dead only to have the delicious pleasure of killing them again.— But in his excellencies we almoft lofe fight of his defects; and are tempted to forgive the vanity of exultation, in the merit which fairly won the palms of conqueft.

We repeat this teftimony of our former applause, as an evidence of our good difpofition towards the Author. We should rejoice to pay the fame tribute of refpect to the Divine as to the Hiftorian; and moft gladly would entwine in one wreath the honours of both. But what friendfhip fometimes wishes, impartiality refolutely forbids!

Thefe fermons are dedicated to the Bishop of Exeter and the dedication, amidst much tautology of declamation, couched in language fometimes tumid, fometimes myftical, and fometimes fantaftical, contains, together with fome very fevere reflections on the nonconformits of the last century, a variety of fenfible and elegant remarks on the general mode of preaching, that hath prevailed among the English clergy from the Reformation to the present day, and the beft means of making fermons anfwer the great ends of popular inftruction.

For nearly a century (fays Mr. Whitaker) after the Reformation, the church-difcourfes of our country feem to have been the driest and, the dulleft addresses that were ever made to a popular affembly. A poor play upon words, a mere splitting of hairs, an involution of divifions within divifions, quotations from the Vulgate tranflation, quotations from the Greek original, quotations from the Scholiaft upon the latter, all minced and carved in the most fantastical fashions, make up the body, and the foul too, of the celebrated compofitions among them. They are particularly ftiffened over with the ice of fcholaftic learning. A polar froft reigns throughout. And one cannot but pity the people who were to derive fo much of their infpiring warmth in religion from fuch a freezing power. Only the feelings of the people, I fuppofe, were in a juft proportion to the fpirits of their preachers. And the ftate of religion at the time, perhaps, required more of the light of instruction than of the fire of exhortation.

In this dead ftyle of our fermons, a new mode was adopted by the Diffenters. Enthufiafm now did in religion, what genius haddone in poetry before. It ftimulated the fober fpirits of the nation into the liveliest exertions. It even did this with an additional load upon them from the gloomy herety of Calvinifin. And a warm impaffioned kind of oratory prevailed univerfally in the conventicle. It there wrought wonderful effects. It thundered and it lightened in its own element of turbulence. It carried the common people along with it. It hurried them into fchifm, fedition, and rebellion. I fent them in arms against their fovereign" with a controuling horror on their spirits." And it terminated its career at laft in the fub. verfion of our church and monarchy.

• This dreadful evidence of the power of the pulpit, when directed to engage the pallions, and to agitate the foul, fhould have carried conviction with it to the minds of the nation. It fhould have induced

Bishop Andrews's, &c. &c.

+ Clarendon.

Ꮓ

REV. April, 1783.

the

the clergy, especially, to purfue the conduct of the Diffenting teach. ers on a better plan, to catch a portion of their fire, and to prefent it at the real altars of religion. But fo little is the human understanding influenced by reason, that the very fuccefs of those teachers prevented any imitation of them. They had abufed the natural energy of the pulpit. They turned it into an inftrument of distraction to the nation. They had swept reafon and religion before it. And, therefore, the preaching of the cle gy went on pretty nearly in its ancient manner.'

The ingenious Author confiders the Reformation as the grand æra of emancipation to the oratory of the church.' He mentions Tillotson's Sermons as compofitions which fome have regarded as models; but he feems only to confider them as the fore-runners of a reformation of pulpit eloquence. They have (fays our Author) been exceeded in all their characteristic excellencies by a variety of difcourfes fince.' Yet fill it is his opinion, that we are however far, very far from perfection.' We have, it feems, a large portion of the national phlegm ftill prefiding over the pulpit; and our difcourfes from thence are almost as little calculated at prefent to win the heart, to captivate the paffions, and to compel men into religion, as ever they were, even in the dulleft and drieft periods of our church eloquence." The Author attempts to account for this defect. We are, in his opinion, more concerned to inform the judgment, by the flow fteps of argument, than to roufe the affections by the impaffioned energy of rhetoric. We are more reafoners than orators; and court the understanding more than the heart. Our didactic fermons are frigid and unanimating. What they gain in conviction, they lofe in perfuafion; their heat is not proportioned to their light. Our fentimental difcourfes are flimfy and futile. They play round the head, but come not to the heart. Or if (fays Mr. W.) they fometimes come to it, they reach it not in those ftrong ftrokes, in thofe deep and awful gafhes, which conftitute the very effence of effective oratory, and which the elevated fpirit of the gofpcl is fo directly calculated to give.' The fault, it fhould feem, of thefe difcourfes lies in their refinement-a ftudied rational refinement which condefcends not to the livelier part of man, his paffions-the most active, the moft manageable half of the human frame.' The warm, ftrong, fublime oratory with which the political fpeakers of former and prefent times have carried fuch fway in the world, though generally excluded from the pulpit, yet is moft admirably calculated to effect its greater purposes, efpecially when accompanied with the tremendous fanctions of the Gospel. Thefe will give it additional force; and make its energy irresistible.

The eloquence (fays Mr. W.) which is adapted to the mixed numbers of a congregation is of a mixed kind itself. It confifts, I apprehend, not in elegance of language, not in refinement of thought, and not in both together; but in obfervations which lie level to the mon intellects of mankind; in addreffes that go directly to the

fedlings,

feelings, and in a bold, pointed, and popular language to convey

them.

The prefent difcourfes are now offered to the Public as models of this bold and forcible fpecies of eloquence; and the Author informs his Diocefan, in the very outfet of his Dedication, that he publishes them with the view of recommending a change in the ftructure of compofitions for the pulpit.' The attempt is fomewhat daring. To depreciate the compofitions of others; to point out their defects; to fhew the causes of them, required no great fortitude, and perhaps no great art. But after delineating the principles of more perfect and effective compofitions, to attempt to illuftrate them by examples formed upon thefe principles, and to exhibit them to the feverer eye of criticifm (for criticism is allowed to be fevere on all reformers) as models for general imitation, this-this called for courage beyond the ftretch of common refolution, and for fkill beyond the reach of common ingenuity.

Let fuch teach others who themselves excel

And cenfure freely who have written well.

Mr. Whitaker thinks himself entitled to the privilege of the cenfor, in reward of his merit as a writer: and feels fo ftrongly his own excellence, that he seems to take it for granted, that it will of course make the fame impreffion on others. What bubbles we are to ourselves! Vanity expands the flight filament, and imagination colours it!-But why should we think of a bubble, when Mr. Whitaker would have us think of a God! Yes!-the God of the pulpit-the Jove of Oratorywho grafps the bolt-who darts the lightning of the Gospel :' -or at leaft its Cæfar or its Marlborough, who works its battering rams' against the citadel of the heart; or brings up the heavy artillery from the arfenal of heaven' to make the breaches deep and awful;' and calling forth the terrible graces of Chriftian oratory, pushes in at the open avenues of the heart:'and to carry on the metaphor, takes it (word in hand, and carries it by ftorm!

Torva Mimalloneis implerunt cornua bombis:

Et raptum VITULO caput, &c.

PERSIUS.

And this brings us to the fermons.-They are in number eleven; and have the fame common text, viz. "It is appointed unto men once to die," &c.

The first fermon afferts, that the human body was originally defigned by Divine providence to be totally exempt from infirmities, decay, and mortality: but yet, that death would naturally have happened to our perifhing frames, even in the scenes of Paradife, had it not been for the life-giving fruit there.' On the refurrection of the body, our Preacher advances fome of the most curious and fingular hypothefes that, we believe, were ever propofed (in carne) by any man, who had the leaft ambition to fe

Z. 2

cure

cure even the flighteft reputation for foundness of intellects. After remarking, that there are certain fixed parts of the body which remain unchangeable (though, it seems, their fixed and unchangeable parts actually admit of growth, and increase in fize!) the Preacher gravely afferts, that they will continue to give the body-what can the Reader fuppofe they will give? perhaps― an effential or a metaphyfical identity.-They will give more. They will, in fhort, continue to give the body the SAME AIR, the SAME TURN of countenance, that it had before.' This very fingular pofition our Preacher attempts to confirm and ilJuftrate by the following remark: Our Saviour was just the fame in his looks, in his tone of voice, and in his peculiarities of action, after his refurrection, as he was before it: and, confequently, we fhall all of us be equally the fame.'

And doth Mr. W. really fuppofe that the glorified body of Chrift is of the fame form, and texture, and quality, with that in which he appeared to his difciples after his refurrection? For their fatisfaction it was neceflary that it fhould not only be the fame, but preserve alfo the fame appearance, or, as the Preacher fays, have the fame looks, the fame tone of voice, and the fame peculiarities of action as it had before.' Had it been the 66 glorious body" into the image of which we fhall at last be changed, when what is natural will become fpiritual, and what is corruptible incorruptible, it could have carried no evidence to those who could only judge of objects by the common organs of fenfe; and confequently their teftimony to the refurrection of their mafter would have been, at leaft, equivocal and unfatisfactory, if Chrift had not appeared with the vifible and palpable body that they had fo long known, with all its characteristic features and peculiarities of action.'-But it is wafting time to reafon on this fubject. We do not enter the lifts with Mr. Whitaker as difputants.-It is enough for our purpose to permit him to speak for himself.

Mr. Whitaker's language, though in fome places very strong, and in others very beautiful, yet is frequently trained by metaphors to the utmoft pitch of affectation. They double, they redouble upon us; and we are fcarcely recovered from the impulfe of one, before we are affailed, by the fhock of another :

The weather-beaten failor is now approaching to port. The foldier, exhaulled with the fatigues of the campaign, is now retiring into quarters. Aud the religious foul, which has long been kept at a distance from her God, by the veil of human flesh, and by the cloud of human infirmities, is now haftening towards him. The veil of the flesh is gradually tearing afunder to let her in to the Holy of Holies beyond it. And the cloud of infirmities is as gradually brightening up before her into the light and luftre of heaven.'

First, the foul is a failor-then a foldier; and at laft-we know not what or whom fpecifically. We only know in general,

that

that it is of the feminine gender. What a wonderful metamorphofis! One might be tempted to imagine, that it is of the fairy race of Fancy (to use the Preacher's own words)—the equivocal generation of the Moon.' No wonder he talks of playing magic flights.' We have here the conjurer, and the conjurer's wand!

Though the Preacher is generally very pofitive, and delivers himself with decifive authority, as much as to fay, "I am SIR ORACLE!"-Yet fometimes he is modeft enough to defcend to humble conjecture. Witnefs his comment on the following text, "The Sun fhall be darkened, and the Moon fhall not give her light, and the ftars fhall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens fhall be fhaken: and then fhall appear THE SIGN OF THE SON OF MAN." This (fays our profound Expofitor) will, in all probability, be a great CROSS OF LIGHT, appearing in the sky, and telling the approach of the mighty Saviour of the world to judge it.' Why a Crofs? The reafon is obvious. Ever fince the death of Chrift upon the Cross, THIS hath been the grand appointed badge of his religion, and fo will form the propereft SIGNAL of his coming. This awful ENSIGN of the Redeeming God will appear, probably, as borne up by fome of the angels, and going before the reft of the train. And it will probably throw a strong light over all the now darkened compass of heaven and earth, and even ferve as a kind of occafional Sun to enlighten the whole folemnity.'

There is a figure in rhetoric called the Oxymyron. We never faw it used to better purpose than in the following very graphical description of the process of judgment:

Let us fuppofe that we fee him at this inftant rifing up to pronounce the fentence, with the appearance of the manhood and the majesty of the Godhead united together. Pleafure, indignation, and pity will then probably mingle in his face. He will appear rejoicing with fatisfaction over the thoufands and ten thousands of the religious, who will be ftanding at his right hand, and to whom he is going to declare the approbation of God, and to whom he is going to deliver the happiness of heaven. He will appear calmly angry at the thoufands and ten thoufands of the wicked, who will be ranged on his left, on whom he is now to pronounce the curfe of God, and to whom he is to affign the miseries of hell. And he will yet look, we may fuppofe, with an eye of pity and tenderness on them. With thefe different pallions foftly blended on his face, he now begins to rife from the feat of judgment.'

Now for the terrible graces,' as the Preacher calls them."On horror's head, horrors accumulate!" Calm anger-the foft blendings of the face, are all exchanged for unmingled vengeance and fury without end! When the fearful folemnity of the laft judgment is over with the wicked, and they are condemned, with their tempters, the devils, to their everlafting refi

23

dence