care is one of the church’s structured expressions of the means of grace. Exercised by both clergy and laity, this care includes traditional tasks of general visitation, comfort of the grieving, help for the sick and needy, forgiveness for the guilty, and the “cure of souls” through discipline and forgiveness. Or, pastoral care is a ministry of the church to bring comfort and redirection to persons in need of renewal.

As every troop or company in a regiment of soldiers must have their own captain and other officers, and every soldier know his own commanders and colours: so is it the will of God, that every church have their own pastors, and that all Christ’s disciples “do know their teachers that are over them in the Lord.” (1 Thess. 5:12, 13.)

It is the first and great work of the Ministers of Christ to acquaint men with that God that made them, and is their happiness: to open to them the treasures of his goodness, and tell them of the glory that is in his presence, which all his chosen people shall enjoy: that so by shewing men the certainty and the excellency of the promised felicity, and the perfect blessedness in the life to come, compared with the vanities of this present life, we may turn the stream of their cogitations and affections, and bring them to a due contempt of this world, and set them on seeking the durable treasuer: and this is the work that we should lie at with them night and day