and animate those confessions, intercessions, and thanksgivings, which, when read coldly and indifferently, with irreligious carelessness, or ignorant flatness, will seem to some to be but a dead letter: he may make every Hymn, every Psalm, every Lesson, Epistle, and Gospel, to become well nigh a new sermon; at least he may give to the old standing text of the Bible a very good clear exposition, even by his very way of reading it to the congrega

tion.

This, upon experience, you will find to be apparently true. For if, as is usually observed by men of learning in printed books, the very accurate and critical pointing of the copy is one of the best kinds of good new commentaries on any old author; how much more, in all the offices of devotion, would that, which consists not only in good pointing, and observing all due stops, but in so much more besides, I mean a good, distinct, forcible, yet easy, and unforced reading of every prayer, and portion of the holy scriptures; how much more would all this really serve for a good new paraphrase and illustration of every sentence in them!

It is indeed almost incredible, how quite another thing the daily morning and evening prayers will appear; what new figures and beauties, and hidden treasures of sacred eloquence, they will continually discover when thus pronounced; how much apter they will be to kindle in us and our auditors all manner of heavenly affections, of spiritual grief and contrition, of love and gratitude, of faith, hope, and charity, and joy in the Holy Ghost; when the harmony of the tongue shall be tuned, as it were, to the harmony of the matter; when the zeal of the reader shall keep company with his voice; and his voice shall be adapted to, and varied together with, every sense and expression; when by long use, and imitation of the best masters, or the best we can come at, we shall know familiarly how to give every word and sentence its due poise; where to lay a greater or smaller weight on every clause, according to its natural or spiritual force; where to be quicker or more vehement, where slower and more sedate; how to 'observe equally all pauses and distances; how to avoid monotonies on the one hand, and immoderate elevations and depressions on the other; yet, where to use the same tones, where to rise or fall in the right place: when, I say, the reader shall be throughly expert and versed in practising these, and many more such natural decencies of pronouncing; though they may seem but light and petty things,

taken singly, and apart, yet all together, in their full united power, they will be found to have an admirable concurrence towards the creating, augmenting, well-tempering, and well-governing of devotion.

Had I time, it were easy to exemplify this, in every Office of our church. Give me leave only to mention one instance within the compass of my own knowledge, which perhaps may not be unworthy your special remarking: though I doubt not but many of you have met with several examples of the like nature.

It was immediately after the happy restoration of king Charles the Second, when, together with the rights of the crown, and the English liberties, the church and the liturgy were also newly restored; that a noted ringleader of schism in the former times was to be buried in one of the principal churches of London. The minister of the parish, being a wise and regular conformist, and he was afterwards an eminent bishop in our church, well knew how averse the friends and relations of the deceased had always been to the Common Prayer; which, by hearing it so often called a low rudiment, a beggarly element, and carnal ordinance, they were brought to contemn to that degree, that they shunned all occasions of being acquainted with it.

Wherefore, in order to the interment of their friend, in some sort, to their satisfaction, yet so as not to betray his own trust, he used this honest method to undeceive them. Before the day appointed for the funeral, he was at the pains to learn the whole Office of Burial by heart. And then, the time being come, there being a great concourse of men of the same fanatical principles, when the company heard all delivered by him without book, with a free readiness, and profound gravity, and unaffected composure of voice, looks, and gestures, and a very powerful emphasis in every part, (as indeed his talent was excellent that way,) they were strangely surprised and affected; professing they had never heard a more suitable exhortation, or a more edifying exercise, even from the very best and most precious men of their own persuasion.

But they were afterwards much more surprised and confounded, when the same person, who had officiated, assured the principal men among them, that not one period of all he had spoken was his own; and convinced them by ocular demonstration how all was taken word for word out of the very Office ordained for that purpose, in the poor contemptible Book of Common Prayer.

Whence he most reasonably inferred, how much their ill-grounded prejudice and mistaken zeal had deluded them, that they should admire the same discourse, when they thought it an unprepared, unpremeditated rapture: which they would have abominated, had they known it to be only a set form prescribed by authority.

And from the same observation, we also may as justly infer, that all the coldness and dulness, which too many such abused and wanton spirits have complained they find in set forms, is not really in the forms themselves; in ours it is far otherwise. If there be any colour for the complaint, that can only proceed from a cold, flat, supine, insipid manner of repeating them.

Upon the whole matter it is most certain, that in the public worship of God nothing can be more grave or moving, more lofty or divine, either in the confessing, petitioning, or praising part, than where the thoughts and expressions are strictly weighed, and prudently reduced into standing unalterable forms: provided also, those very forms be not pronounced in a formal way; but that they be assisted, inflamed, inspired, as I may say, with such a present ardour and sprightly zeal in reading them, as will always make them seem to be extempore: extempore, mean, in the new, ready, vehement manner of their pronunciation; but set forms still, in the solid ripeness of the sense, and the due choice and deliberate ordering of their phrases and figures; which are the peculiar advantages of set forms and therefore, so spoken, they will in all reason produce a far more real, unfeigned, and durable devotion, than all the other mere extempore, raw, and indigested effusions ought to pretend to.

I

I should crave your pardon, that I have dwelt so long on this first head of advice. But it appeared to me so very material, that I could not hastily pass it over: especially since what I have now said on this subject may concern in common all your public ministrations, and is equally applicable, not only to the well performing the daily Morning and Evening Prayers throughout the year, both of ordinary days and Sundays, and extraordinary fasts and festivals; but also to the Offices of Baptism, Matrimony, and the holy Communion; and indeed to every other part of our established liturgy; in all which, as the reader officiates better or worse, so most usually is their benefit and efficacy more or less on the minds of the

hearers.

Nay, I will now make bold to go further, to apply the

usefulness of this counsel, not only to the praying part, but also to another part of your office I am next to consider, which is that of preaching.

I am verily persuaded, that the sermons preached every Sunday in this one kingdom, by the church of England clergy in this age, are more excellent compositions of that kind, than have been delivered, in the same space of time, throughout the whole Christian world besides.

Only let me take the freedom, to suggest, that perhaps it would add much, though not to the solid and substantial part of such discourses, yet to their just popularity, and more general acceptance, and to the greater edification of our hearers, if we would universally addict ourselves a little more to this study of pronunciation: by which advantages alone of the freedom and life of their elocution, we know the preachers of some other nations do seem to reign and triumph in the pulpit, whilst their sermons, as far as we can judge by those we have of them in print, are not comparable to the English.

An observation, which, methinks, may rouse our preachers to outdo them in this kind of perfection also: I mean, in a natural, comely, modest, yet undaunted force of pronunciation: not such as is full of over-action and mimical gesticulations; which, though some parties may admire for a time, and to serve a turn, yet the serious temper of our nation will never long approve or admit of. But I intend such a steady, composed, severe, decent, lively, and apposite managing your voices and gestures in the pulpit, as is best accommodated to the gravity and solidity of the English genius, and is also agreeable, as much as may be, to the simplicity, power, and height of the message you bring from heaven.

The next great duty then of your priestly office, which comes in our way, being that of preaching, I shall begin with one short admonition, which, I confess, I am almost ashamed to give; and yet it may be very expedient that it should be given; not, I declare, as a correction to any of you here present for any thing past, but only in regard to the future, and for the sake of those who as yet are less experienced preachers, and young timorous beginners.

The caution, in plain terms, is this; that every person, who undertakes this great employment, should make it a matter of religion and conscience, to preach nothing but what is the product of his own study, and of his own composing.

I would not be mistaken, as if I should hereby condemn Ꭱ Ꮞ

the reading of the Homilies; which were composed by the wisdom and piety of former times, and have been ever since allowed, nay recommended, by our church, in some places, and upon some necessities to be used. I am so far from doing so, that I rather wish from my heart we were furnished with a larger stock of such learned, plain, and orthodox discourses.

There can be no manner of hurt, nay there is very great reason, that, upon some urgent occasions, a preacher should have liberty to take something out of that public treasury, which was laid up for that end, and has the stamp of authority upon it to make it current. My purpose is only to dissuade you from all unjust rapine of this kind, from all underhand dealing with the private stores of particular persons.

As to that, I dare avouch, it is far better and more advisable, even for the rawest practiser, to exhibit but very mean things of his own at first, than to flourish it in the best of other men's sense and oratory. For he who does never so ordinarily at first, provided it be from himself, may and will do better and better in time, by God's assistance, through fervent prayer, and indefatigable attention to reading, and hearing, and practising to preach. Whereas this sordid borrowing, this shameful, I had almost said sacrilegious, purloining from other men's labours, is an utter irreconcileable enemy to all manner of growth and improvement in divine learning or eloquence.

I will not now insist on the meanness of spirit, and perpetual fear, that must attend the consciousness of this guilt, lest it should be some time or other discovered; or on the shame and contempt that often happens to such pilferers upon the discovery. But besides all this, in truth, when once men have indulged themselves in this easy, but despicable and shuffling commerce, they seldom or never give it over; nay, at last, they can very hardly give it over if they would.

Thence would succeed such a visible decay of parts, such a neglect of all serious studies, such a desuetude and unaptness for regular thinking, such emptiness of invention and memory, such a diffidence of their own style, understanding, and judgment; that they, who at first made bold with others' sermons, perhaps merely out of idleness, will at length be forced to do it out of necessity. It will unavoidably happen to this kind of thieves, as most commonly it does to all others; they steal so long in their youth and strength of age, because they will not work,