that in their old age they are compelled to steal on, because they cannot work.

But enough or too much of this. I know to whom I speak; to those, who, for aught I could ever observe, or hear, do not only preach, but themselves compose what they preach. Yet I thought it became me to give this intimation, seeing, in my own small experience, I have been forced to deny orders to some persons, because I found them peccant in this very crime. I was at first exceedingly amazed to hear them produce most excellent sermons, whilst I found their gifts of nature, and abilities of learning, and knowledge, were far from being passable. But my wonder was soon over, when I manifestly discovered, that nothing but their ignorance was their own, their sermons belonging of right to their betters.

Now then, my brethren, that we may come into the way again, after this unwelcome digression; in making our sermons, great regard ought to be had to the words and to the matter; great to both, though not equally great to both.

Your words and style should be simple, expressive, weighty, authoritative; and therefore, though not without some true art, yet not very artificial; and rather void of all ornament, than over-adorned; but as much scriptural as may be without affectation; and as easy, familiar, and intelligible as possible. And perspicuity is always possible. Nay it is almost impossible, that one's words should not be perspicuous, when his thoughts are clear, and untroubled, and the thing to be spoken of is throughly understood. When the matter is well invented, digested, and ordered in the mind, it very rarely happens, but the fittest and most expressive words will occur to the fancy and tongue of the speaker. Verba non invita sequentur.

Next, since your matter must of course be either doctrinal or practical; where it shall be merely doctrinal, there it may suffice for your common auditories, and, in good truth, for all other from the lowest to the very highest, that it be plain, sound, substantial, ancient, catholic; seldom or never curiously drawn out into the fine threads of dispute and speculation, or, as the apostle terms them, oppositions of science falsely so called.

It were indeed much to be wished, that the agitating of all manner of controversies could be utterly excluded from the great work of saving souls, which is your special work. Yet, because in times so degenerate from the primitive purity, and in this militant state of the Christian church,

it cannot be expected, that you should teach aptly, or op pose schism and heresy solidly, without touching sometimes, and entering upon some walks of controversies; certainly the best way, in these inevitable cases, is never to meddle with such obscure subtilties, out of spiritual pride or ostentation, but merely out of necessity; and then only with the most necessary parts of them; and then also that you be ever sure to keep close to the form of sound words used in the church, and to contain yourselves within the known bounds of scripture determinations, in every controverted point, to deliver the faith to your people, as it was once delivered to the saints.

As little a lover then as I am of controversial divinity in the pulpit, yet I cannot be faithful to you, or to our mother the church of England, if I do not recommend two sorts of it to be seriously studied by you: but I must still say, rather to be studied than preached; though preached too upon reasonable occasions.

The first kind is that of the controversies between us and the church of Rome. For we are not yet so exempt from fear on that quarter, that we should securely lay aside, and suffer to rust on the walls, those very arms, which, to the immortal praise of the parochial clergy, were so successfully managed by them, during the last great crisis of danger from the popish interest.

I the rather mention these, because they are still almost in every man's hands; and perhaps a judicious sum and full epitome collected out of them all would be as useful a body of controversies on those questions, as any is yet

extant.

Wherefore, that you may preserve your own, and the souls under your care, from infection, and be able to convince gainsayers, I exhort you all, according to your several stations and opportunities, to be still conversant and prepared in those very same arguments against the papists: yet, let me say also, not only now in those. For there is another sort of controversies, or rather blasphemous doctrines, revived in this age, and which seem indeed to be the most cherished and darling tenets of the loose and antichristian part of the age; I mean those execrable opinions against the incarnation and eternal godhead of our Saviour, the satisfaction of his meritorious sufferings, and death, and the very being of the ever-blessed Trinity: which being all of them the peculiar and distinguishing foundations of Christianity, whatever they, who so directly oppose them, may at first pretend, yet they cannot but

really tend to the destruction of the primitive faith in Christ, and the introduction of another religion, new, and therefore abominable.

Wherefore, to maintain no less than the main fundamental points of our pure and undefiled religion, you are now most zealously to apply your thoughts to the serious. study of those divine mysteries. Yet, if you please to take my judgment, after you shall be never so well furnished with weapons defensive or offensive, of this nature, you should very rarely brandish, or so much as shew them in your ordinary pulpits; never but when you cannot avoid it without betraying or deserting the orthodox truth. And whenever you shall produce any of them in such auditories, even then, it were best done in a calm, positive, and didactical, rather than in a sharp, wrangling, or contentious way. But always take along with you what I said before, to wade no farther in them, in your popular sermons, than as the scripture light primitively expounded shall plainly lead you.

This may suffice, at present, touching the doctrinal and speculative part of your preaching. As to the other, which is the practical, in that I need not forewarn you to proceed with such reserve or restraint. In the greatest abundance of that, if managed with any tolerable prudence, there can hardly be any manner of excess. Most assuredly the less controversial, and the more practical, your pulpit discourses are, the better they must be, and the more profitable.

Now, my dear brethren, the subject of this part of your sermons being, as you cannot but know, so comprehensive and vast, as to take in the whole compass of all our spiritual and moral duties; I say of moral also; for, let none be deceived, moral preaching is of marvellous use, wherever it is subservient to the inspired doctrine of Christianity, and does not strive to justle that, which is its principal, quite out of the pulpit: but, I say, the matter of your practical preaching being in itself so large, as to extend to all the precepts and promises both of the law and the gospel; to all the temptations and corruptions of the world, the flesh, and the Devil; whereof the one ought to be the eternal argument of your exhortations, the other of your reproofs and admonitions: here it is especially that I would beseech you all with a brotherly tenderness, and oblige you with a fatherly authority, to lay out the whole stress and bent of your souls, to draw all your studies, all your learning, human or divine, all your eloquence, all your

affections, all your zeal this way; this being the great work you have chosen for the business of your whole lives, and for which we all were so peculiarly dedicated to the service of God, and his church: and let me add, this being the great purpose, for which all scripture seems to have been given by inspiration of God; that it may be profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction. There is the chief end of all the doctrine you are to teach. But what follows? For instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished to every good work. There is the great design of all the practice you are to enforce.

I have despatched what I thought proper now to say on this head of preaching, unless you will suffer me to name one very obvious caution; which yet I cannot think to be ever the less necessary, for being so very obvious.

The caution is, that in all your sermons, where you have occasion to praise any virtue, or dispraise any vice; in all your commendations of what is good, or discommendations of what is bad; you would always separate the good person from the good thing, and always distinguish the sinner from the sin: that is, that you would never put any one virtue, never any one vice, you are to deal with in the pulpit, into the habit or countenance of any one member of your congregations, so that they may be known thereby in a word, that you would utterly shun and abhor all personal flatteries of the good, and all personal reflections on the wicked.

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As to the first of these extremes, that of flattery, I need only mention it here. That is seldom thought worthy of such plain country congregations as yours generally are: it were well, if it were as much excluded out of all other religious assemblies of better quality.

It is indeed great pity, that such glossing and deceitful language should at last, in any measure, take sanctuary in the church; when it had been so long, in all ages, by common consent of wise and good men, judged fit to be banished out of all other well-constituted societies. Has it not been always found by experience, that a flattering tongue is so far from increasing the virtues of the good and the great, that it rather serves to deprave the real worth they might have before? so that, as the Psalmist says, the men, who flatter with their tongue, have not only no faithfulness in their mouth, but their very throat is an open sepulchre. But, above all, it is most unbecoming the pulpit; where men would seem to speak as from God, and

with authority, which nothing can more debase or prostitute than flattery.

As to the other excess, that of secret reflections, and malicious insinuations against, or open defamations of persons, I would absolutely dissuade you from the very shadow and suspicion of it. I would intreat you all, in the bowels of our Lord Christ, that you would never, on any occasion or accident, not even on the greatest provocation, do that affront to the honour and modesty of the pulpit, as to make it a place for any rudeness or scurrility whatso ever. Surely nothing can be more disgraceful to the reputation of your profession, or more destructive to edification, or more unbeseeming the gravity and charity of a church of England divine, than to make an ordinance so sacred, and the word of God handled in it, become instrumental to your own private passions, animosities, or re

venges.

I am now arrived at the next great duty of your holy office, which is that of catechising; not so much to recommend to you the duty itself; though I might do that most earnestly and vehemently, and with some kind of episcopal expostulation and reprehension, if any where it should be totally neglected. But that I would not here so much as suppose.

I cannot doubt but we are all of one mind touching the inexpressible advantages of this ordinance in general; we especially who have lived in these times. We cannot but be abundantly convinced of it by a woful and dearbought experience: since it is evident, that the far greater part of the monstrous looseness of opinions, and profane enormity of manners, which overwhelmed the whole face of the last age, and has too much descended on this, did remarkably proceed from the notorious defect, or universal omission of orthodox catechising, during the calamities and confusions of the great rebellion.

Wherefore, touching the imminent necessity of restor ing, or, I may well hope rather, among you, of continuing this first part of Christian discipline, I make sure account we are all agreed.

The only thing to be debated is the manner how this holy exercise may be so put in use, that the blessed ends, which, I am assured, we all aim at alike, may be attained.

Without all controversy then, the first practice of your regular catechising, in all your churches, ought to be in the very same order, and on the same materials, which the Church Catechism has traced out, and the law has enjoined.