'SECTION rI. 615 with power tolove and practise all the important duties öf god- liness, in opposition to the flesh-and the world ; endeavour to kindle the soul to zeal io the holywarfare, and to make it bravely victorious over all the enemies of its salvation. But in all these efforts of sacred oratory, remember still you are a minister of the gospel of Christ and as your style must not affect the pomp and magnificence of the theatre, so neither should, you borrow your expressions or yodr metaphors, from the coarsest occupa- tions, or any of the meant and uncleanly occurrences in life. Swell not the sound of your periods, with ambitious or pedantic phrases ; dress not your serious discourses to the people in too glittering array, with an affectation of gaudy and flaunting or naments, nor ever descend to so low a degree of familiarity and meanness, as to sink yourlanguage below the dignity of your subject, or your office. 3X. As the art of .reasoning, and the happy skill of per- suasion, are both necessary to be used in framing your discourses, so both of them may be borrowed in a good measure from the holy scriptures. The word of God will furnish you with .a rich variety of forms, both to prove and persuade. Clear instruction, convincing argument, and pathetic address to the heart, may be all drawn from the sacred writers. Many fine strokes of true logic and rhetoric, are scattered through that divine book the bible : Words of force and elegance to charm and allure the soul, glitter and sparkle like golden ore in some peculiar parts of it. You may find there noble examples of the awful and compassionate style; and inimitable patterns of the terrible and the tender. Shall I therefore take the freedom, once again to call upon you to remember, that you are a minister of the word of God, a professor and preacher of the bible, and not a mere philosopher upon the foot of reason, nor an orator in a heathen School'? I am not here directing ycu to compose your whole sermons of nothing else, but a perpetual connexion of texts of scripture ; nor to spend the whole hour in running from one text to another, as .a concordance, or the margin shall point them out. Persons of low degrees.of learning, who give themselves sip to this method, have frequently introduced. scripture in their discourses, in a sense which the holy writers never thought of, and which the .Spirit of God .never designed : and yet if a learned man ìvonld happily explain the more difficult parts of the word of God, perhaps it will be generally best done, and especially in the pulpit, by comparing them with other texts, which are more plain and easy. Scripture is the best interpreter of itself. As for argument to confirm a doctrine or enforce a duty, ;you may borrow much ofthis front the word of God. It is true, when we speak of those subjects which belong to natural religion,
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