How good we are as preachers depends - not altogether, but (make no mistake!) primarily - on how good we are as men.

As the world is weary of me so am I of it.

The testimony of scripture is so plain that to add anything were superfluous, were it not that the world is almost now come to that blindness, that whatsoever pleases not the princes and the multitude, the same is rejected as doctrine newly forged, and is condemned for heresy.

Prayer is an earnest and familiar talking with God, to whom we declare all our miseries, whose support and help we implore and desire in our adversities, and whom we laud and praise for our benefits received. So that prayer contains the exposition of our sorrows, the desire of God's defence, and the praising of His magnificent name, as the Psalms of David clearly do teach.

You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.

The general consent of all that sect is that God (by his foreknowledge, counsel, and wisdom) has no assured election, neither yet any certain reprobation, but that every man may elect or reprobate himself by his own free will, which he has (say they) to do good or evil ... [All these things are] forged by their own brains, and polished by the finest of their wits, when yet in very deed they are but the rotten heresies of ... Pelagius, long ago confuted by Augustine.

But hereof be assured, that all is not lawful nor just that is statute by civil laws; neither yet is everything sin before God, which ungodly persons allege to be treason.