purity of Conscience - [b]Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men.
Write all this upon your hearts, and it will do yourselves and the Church more good than twenty years' study of those lower things, which, though they might get you greater applause in the world, yet, if separated from these, they will make you but "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.'"
- From Richard Baxter's "The Reformed Pastor"
