We are often reproved by divines from the pulpits, on account of our ignorance in things sacred, and perhaps with justice enough.  However, it is not very reasonable for them to expect, that common men should understand expressions which are never made use of in common life.  No gentleman thinks it safe or prudent to send a servant with a message, without repeating it more than once, and endeavouring to put it into terms brought down to the capacity of the bearer:  yet after all this care, it is frequent for servants to mistake, and sometimes to occasion misunderstandings among friends.  Although the common domestics in some gentlemen’s families have more opportunities of improving their minds than the ordinary sort of tradesmen.

It is usual for clergymen who are taxed with this learned defect, to quote Dr. Tillotson, and other famous divines, in their defence; without considering the difference between elaborate discourses upon important occasions, delivered to princes or parliaments, written with a view of being made public, and a plain sermon intended for the middle or lower size of people.  Neither do they seem to remember the many alterations, additions, and expungings, made by great authors in those treatises which they prepare for the public.  Besides, that excellent prelate above-mentioned, was known to preach after a much more popular manner in the city congregations:  and if in those parts of his works he be any where too obscure for the understandings of many who may be supposed to have been his hearers, it ought to be numbered among his omissions.

The fear of being thought pedants hath been of pernicious consequence to young divines.  This hath wholly taken many of them off from their severer studies in the university, which they have exchanged for plays, poems, and pamphlets, in order to qualify them for tea-tables and coffee-houses.  This they usually call “polite conversation; knowing the world; and reading men instead of books.”  These accomplishments, when applied to the pulpit, appear by a quaint; terse, florid style, rounded into periods and cadences, commonly without either propriety or meaning.  I have listen’d with my utmost attention for half an hour to an orator of this species, without being able to understand, much less to carry away one single sentence out of a whole sermon.  Others, to shew that their studies have not been confined to sciences, or ancient authors, will talk in the style of a gaming ordinary, and White Friars[3], when I suppose the hearers can be little edified by the terms palming, shuffling, biting, bamboozling and the like, if they have not been sometimes conversant among pick-pockets and sharpers.  And truly, as they say, a man is known by his company, so it should seem that a man’s company may be known by his manner of expressing himself, either in public assemblies, or private conversation.

[Footnote 3:  See note on “Alsatia,” p. 100. [T.  S.] ]