So you want to be a pastor?

“We may see by experience, that to study with constantness, to instruct with diligence, to exhort with carefulness, to reprove with zeal, to comfort with cheerfulness, to convince with boldness, to watch over people with a godly oversight, as they that must give an account for their souls, to conceive godly anger and great sorrow for sin, to pray in public and private, to go in and out before the people of God in the doctrine of faith and in example of life, to prepare themselves to handle the Word and to deliver it with power and evidence of the Spirit and with earnest affection being thus prepared I say, to perform all these duties does more consume the inward parts, waste the body, impair nature, decay strength, spend the vital spirits and cause them to be subject to sundry infirmities, sicknesses and diseases than any of the strongest labour that is used among men.” (The Nature of Pastoral Ministry, and its Toll on the Man of God, William Attersol,  1630)