out of countenance: he has blushed and complained to his intimate friends, lest he should be thought to have preached himself, and not Christ Jesus his Lord: he has been ready to wish he had entertained the audience in a more unlearned manner, and on a more vulgar subject, lest the servants, and the labourers, and tradesmen there, should reap no advantage to their souls, and the important hour of worship should be lost as to their improvement. Well he knows, and keeps it upon his heart, that the middle and lower ranks of mankind, and people of an unlettered character, make up the greater part of the assembly; therefore he is ever seeking how to adapt his thoughts and his language, and far the greatest part of all his ministrations, to the instruction and profit of persons of common rank and capacity; it is in the midst of these that he hopes to find his triumph, his joy and crown in the last great day; for not many wise,

not many

the

noble are called.

There is so much spirit and beauty in his common conversation, that it is sought and desired by the ingenious men of his age: but he carries a severe guard of piety always about him, that tempers the pleasant air of his discourse, even in his brightest and freest hours; and before he leaves the place (if possible) he will leave something of the favour of heaven there: in the parlour he carries on the design of the pulpit, but in so elegant a manner that it charms company, and gives not the least occasion for censure. His polite acquaintance will sometimes rally him for talking so plainly in his sermons, and sinking his good sense to so low a level: but Ergates is bold to tell the gayest of them, "Our public business, my friend, is chiefly with the weak and the ignorant, that is, the bulk of mankind; the poor receive the gospel: the mechanics and day labourers, the women and children of my assembly, have souls to be saved; I will imitate my blessed Redeemer, in preaching the gospel to the poor; and learn of St Paul to become all things to all men, that I may win souls, and lead many sinners to heaven by repentance, faith, and holiness."

SECT.

SECT. II. *

A branching Sermon.

I HAVE always thought it a mistake in the preacher to mince his text or his subject too small, by a great number of subdivisions; for it occasions great confusion of the understandings of the unlearned. Where a man divides his matter into more general, less general, special, and more particular heads, he is under a necessity sometimes of saying, firstly or secondly, two or three times together, which the learned may observe; but the greater part of the auditory, not knowing the analysis, cannot so much as take it into their minds, and much less treasure it up in their memories in a just and regular order; and when such hearers are desired to give some account of the sermon, they throw the thirdly's and secondly's into heaps, and make very confused work in a rehearsal, by intermingling the general and the special heads. In writing a large discourse this is much more tolerable *; but in preaching it is less profitable, and more intricate and offensive.

It is as vain an affectation also to draw out a long rank of particulars in the same sermon under any one general, and run up the number of them to eighteenthly, or sevenand-twentiethly. Men that take delight in this sort of work will cut out all their sense into shreds; and every thing that they can say upon any topic shall make a new particular.

This sort of folly and mistaken conduct appears weekly in Polyramus's lectures, and renders all his discourses lean and insipid. Whether it proceed from a mere barrenness of thought, and a native dryness of soul, that he is not able to vary his matter, and to amplify beyond the formal topics of analysis, or whether it arise from affectation of such a way of talking, is hard to say: but it is certain that the chief part of his auditory are not over-much profited or pleased.

Especially as words may be used to number the generals and figures of different kinds and forms, to marshal the primary and secondary ranks of particulars under them.

pleased. When I sit under his preaching, I fancy myself brought into the valley of Ezekiel's vision; it was full of bones, and behold, there were very many in the valley, and lo, they were very dry, Ezek. xxxvii. 1. 2..

It is the variety of enlargement upon a few proper heads that clothes the dry bones and flesh, and animates them with blood and spirits; it is this that colours the discourse, makes it warm and strong, and renders the divine propositions bright and persuasive; it is this brings down the doctrine or the duty to the understanding and conscience of the whole auditory, and commands the natural affections into the interest of the gospel. In short, it is this that, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, gives life and force, beauty and success to a sermon, and provides food for souls. A single rose-bush, or a dwarf-pear, with all their leaves, flowers, and fruit about them, have more beauty and spirit in themselves, and yield more food and pleasure to mankind, than the innumerable branches, boughs, and twigs of a long hedge of thorns. The fruit will feed the hungry, and the flower will refresh the fainting; which is more than can be said of the thickest oak in Bashan, when it has lost its vital juice; it may spread its limbs indeed far and wide, but they are naked, withered, and sapless.

SECT. III.

The Harangue.

Is it not possible to forsake one extreme without running into a worse? Is there no medium between a sermon made up of sixty dry particulars, and a long loose declamation, without any distinction of the parts of it? Must the preacher divide his works by the breaks of a minute-watch, or let it run on incessantly to the last word, like the flowing stream of the hour-glass that measures his divinity? Surely Fluvio preaches as though he knew no medium; and having taken a disgust heretofore at one of Polyramus's lectures, he resolved his own discourses should have no distinction of particulars in them. His language flows

smoothly

smoothly in a long connexion of periods, and glides over the ear like a rivulet of oil over polished marble, and like that too leaves no trace behind it. The attention is detained in a gentle pleasure, and (to say the best thing pos▴ sible of it), the hearer is soothed into something like divine delight; but he can give the inquiring friend scarcely any account what it was that pleased him. He retains a faint idea of the sweetness, but has forgotten the sense.

Tell me Fluvio, is this the most effectual way to instruct ignorant creatures in the several articles of faith, and the various duties of the Christian life? Will such a long uniform flow of language imprint all the distant parts of Christian knowledge on the mind, in their best form and order? Do you find such a gentle and gliding stream of words most powerful to call up the souls of sinners from their dangerous or fatal lethargy? Will this indolent and moveless species of oratory make a thoughtless wretch attend to matters of infinite moment? Can a long purling sound awaken a sleepy conscience, and give a perishing sinner just notices of his dreadful hazard? Can it furnish his understanding and his memory with all the awful and tremendous topics of our religion, when it scarcely ever leaves any distinet impression of one of them on his soul? Can you make the arrow wound where it will not stick? Where all the discourse vanishes from the remembrance, can you suppose the soul to be profited or enriched? When you brush over the closed eye-lids with a feather, did you ever find it give light to the blind? Have any of your soft harangues, your continued threads of silken eloquence, ever raised the dead? I fear your whole aim is to talk over the appointed number of minutes upon the subject, or to practise a little upon the gentler passions, without any concern how to give the understanding its due improvement, or to furnish the memory with any lasting treasure, or to make a knowing and a religious Christian.

Ask old Wheatfield, the rich farmer, ask Plowdown, your neighbour, or any of his family who have sat all their lives

under

under your ministry, what they know of the common truths of religion, or of the special articles of Christianity? Desire them to tell you what the gospel is, or what is salvation? What are their duties toward God, or what they mean by religion? Who is Jesus Christ, or what is the meaning of his atonement, of redemption by his blood? Perhaps you will tell me yourself, that you have very sela dom entertained them with these subjects. Well, inquire of them what is heaven? Which is the way to obtain it, or what hope they have of dwelling there? Entreat them to tell you wherein they have profited as to holiness of heart or life, or fitness for death. They will soon make it appear by their awkward answers, that they understood very little of all your fine discourses, and those of your predecessors, and have made but wretched improvement of forty years attendance at church. They have now and then been pleased, perhaps, with the music of your voice, as with the sound of a sweet instrument, and they mistook that for devotion: but their heads are dark still, and their hearts earthly; they are mere Heathens with a Christian name, and know little more of God than their yokes of oxen. In short, Polyramus's auditors have some confusion in their knowledge, but Fluvio's hearers have scarcely any knowledge at all.

But you will tell me, your discourses are not all made up of harangue: your design is sometimes to inform the mind by a train of well-connected reasonings, and that all your paragraphs, in their long order, prove and support each other; and though you do not distinguish your discourse into particulars, yet you have kept some invisible method all the way, and, by some artificial gradations, you have brought your sermon down to the concluding sentence.

It may be so sometimes, and I will acknowledge it: but believe me Fluvio, this artificial and invisible method carries darkness with it instead of light; nor is it by any means a proper way to instruct the vulgar, that is, the bulk your auditory: their souls are not capable of so wide

of