gard him; and, therefore, he must whine : if a man should cry fire, or murder, in an ordinary voice, nobody would come out to help him. 7. Preachers will bring any thing into the text. The young masters of arts preached against non-residency in the university; whereupon the heads made an order, that no man should meddle with any thing but what was in the text. The next day one preached upon these words, Abraham begat Isaac; when he had gone a good way, at last he observed, that Abraham was resident, for if he had been non-resident, he could never have begat Isaac ; and so fell foul upon the non-residents. 8. I could never tell what often preaching meant, after a church is settled, and we know what is to be done it is just as if a husbandman should once tell his servants what they are to do, when to sow, when to reap; and afterwards one should come, and tell them twice or thrice a day what they know already: You must sow your wheat in October, you must reap your wheat in August, &c. 9. The main argument why they would have two sermons a day is, because they have two meals a day; the soul must be fed as well as the body: but I may as well argue, I ought to have two noses because I have two eyes, or two mouths because I have two ears. What have meals and sermons to do one with another? 10. The things between God and man are but few, and those, forsooth, we must be told often of : but things between man and man are many; those I hear not of above twice a year at the assizes, or once a quarter at the sessions: but few come then; nor does the minister exhort the people to go at these times to learn their duty towards their neighbour. Often preaching is sure to keep the minister in countenance, that he may have something to do. 11. In preaching they say more to raise men to love virtue than men can possibly perform, to make them do their best as if you would teach a man to throw the bar; to make him put out his strength, you bid him throw farther than it is possible for him, or any man else: throw over yonder house. 12. In preaching they do by men as writers of romances do by their chief knights, bring them into many dangers, but still fetch them off: so they put men in fear of hell; but at last they bring them to heaven. 13. Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do; but if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing, and he do quite another, could I believe him? 14. Preaching the same sermon to all sorts of people, is, as if a schoolmaster should read the same lesson to his several forms: if he reads Amo, amas, amavi, the highest forms laugh at him; the younger boys admire him so it is in preaching to a mixed auditory. Objection. But it cannot be otherwise; the parish cannot be divided into several forms. What must the preacher then do in discretion? Answ. Why then let him use some expressions by which this or that condition of people may know such doctrine does more especially concern them, it being so delivered that the wisest may be content to hear; for if he delivers it altogether, and leaves it to them to single out what belongs to themselves, which is the usual way, it is as if a man would bestow gifts upon children of several ages; two years old, four years old, ten years old, &c.; and there he brings tops, pins, points, ribbons, and casts them all in a heap together upon a table before them; though the boy of ten years old knows how to choose his top, yet the child of two years old, that should have a ribbon, takes a pin, and the pin, ere he be aware, pricks his fingers, and then all is out of order, &c. Preaching, for the most part, is the glory of the preacher, to show himself a fiue man: catechising would do much better. 15. Use the best arguments to persuade, though but few understand; for the ignorant will sooner believe the judicious of the parish, than the preacher himself and they teach when they dispute what he has said, and believe it the sooner, confirmed by men of their own side: for betwixt the laity and the clergy, there is, as it were, a continual driving of a bargain; something the clergy would still have us be at, and therefore many things are heard from the preacher with suspicion: they are afraid of some ends, which are easily assented to, when they have it from some of themselves. It is with a sermon as it is with a play; many come to see it, who do not understand it; and yet hearing it cried up by one, whose judgment they cast themselves upon, and of power with them, they swear, and will die in it, that it is a very good play, which they would not have done if the priest himself had told them so: as in a great school, it is the master that teaches all; the monitor does a great deal of work; it may be the boys are afraid to see the master; so in a parish it is not the minister does all; the greater neighbour teaches the lesser, the master of the house teaches his servant, &c. 16. First, in your sermons use your logic, and then your rhetoric: rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root: yet I confess more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with a free expression, when they understand not reason. Logic must be natural, or it is worth nothing at all. Your rhetoric figures may be learned. That rhetoric is best which is most seasonable and most catching: an instance we have in that old blunt commander at Cadiz, who showed himself a good orator : being to say something to his soldiers, which he was not used to do, he made them a speech to this purpose: 66 What a shame will it be, you Englishmen, that feed upon good beef and brewess, to let those rascally Spaniards beat you, that eat nothing but oranges and lemons;" and so put more courage into his men than he could have done with a more learned oration. Rhetoric is very good, or stark naught there is no medium in rhetoric; if I am not fully persuaded, I laugh at the orator. : 17. It is good to preach the same thing again, for that is the way to have it learned. You see a bird by often whistling to learn a tune, and a month after record it to herself. 18. It is a hard case a minister should be turned out of his living for something they inform he should say in his pulpit: we can no more know what a minister said iu his sermon by two or three words picked out of it, than we can tell what tune a musician played last upon the lute, by two or three single notes. PREDESTINATION. 1. They that talk nothing but predestination, and will not proceed in the way of heaven till they be satisfied in that point, do, as a man that would not come to London, unless at his first step he might set his foot upon the top of St. Paul's. 2. For a young divine to begin in his pulpit with predestination, is, as if a man were coming into London, and at his first step would think to set his foot, &c. 3. Predestination is a point inaccessible, out of our reach; we can make no notion of it, it is so full of intricacy, so full of contradiction; it is in good earnest, as we state it, half-a-dozen bulls one upon another. 4. Doctor Prideaux, in his lectures, several days used arguments to prove predestination: at last tells his auditory they are damned that do not believe it; doing herein just like schoolboys, when one of them has got an apple, or something the rest have a mind to, they use all the arguments they can to get some of it from them: I gave you some the other day; you shall have some with me another time. When they cannot prevail, they tell him he is a jackanapes, a rogue, and a rascal. PREFERMENT. 1. When you would have a child go to such a place, and you find him unwilling, you tell him he shall ride a cock-horse, and then he will go presently: so do those that govern the state deal by men, to |