fhould push this motive home to their hearts, are bafely found to defert their poft. They speak to the fquire, the philofopher, and the pedant; but the poor, those who really want inftruction, are left uninftructed.

I have attended moft of our pulpit orators, who, it must be owned, write extremely well upon the text they affume.. To give them their due alfo, they read their fermons with elegance and propriety, but this goes but a very fhort way in true eloquence. The fpeaker muft be moved. In this, in this alone, our English divines are deficient. Were they to fpeak to a few calm difpaffionate hearers, they certainly use the propereft methods of addrefs; but their audience is chiefly compofed of the poor, who must be influenced by motives of reward and punifhment, and whofe only virtues lie in felf-interest or fear.

How then are fuch to be addreffed? not by ftudied periods or cold difquifitions; not by the labours of the head, but the honeft fpontaneous dictates of the heart. Neither writing a fermon with regular periods and all the harmony of elegant expreffion; neither reading it with emphatis, propriety, and deliberation; neither pleafing with metaphor, fimile, or rhetorical fuftian; neither arguing coolly, and untying confequences united in a priori, nor bundling up inductions a pofteriori; neither pedantic jargon, nor academical trifling, can perfuade the poor; writing a difcourfe coolly in the clofet, then getting it by memory, and delivering it on Sundays, even that will not do. What then is to be done? I know of no expedient to speak; to fpeak at once intelligibly, and feelingly, except to understand the language. To be convinced of the truth of the object, to be perfectly acquainted with the subject in view, to prepoffefs yourfelt with a low

opinion of your audience, and to do the reft extempore: by this means ftrong expreffions, new thoughts, rifing paffions, and the true declamatory ftyle, will naturally enfue.

Fine declamation does not confift in flowery periods, delicate allufions, or mufical cadences; but in a plain, open, loofe ftyle, where the periods are long and obvious; where the fame thought is often exhibited in feveral points of view; all this ftrong fenfe, a good memory, and a small share of experience, will furnish to every orator; and without these a clergyman may be called a fine preacher, a judicious preacher, and a man of good sense; he may make his hearers admire his understanding, but will feldom enlighten theirs.

When I think of the Methodist preachers among us, how feldom they are endued with common fenfe, and yet how often and how juftly they affect their hearers, I cannot avoid faying within myfelf, had these been bred gentlemen, and been endued with even the meaneft fhare of understanding, what might they not effect! Did our bishops, who can add dignity to their expoftulations, teftify the fame fervour, and intreat their hearers, as well as argue, what might not be the confequence! The vulgar, by which I mean the bulk of mankind, would then have a double motive to love religion, first from feeing its profeffors honoured here, and next from the confequences hereafter. At prefent the enthufiafms of the poor are oppofed to law; did law confpire with their enthusiasms, we should not only be the happiest nation upon earth, but the wifeft alfo.

Enthufiafm in religion, which prevails only among the vulgar, fhould be the chief object of politics. A fociety of enthufiafts, governed by reafon among the great, is the moft indiffoluble, the moft virtuous, and the most efficient of its own decrees that can

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be imagined. Every country, poffeffed of any degree of ftrength, have had their enthufiafms, which ever ferve as laws among the people. The Greeks had their Kalokagathia, the Romans their Amor Patria, and we the truer and firmer bond of the Proteftant religion. The principle is the fame in all; how much then is it the duty of thofe, whom the law has appointed teachers of this religion, to enforce its obligations, and to raise those enthusiasms among people, by which alone political fociety can subsist.

From eloquence therefore the morals of our people are to expect emendation; but how little can they be improved by men, who get into the pulpit rather to fhew their parts than convince us of the truth of what they deliver, who are painfully correct in their ftyle, mufical in their tones, where every fentiment, every expreffion, feems the refult of meditation and deep ftudy?

Tillotfon has been commended as the model of pulpit eloquence; thus far he fhould be imitated, where he generally ftrives to convince rather than to pleafe; but to adopt his long, dry, and fometimes tedious difcuffions, which ferve to amuse only divines, and are utterly neglected by the generality of mankind, to praise the intricacy of his periods, which are too long to be spoken, to continue his cool phlegmatic manner of enforcing every truth, is certainly erroneous. As I faid before, the good preacher fhould adopt no model, write no fermons, ftudy no periods; let him but understand his fubject, the language he speaks, and be convinced of the truths he delivers. It is amazing to what heights eloquence of this kind may reach! This is that eloquence the antients represented as lightning, bearing down every oppofer; this the power which has turned whole affemblies into aftonishment, admiration, and awe, that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other inftance of irrefiftible impetuofity,

But to attempt fuch noble heights belongs only to the truly great, or the truly good. To difcard the lazy maner of reading fermons, or fpeaking fermons by rote; to fet up fingly against the oppofition of men, who are attached to their own errors, and to endeavour to be great instead of being prudent, are qualities we feldom fee united. A minifter of the Church of England, who may be poffeffed of good fenfe and fome hopes of preferment, will feldom give up fuch fubftantial advantages for the empty pleasure of improving fociety. By his prefent method he is liked by his friends, admired by his dependants, not difpleafing to his bifhop; he lives as well, eats and fleeps as well, as if a real orator, and an eager afferter of his miffion; he will hardly therefore venture all this to be called perhaps an enthufiaft; nor will he depart from cuftoms eftablished by the brotherhood, when by fuch a conduct he only fingles himself out for their contempt.

CUSTOM AND LAWS COMPARED,

WHAT, fay fome, can give us a more contemptible idea of a large ftate than to find it moftly governed by cuftom; to have few written laws, and no boundaries to mark the jurifdiction between the fenate and people? Among the number who fpeak in this manner is the great Montefquieu, who afferts that every nation is free in proportion to the number of its written laws, and feems to hint at a defpotic and arbitrary conduct in the prefent king of Pruffia, who has abridged the laws of his country into a very thort compaís.

As

As Tacitus and Montefquieu happen to differ in fentiment upon a fubject of fo much importance, (for the Roman expreffly afferts that the ftate is generally vicious in proportion to the number of its laws); it will not be amifs to examine it a little more minutely, and fee whether a ftate, which like England is burthened with a multiplicity of written laws, or which like Switzerland, Geneva, and fome other republics, is governed by cuftom and the determination of the judge, is beft.

And to prove the fuperiority of cuftom to written law we fhall at leaft find hiftory confpiring. Cuftom or the traditional obfervance of the practice of their forefathers, was what directed the Romans as well in their public as private determinations. Cuftom was appealed to in pronouncing fentence against a criminal, where part of the formulary was more majorum. So Salluft speaking of the expulfion of Tarquin, fays, mutato more, and not lege mutata; and Virgil, pacifque imponere morem. So that in those

times of the empire, in which the people retained their liberty, they were governed by cuftom; when they funk into oppreffion and tyranny, they were reftrained by new laws, and the laws of tradition

abolished.

As getting the antients on our fide is half a victory, it will not be amifs to fortify the argument with an observation of Chryfoftom's; "That the

enflaved are the fitteft to be governed by laws, "and free men by cuftom." Cuftom partakes of the nature of parental injunction; it is kept by the people themselves, and obferved with a willing obedience. The obfervance of it must therefore be a mark of freedom, and coming originally to a ftate from the reverenced founders of its liberty, will be an encouragement and affiftance to it in the defence of that bleffing; but a conquered people, a nation of

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flaves,