CHAPTER VI. 205 Men that take delight in this sort of work, will cut out all their Sense into shreds ; and every thing that they can say upon any topic, shall make a new particular. This sort of folly and mistaken conduct appears weekly in 1'olyratnns' lectures, and renders all his discourses lean and insipid. Whether it proceed from mere barrenness of thought and a native dryness of soul, that he is not able to vary his mat- ter, and to amplify beyond the formal topics of an analysis, or whether it arise from affectation of such a wayof talking, is hard to say ; but it is certain, that the chief part of his auditory are not overmuch profited or pleased. When 1 sit under his preach- ing, 1 fancy myself brought into' the valley of Ezekiel's vision ; it was fiat of bones, and behold, Mere were very many in the valley, and lo, they were very dry ; Ezek. xxxvii. 1, 2. It is the variety of enlargement upon a few proper heads, that clothes the dry bones and flesh, and animates them with blood and spirits ; it is this that colours the discourse, makes it warm and strong, and renders the divine propositionsbright and persuasive : it is this brings down the doctrineor the duty to the understanding and conscience of the whole auditory, and com- mands the natural affections into the interest of the gospel : in short, it is this that, under the influence of the iloly Spirit, gives life and force, beauty and success to a sermon, and provides food for souls. A single rose-bush, or a dwarf-pear, with all their leaves, flowers and fruit about them, have more beauty and spirit, in themselves, and yield more food and pleasure to mankind, than the innumerable branches, boughs and twigs of a long hedge of thorns. The fruit will feed the hungry, and the flower refresh the fainting ; which is more than can be said of the thickest oak in Bashan, when it has lost its vital juice ; it may spread its limbs indeed far and wide, but they are naked, withered, and sapless. SECT. III.The harangue. IS it not possible to forsake one extreme without running into a worse ? Isthere no medium between a sermon made upof sixty dry particulars, and a long loose declamation without any distinctionof the parts of it ? Must the preacher divide his works by the breaks of a minute watch, or let it run on incessantly to the last word, like the flowing stream of the hour glass that mea- sures his divinity ? Surely Fluvio preaches as though he knew no medium . and having taken a disgust heretofore at one of Polyramus' lectures, he resolved his own discourses should have no distinction of particulars in them. His language flows smooth- ly in a long connection of periods, and glides over the ear like a rivulet of oil over polished marble, and like that too leaves no trace behind it. The attention is detained in a gentle pleasure,
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