are playing with a certain air of liberty and peace while giving indulgence to their vague and fluctuating desires.'"*

SECTION LII.

OF QUOTATIONS FROM PROFANE AUTHORS.

It is sometimes allowable to quote in the pulpit the profane writers of antiquity, provided that such citations be not long, nor frequent, nor accompanied with historical relations foreign to religion.

Our old preachers flattered themselves that they were very eloquent when they had collected into one barbarous compilation, which they call a Christian discourse, some shreds of poetry, eloquence, or history.

The author of "Pulpit Maxims" ingeniously compares those sermons blended with the principles of religion and the maxims of paganism, "to the Temple at Jerusalem built with the marble and cedars of King Hiram."

But it is no less certain that Christian eloquence doth not exclude heathen testimonies when the or

* Second sermon for the Thursday of the second week of Lent, upon "Final Impenitence." Tanquam olivæ pendentes in arbore, ducentibus ventis, quasi quadam libertate auræ perfruuntur, vago quodam desiderio suo.-AUGUST. in Psal. 136, vol. iv., p. 1528,

ator is pointing out the duties of morality or the particulars of good conduct.

S. BASIL has composed a treatise in order to prove the utility of reading heathen authors. Bossuet, whose learning equalled his eloquence, drew from time to time out of those authors sublime thoughts, which he quoted in the pulpit; and Bourdaloue, in his sermon "On the Love of Riches," hath paraphrased this maxim of Horace,

Si possis recte, si non, quocumque modo, rem.

Let us not, however, make an improper use of these examples. We shall never be blamed for not having founded our proofs upon a profane authority; and we shall do an equal injury to piety and taste if we relate ideas taken from heathens, when we can find them equally well, and perhaps better, expressed in Scripture or in the fathers.

SECTION LIII.

OF THE STUDY OF A PREACHER.

I WILL not, then, read the moralists, the poets, and the orators of antiquity with a view of multiplying such heathen quotations, but råther in order to know the human heart, and to form my taste upon the models of eloquence. This study is more useful than the reading of sermons.

Is it your aim to excel in Christian eloquence?

At first consult collections of sermons. But, when once you become conversant with them, shut those books; they would blunt your imagination, and thereby contract your ideas, although they may be filled with sublime passages.

Aim at original composition.* Search for food to

* "Original writers are, and ought to be, great favourites, for they are great benefactors; they extend the republic of letters, and add a new province to its dominion. The pen of an original writer, like Armida's wand, out of a barren waste calls a blooming spring. An original, though but indifferent, yet has something to boast; it is something to say with him in Horace,

'Meo sum pauper in ære;'

and to share ambition with no less than Cæsar, who declared he had rather be first in a village than the second at Rome.

"But why are originals so few? Not because the writer's harvest is over, the great reapers of antiquity having left nothing to be gleaned after them; nor because the human mind's teeming time is past, nor because it is incapable of putting forth unprecedented births, but because illustrious examples engross, prejudice, and intimidate. They engross our attention, and so prevent a due inspection of ourselves; they prejudice our judgment in favour of their abilities, and so lessen the sense of our own; and they intimidate us with the splendour of their renown, and thus under diffidence bury our strength. Nature's impossibilities and those of diffidence lie wide asunder."YOUNG'S Conjectures on Original Composition; v. his works, vol. vi., p. 70, 71, 73.

nourish your mind, without degrading yourselves to a level with plagiarists.

No spare time will remain for reading the sermons of others when we ourselves apply in earnest to composition.

Prefer, then, to all those discourses which have been consecrated by public admiration, works no less valuable to eloquence and much more profitable to the preacher. Such are FENELON's Letters, in which this profound moralist points out every singular character by the knowledge which he hath of the human heart; the Works of the Abbé de FLEURY, who interests by his candour, astonishes by the universality of his knowledge, always engages when speaking of religion, because it is evident that he loves it, and displays, without ostentation, a boldness of reasoning, which is, in him, the necessary consequence of sincerity;* some excellent books of PORT-ROYAL, in which we recognise the voice of

* Abbé de FLEURY was the author of many excellent works, all in French, and very well written. Among these are, "The Manners of the Jews" (translated into English by Farneworth); also "the Manners of the Christians ;" "an Historical Catechism;" "the Method of Study;" "the Institutes of the Ecclesiastical or Canon Law;" "the Duty of Masters and Servants." His principal work, which has been much esteemed, is his "Ecclesiastical History," 20 volumes in 4to. They breathe a spirit truly philosophic.-See New and General Biog. Dictionary,

↑ "Messrs. de PORT-ROYAL was the general denomina

religion and the poetry of the sacred books; the Sinner's Guide, by GRENADE, in which he alarms the apprehensions of the wicked, and holds them, so to speak, suspended between the terrors of remorse and of Divine justice; the Imitation of JESUS CHRIST,* a master-piece of simplicity and plainness, and “the best book," says, Fontenelle, "which can proceed from the hand of man, seeing the Gospel doth not come from thence;"† in a word, the writings of FRANCIS DE SALIS, which breathe the most unaffected piety, and where we should find still more pathos were there somewhat less of wit.‡

tion which comprehended all the Jansenist writers; but was, however, applied in a more confined and particular sense to those Jansenists who passed their days in pious exercises and religious pursuit, in the retreat of PortRoyal, a mansion situated at a little distance from Paris. It is well known that several writers of superior genius, extensive learning, and uncommon eloquence resided in this sanctuary of letters."-MOSHEIM'S Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv., p. 350, n.

* BY THOMAS A KEMPIS. His work is perhaps as much known and read by Protestants as any other religious performance of a Catholic writer. He died 1471, aged 91.See DUPIN'S History.

+ Life of Corneille.

+ After this imperfect enumeration of French theological writers by our author, it may with pleasure be observed, that perhaps no nation abounds with an equal number of solid, judicious, and instructive discourses as doth the English. To attempt an enumeration of them would be