The fame of the conformist Puritan Richard Bernard rests primarily on two works, The Faithfull Shepheard (1607), which together with William Perkins's Prophetica (1592; translated as The Arte of Prophecying, 1607) was one of the most influential preaching manuals in early Stuart England, and The Isle of Man (1626), an allegory of the trial of Sin in Manshire that in all probability influenced John Bunyan's use of allegory. Bernard insists on the centrality of rhetoric to the preacher's art as a tool both for the interpretation of Scripture and for effective persuasion. He goes beyond Perkins's advocacy of a passionate, plain style derived primarily from the preacher's heartfelt zeal, calling in addition for the use of eloquence to move the hearer. As Debora K. Shuger has observed, Bernard is one of the few writers of vernacular sermon manuals in seventeenth-century England who drew on Continental exponents of "sacred eloquence" in his conviction...