THE IMPROVEMENT or THE MIND. of their sermons, and prevent their preaching them three or four. times over : but I have condour enough to persuade myself, that the true reason is, they imagine it to be a more modish way of preaching without particulars : I amsure it is a much more useless one. And it would be of great advantage both to the speaker and hearer, to have discourses for the pulpit cast into a plain and easy method, and the reasons and inferences ranged in a proper order, and that under the words,first, secondly, and thirdly, how- ever they may be now fancied to sound unpolite or unfashionable : but archbishop Tillotson did not think so in his days. 4. 4 frequent review and careful repetition of the, things we would learn, and an abridgment ofthem in a narrow compass . for this end, has a great influence to fix them in the memory :- therefore it is that the rules of grammar, and useful examples of the variation of words, and the peculiar forms of speech in any language, are so often appointed by the master as lessons for the scholar to be frequently repeated ; and they are contracted into tables for frequent review, that what is not fixed in the mind at first, may be stamped upon the memory bya perpetual surveyand rehearsal. Repetition is so very useful a practice, that ]'Inemon, even from his youth to his old age, never read a book without making some small points, dashes or hooks in the margin, to mark what parts of the discourse were proper for areview : and when he came the end of a section or chapter, he always shut his book, and recollected all the sentiments or expressions he had remarked, so that he could give a tolerable analysis and abstract of every . treatise he had read, just after he had finished it. Thencehe became so well furnished with a rich variety of knowledge. Even when a person is hearing a sermon, or a lecture, he may give his thoughts leave now and then to step back so far as to recollect the severalheads of it from the beginning, two or three times before the lecture or sermon is finished : the omission or the loss of a sentence or two among the amplifications, is richly compensated by preserving in the mind the method and order of the whole discourse in the most important branches of it., If we would fix in the memory the discourses We hear, or. what we design to speak, let us abstract them into briefcompends, and review them often. Lawyers and divines have need of such, assistances : they write down short notes or hints of the principal heads of what they desire to commit to their memory, in order to preach oi`plead ; for such abstracts and epitomes may bereview- ed much sooner, and the several amplifying sentiments or sentences will be more easily invented or recollected in their proper places. The art of short hand is of excellent use for this as well as other purposes. It must be acknowledged, that those who scarcely ever take a pen in their hands to write short notes or hints of what
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