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 scarce 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 of your auditory: their souls are not capable of so wide a stretch, as to take in the whole chain of your long-connected consequences; you talk reason and religion to them in vain, if you do not make the argument so short as to come within their grasp, and give a frequent rest for their thoughts: you must break the bread of life into pieces to feed children with it, and part your discourses into distinct propositions to give the ignorant a plain scheme of any one doctrine, and enable them to comprehend or retain it.

Every day gives us experiments to confirm what I say, and to encourage ministers to divide their sermons into several distinct heads of discourse. Myrtilla, a little creature of nine years old, was at church twice yesterday: in the morning the preacher entertained his audience with a running oration, and the child could give her parents no other account of it, but that he talked smoothly and sweetly about

virtue and heaven. It was Ergates' lot to fulfil the service of the afternoon; he is an excellent preacher, both for the wise and for the unwise: in the evening Myrtilla very prettily entertained her mother with a repetition of the most considerable parts of the sermon; for Here (said she) I can fix my thoughts upon first, secondly, and thirdly; upon the doctrine, the reasons, and the inferences, and I know 'what I must try to remember, and repeat it when 'my friends shall ask me: but as for the morning 'sermon, I could do nothing but hear it, for I could not tell what I should get by heart."

This manner of talking in a loose harangue has not only injured our pulpits, but it makes several essays and treatises that are written now-a-days less capable of improving the knowledge or enriching the memory of the reader. I will easily grant, that where the whole discourse reaches not beyond a few pages, there is no necessity of the formal proposal of the several parts before you handle each of them distinctly; nor is there need of such a set method: the unlearned and narrow understanding can take an easy view of the whole, without the author's pointing to the several parts. But where the essay is prolonged to a greater extent, confusion grows upon the reader almost at every page, without some scheme or method of successive heads in the discourse to direct the mind and aid the memory.

If it be answered here, That neither such treatises nor sermons are a mere heap, for there is a just method observed in the composure, and the subjects are ranked in a proper order, it is easy to reply, That this method is so concealed, that a common reader or hearer can never find it; and you must suppose every one that peruses such a book, and much more that attends such a discourse, to have some good knowledge of the art of logic before he can distinguish the various parts and branches, the connections and transitions of it. To an unlearned eye or ear it appears a mere heap of good

things, without any method, form, or order; and if you tell your young friends they should get it into their heads and hearts, they know not how to set about it.

If we inquire how it comes to pass that our modern ingenious writers should affect this manner, I know no juster reason to give for it, than a humorous and wanton contempt of the customs and preaching of our forefathers: a sensible disgust taken at some of their mistakes and ill conduct at first tempted a vain generation into the contrary extreme near sixty years ago; and now, even to this day, it continues too much in fashion, so that the wise, as well as the weak, are ashamed to oppose it, and are borne down with the current.

Our fathers formed their sermons much upon the model of doctrine, reason, and use; and perhaps there is no one method of more universal service, and more easily applicable to most subjects, though it is not necessary or proper in every discourse: but the very names of doctrine and use are become now. a-days such stale and old-fashioned things, that a modish preacher is quite ashamed of them; nor can a modish hearer bear the sound of those syllables. A direct and distinct address to the consciences of saints and sinners must not be named or mentioned, though these terms are scriptural, lest it should be hissed out of the church like the garb of a roundhead or a puritan.

Some of our fathers have multiplied their particulars under one single head of discourse, and run up the tale of them to sixteen or seventeen. Culpable indeed, and too numerous! But in opposition to this extreme, we are almost ashamed in our age to say thirdly; and all fourthlies and fifthlies are very unfashionable words.

Our fathers made too great account of the sciences of logic and metaphysics, and the formalities of definition and division, syllogism and method, when they brought them so often into the pulpit; but

we hold those arts so much in contempt and defiance, that we had rather talk a whole hour without order, and without edification, than be suspected of using logic or method in our discourses."

Some of our fathers neglected politeness perhaps too much, and indulged a coarseness of style, and a rough or awkward pronunciation; but we have such a value for elegancy, and so nice a taste for what we call polite, that we dare not spoil the cadence of a period to quote a text of scripture in it, nor disturb the harmony of our sentences to number or to name the heads of our discourse. And for this reason I have heard it hinted, that the name of Christ has been banished out of polite sermons, because it is a monosyllable of so many consonants and so harsh a sound.

But after all, our fathers, with all their defects, and with all their weaknesses, preached the gospel of Christ to the sensible instruction of whole parishes, to the conversion of sinners from the errors of their way, and the salvation of multitudes of souls. But it has been the late complaint of Dr. Edwards, and other worthy sons of the established church, that in too many pulpits now-a-days there are only heard some smooth declamations, while the hearers that were ignorant of the gospel abide still without knowledge, and the profane sinners are profane still. O that divine grace would descend, and reform what is amiss in all the sanctuaries of the nation!

It appears by the date at the bottom of this paper, in the manuscript, that it was written in the year 1718. The first and perhaps the second section of it may seem now to be grown, in a great measure, out of date; but whether the third is not at least as seasonable now as ever, may deserve serious consideration. The author has, since this was drawn up, delivered his sentiments more fully in the first part of that excellent piece entitled, An humble Attempt for the Revival of Religion. &c.

CHAP. VII.

Of Writing Books for the Public.

IN the explication and distinction of words and things by definition and description, in the division of things into their several parts, and in the dis tribution of things into their several kinds, be sure to observe a just medium. We must not always explain and distinguish, define, divide, and distribute; nor must we always omit it: sometimes it is useless and impertinent, sometimes it is proper and necessary. There is confusion brought into our argument and discourse by too many or by too few of these. One author plunges his reader into the midst of things without due explication of them; another jumbles together, without distinction, all those ideas which have any likeness; a third is fond of explaining every word, and coining distinctions between ideas which have little or no difference; but each of these runs into extremes, for all these practices are equal hindrances to clear, just, and useful knowledge. It is not a long train of rules, but observation and good judgment can teach us when to explain, define, and divide, and when to omit it.

In the beginning of a treatise it is proper and necessary sometimes to premise some præcognita, or general principles, which may serve for an introduction to the subject in hand, and give light or strength to the following discourse; but it is ridiculous, under a pretence of such introductions or prefaces, to wander to the most remote or distant themes, which have no near or necessary connection with the thing in hand; this serves for no other purpose but to make a gaudy shew of learning. There was a professor of divinity who began an analytical exposition of the Epistle to the Romans with such