“As you are a superior,

1. Walk worth of all honour and due respect…

…behaving yourself in your place with such holiness, wisdom, gravity, justice, and mercy; and observing such a medium between too much rigour and remissness, between straining your authority too far, and relaxing it too much, that those under your charge may have cause to fear and love you. (Lev. 25:43)

2. Wait on your office, and be watchful over your charge…

…with all diligence and faithfulness; using all good means to direct and preserve them in the duties of godliness and honesty (1 Tim 2:2), which is the only end why God has set you over them. The means are:

1. Go before them in good example. Examples of superiors have a kind of constraining power, working strongly and insensibly upon inferiors.
2. Pray with them and for them (Job 1:5)
3. Command only things lawful, possible, and convenient, and only those to which the extentof your authority from God and man doth allow you.
4. As much as in you lies, procure for them the means, and put them upon the opportunities of being, and of doing good (Exod. 20:8-10).
5. Prevent likewise and remove all occasions of their being, and of doing evil.
6. Protect and defend them, according to your power from all wrongs and injuries.
7. When they do well, encourage them, by letting them see that you take notice as readily of their well-doing, as of their faults (Psalm 101:6); and os far as is fit, let them have the praise and fruit of their well-doing (Proverbs 31:31).
8. When they do evil, rebuke them more or less, according to the nature of their fault: but never with bitterness (Col. 3:19-21; Eph 6:9), by railing at or reviling them, in terms of disdain and contempt. There should be always more strength of reason in your words to convince them of their sin, and how tom ake them see their danger, and to know how to be reformed, than heat of anger, in uttering your own displeasure.
9. If admonitions and words will reclaim them, then proceed not to corrections and blows; but if they regard not your reproofs, then according to the nature of the fault, and condition of the person, and the limits of your authority, you must, in mercy to their soul, give them sufficient but not excessive punishment (Proverbs 29:15-19).
10. When you have done thus, and have waited a convenient time for their admendment, but find none; when they thus declare themselves to be rebellious, you must seek the help of higher authority (Deut. 21:18-21).

That you may govern according to these directions:

Consider well and often, first, that those whom you govern, are such whom you must not oppress, neither may you rule over them with rigour (Lev. 25:39-43); because they now are, or may be heirs of the same grace together with you (1 Pet 3:7).

Secondly, remember often, that you have a Superior in heaven (Eph 6:9; Col 4:1), that you are his servant and deputy, governing under him, and that at last, a time will come when you must give account to him of your government.