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further ftill you muft not only urge them to do their duty, but to use the means of doing it; which must be pointed out to them: avoiding temptations, keeping clear of bad company, contracting friendships with ferious and prudent perfons, employing themselves in proper business, reading good books, forming pious, yet prudent, refolutions, and begging, in private prayer, grace to help in time of need (o): not ftrictly confining their devotions to any forms, though forms are very ufeful, but varying them according to their fpiritual condition. Thefe are the things, on which you must infift with your whole force: not as pleafing men, but God, which trieth our hearts (p).

Yet, while you take without referve all requifite freedom, you must alfo take care not to provoke, inftead of reforming them; but fhew, that you fincerely wish well to them; and think as well of them as you can: you must praise them when you have opportunity; give them cautions oftener than reproofs, and never reprove harfhly; but exprefs a fatherly concern, rather than anger, at their faults. Represent no fault as worfe than it is and carry no injunction to an extravagant height. If you do, they will either think you unreasonable, or themselves incapable of becoming good; or will run into some abfurdity by attempting it. And for their encouragement, along with the duties, lay before them, in a ftrong light, the comforts alfo, present and future, of religion.

It is but too poffible, that fometimes you muft excite your people to virtues, in which you are, more or lefs, deficient yourselves. For it would be heinous unfaithfulness to omit or explain away neceffary precepts because you are imperfect in the practice of them. And lamentable is our cafe, if there be any Chriftian obligation, on which we dare not for fhame speak freely: yet ftill worfe, if we harden our confciences, till we venture boldly to enjoin what we habitually tranfgrefs. For in that cafe, not only our credit will be utterly loft, but our amendment almoft abfolutely hopeless. Therefore correct your own hearts and lives in the first place by the difcourfes which you compofe: become in all points good men; and then you may fearlessly speak on all points like fuck.

Yet even good men muft observe a difference. Those of lefs knowledge muft express themselves with lefs pofitiveness, thofe of less gravity and discretion with lefs authority and ftrictness, than their betters. And every one fhould confider, what his age and ftanding, reputation for learning, prudence and piety, will fupport him in saying; that he may not take more upon him, than will be allowed him. Yet all muft affiduously take pains to acquire, and preferve, fuch efteem, that they may fay with propriety whatever their function requires. For how unhappy would it be to difqualify yourselves from usefulness by levity or indifcretion!

But even the best qualified to exhort muft keep within due bounds; convince the judgment before they attempt to warm the paffions; rife gradually into what deferves the name of vehemence; and be fure neither to rife any higher, nor continue in that strain any longer, than they are likely to carry their auditors along with them. For if they are cold, while the preacher is pathetic, the impreffion made upon them will be

(0) Heb. iv. 16.

(p) 1 Theff. ii. 4.

very

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very different from what he wishes. And our nation is more difpofed, than most others, to approve a temperate manner of speaking. Every thing, which can be called oratory, is apt to be deemed affectation: and if it goes a great length, raises contempt and ridicule. But were the moft ferious emotions to be raised by mere mechanical vehemence, they would be unfairly raised: and what is beyond nature will ufually foon fubfide; perhaps with scorn, upon reflection, of what was admired when heard. Or fuppofing fuch admiration to continue, bad effects may as poffibly follow as good: whereas warmth of affection, excited to a proper degree by the rational enforcement of folid arguments, promises to be durable, and will never do harm. The faculty of moving hearers thus, is a moft valuable bleffing. And fuch, as have but little of it, may confiderably improve it, by labouring to affect themselves deeply with what they would fay: and thinking, what methods of faying it will be most perfuafive. But they must not attempt to force an unwilling genius too far. If they do, what it produces will be fo ungraceful and unsuccessful, that they had much better content themselves to do as well as they can in their own way.

Your delivery muft in the first place be fuch, that you can be heard; elfe you preach in vain: befides that speaking too low argues indolence and indifference; whereas an audible exertion is a mark of earnestness : and the common people are peculiarly pleased, when their minister appears to take pains about them. But then you must neither be precipitately quick, (for if your words be understood, your meaning will not) nor tediously flow; nor fink any one part of your fentence under its proper level, efpecially the concluding part. Diftinctnefs will do much to fupply want of ftrength in speaking: which however it is very material that you should try to remedy gradually, as many have done, by a prudent exercife of your voice. Yet ftraining beyond your due pitch will give your hearers pain, make you in fome degree inarticulate, and produce a finging fort of cadence and tone. This laft indeed hath been fometimes known to please weak perfons: but it cannot poffibly make them either wifer or better and it offends the judicious extremely. Many learn in their childhood a provincial dialect; which they cannot lay afide eafily; and yet fhould endeavour it, especially if they settle in a different part of the nation. Some acquire uncouth accents one knows not how: fome bring them from the school or the college and now and then one seems to hear a theatrical pronunciation; which hath been condemned even by heathen writers upon oratory; and is the very worst, that a Chriftian orator can adopt. It reminds his hearers, greatly to his difcredit, where he must probably have learnt it: he will also appear by means of it to be only acting a part, and be regarded accordingly. Indeed all remarkable imitation, in delivery as well as compofition, though of a perfon in your own profeffion, and one justly admired, will be difliked. You will never attain to an advantageous resemblance of his manner: but, by a mistaken or overdone mimicry, turn what perhaps may be graceful in the original, into oddness. Or could you avoid that, you would leffen your weight and influence: which muft arise from fpeaking in your own character, not perfonating another. Every's man's voice and utterance, as well as his face, belongs to himself alone; and it

is

is vain to think either of looking or talking like fuch or fuch a one. Therefore preserve what is native to you: free it from adventitious faults: improve it, if you can: but remember, that you may deprave it by the endeavour; and certainly will, if you change it effentially. Speak to your people, as you would in converfation, when you undertake to inform or perfuade a friend, in a concern of great moment; only with more deliberateness, more ftrength and energy, in proportion to the numbers: and vary both your ftile and your elocution, as in converfation you always do, fuitably to your matter. For monotony both abfolutely prevents emotion, and foon deadens attention. It is worft indeed, when uniformly unnatural, by degenerating into a kind of chant. But merely to be uniformly inexpreffive, be it through heavinefs, or effeminacy, or infignificant lightness, is either very blamable, or, if it cannot be helped, very unhappy. And perhaps a little even of injudicious variety is better than a wearifome fameness.

In public fpeaking, perfons commonly fall into errors, and fometimes great ones, without perceiving it, though they can observe small ones in others. Therefore you will act prudently in defiring fome well-wifher, on whofe judgment and frankness you can depend, to advertise you of any thing wrong in the conduct of your voice, or in your action; and you will fhew your gratitude and good fenfe by studying to amend it.

We of this nation are not given to use or to admire much action, either in ordinary difcourfe, or even in popular Karangues. And, were it for this reafon only, a preacher should be moderate in it. But befides, in the nature of the thing, you had far better have none, than what is unbecoming, or unmeaning, or unsuitable to what you are saying, or repeated at certain distances, whatever you are faying. Yet fomewhat of gefture, appearing to be artless, and regulated by propriety, may be very useful, especially in the warmer parts, of exhortation, reproof, or even argument. For to be altogether motionless, when the subject is animating, and our language perhaps vehement, feems an inconfiftency; and may raise a doubt, whether we are in earnest. But ftill defect in action is better than excess. And a great deal cannot well be used by those who read their fermons.

This is one objection against reading them: and there are feveral befides. Perfons, who are fhort-fighted, have peculiar reasons to avoid it. Indeed almost all perfons are accustomed from their early years to read in a different tone, from that in which they speak at other times: and we seldom correct it throughly. Or if we did, what we fay in fuch manner as to make it seem the prefent dictate of our own hearts, will much better make its way into the hearts of others, than if our eyes are fixed all the while on a paper, from which we vifibly recite the whole. It will ordinarily be uttered too with more difengaged freedom and livelier fpirit. The preacher alfo will be abler to enforce his words by fignificant looks: to perceive from the countenances of his hearers, what they comprehend, and by what they are moved; and may accordingly enlarge on that head, or proceed to another, as he finds caufe.. He may hikewife oppose with fuccefs irregular itinerant declaimers, who affect and gain popularity by this method: and as their credulous followers are apt to think it a supernatural gift, he may undeceive them by imitating

in this cafe the practice of St. Paul in another, which he describes thus: what I do, that I will do, that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we (q). But then there must be a long and diligent preparation to do this well: fome will scarce ever attain fufficient prefence of mind, and readiness of expreffion: others will acquit themselves handfomely in a good flow of fpirits, but meanly when these fail them: and though little inaccuracies will be obferved by few, yet hesitations will by all, and every other confiderable fault by fenfible hearers, to the preacher's great difgrace. Or if fuch do get the faculty of being always able to say something plaufible, it will tempt them to neglect the improvement of their understandings and their discourses; and to be content with digreffing, whenever they are at a lofs, from their text and their fubject, to any point, on which they can be copious: to utter off hand fuch crudities, as they could not bear to write down; and think the meaneft of extempore effufions good enough for the populace. Now on the contrary, previously studying and writing fermons tends to fill them with well digefted and well adapted matter, difpofed in right order: efpecially, if you will care→ fully revife them every time you preach them; fupply deficiences, blot out repetitions, correct improprieties, guard againit mifapprehenfions, enlighten what is obfcure, familiarize what is too high, transpose what is wrongly placed, ftrengthen the weak parts, animate the languid ones. Your compofition needs not be at all the stiffer, but may be the freer, for the pains thus employed upon it. You may frame it purposely to be fpoken as if you were not reading it: and by looking it over a few times when you are about to use it, you may deliver it almoft without being obferved to read it. The more you acquire of this art, the more you will be liked, and the ftronger impreffion you will make. But after all, every man, as the apoftle faith on a different occafion, hath his proper gift of God; one after this manner, another after that (r): let each cultivate his own; and no one cenfure or defpife his brother. There is a middle way, ufed by our predeceffors, of fetting down, in fhort notes, the method and principal heads, and enlarging on them in fuch words as prefent themselves at the time. Perhaps, duly managed, this would be the best, That which is, or lately was, common amongft foreign divines, of writing fermons firft, then getting and repeating them by heart, not only is unreasonably laborious, but fubjects perfons to the hazard of stopping difagreeably, and even breaking off abruptly, for want of memory. Or if they escape that danger, there ftill remains another, of faying their leffon with ungraceful marks of fear and caution.

Inftead of taking a text, which comprehends within itself the whole subject, of which you would treat, it may often be ufeful to chufe one, which hath a reference to things preceding and following it, and to expound all the context. This will afford you a variety of matter, and give you opportunities for fhort unexpected remarks; with which perfons are frequently more ftruck, than with an entire difcourfe; for of the latter they foresee the drift all the way, and therefore fet themselves to fence against it. Thus alfo you may illuftrate the beauties, at the fame time that you thew the practical ufes, of large portions of fcripture at once: for inftance, of a parable, a converfation, a miracle, of our blessed Lord; (r) 1 Cor. vii. 7.

(9) 2 Cor. xi. 12.

or a narration concerning this or that other memorable perfon, whether deferving of praife or blame. For fcripture hiftories and examples are eafily remembered, and have great weight. In proportion as we overlook them, we fhall appear lefs to be minifters of God's word: and our people will have less veneration for us, or for it, or for both. You may alfo in this method, as you go along, obviate objections to paffages of God's word without stating them in form, at which otherwife many may stumble, if they read with attention: and if they do not attend, they will read with no profit. Several things in holy writ seem to be ftrange= hardly confiftent one with another, or with our natural notions. Of thefe difficulties, which must always perplex perfons, and may often deliver them over a prey to infidels, you may occafionally remove one and another; meddling with none, but such as you can overcome: and from your fuccefs in thefe, you may obferve to your auditors the probability, that others are capable of folutions alfo. Perhaps they will forget your folution but they will remember that they heard one, and may have it repeated to them, if they pleafe. By these means you will teach your people, what is grievously wanting in the prefent age, to value their bibles more, and understand them better; and to read them both with pleasure and profit, drawing from them useful inferences and observations, as they have heard you do. Formerly courfes of lectures on whole books of fcripture were cuftomary in churches; and they were doubtless extremely beneficial. It would not be eafy, if poffible, to revive these now: but the practice, which I have been propofing to you, is fome approach towards them.

I would also advice you to inftruct your parishioners, amongst other things, from fome proper text or texts, in the daily and occafional fervices of the church: not with a view to extol either immoderately, much less to provoke wrath against those who diffent from us; but mildly to answer unjuft imputations upon our liturgy, and chiefly to fhew the meaning, the reafons, the uses of each part; that your congregations may, as the apostle expreffes it, pray with the understanding (s). In all compofitions, there will be fome things, which to fome perfons want explaining: and, were the whole ever fo clear, men are ftrangely apt both to hear and to speak words, that are become familiar to them, with fcarce any attention to their sense. And fo by degrees a bodily attendance and worship becomes all that they pay: and they return home almost as little edified, as they would by devotions in a tongue unknown. Convincing them of this fault, and affifting them to mend it, muft greatly contribute to the promotion of true piety amongst them. Nor will it be a fmall benefit, if, in the course of your liturgical inftructions, you can perfuade the bulk of your congregations to join in the decent ufe of pfalmody, as their forefathers did; inftead of the prefent shameful neglect of it by almoft all, and the conceited abuse of it by a few.

But a fervent defire of being useful will teach you more than any particular directions can, upon every head. Without this defire, you will either be negligent; or if you would feem zealous, you will be detected for want of uniformity and perfeverance. Therefore make fure firft that all be right within, and out of the good treasure of the heart you will bring forth

(s) 1 Cor. xiv. 15: