reform of the same century, the celebrated preachers— whom, perhaps, as popular haranguers, the Church has never seen equalled-Simon Rodriguez, Ignacio Martinz, and others, were noted for the same disposition. In our own country, Bishop Andrewes has passages which cannot be read, and could scarcely have been heard, without a smile. The case was the same with those who, if the producing a great effect constitutes a great preacher, certainly deserve that name, the Methodist missionaries of the eighteenth century,-John Wesley himself, Whitfield, Cennick, and others. Here, as might be expected, unrestrained by the discipline of the preachers whom we have before named, they frequently became little better than buffoons; as was the case also with Rowland Hill, and, still more coarsely, with Berridge; both, nevertheless, men possessing great power in addressing a popular audience. It would not be difficult to match, among the many puns of the medieval pulpit, that sentence of Rowland Hill, in preaching at Wapping, which, notwithstanding all its vulgarity, is said to have produced a startling effect :-"Who can dare to despair of the mercy of GOD, when it can extend itself to heinous sinners, to great sinners, to mighty sinners, yea, and to Wapping sinners ?" A pun of even a more curious nature was introduced, if I remember right, by S. Ivo of Chartres, when preaching at a monastery very much infested with dissensions and quarrels, of which the abbat was the principal cause. "My brethren," said the Bishop, "if it is the part of a Christian to imitate GOD, you are very much wanting to your duty here. Of GoD it is written, Pater noster quies in cœlis, but you have to say, Pater noster inquies in terris." I am not now speak

ing of such plays upon words as were fashionable in the pulpits of Charles the Second's time, and in which South and Echard so largely indulged,-things intended rather to display the wit of the writer, than to promote the edification of the hearer; but of witticisms introduced with the honest purpose of doing good, and on the principle of becoming all things to all men. Under this head fall such ingenious contrivances as that of the Spanish Bishop, who, having to preach before a crowded and fashionable auditory, perceived, on mounting the pulpit, so drowsy an aspect in his congregation, that there was little hope of his making any impression. Looking, therefore, to that part of the church in which sat the authorities of the Inquisition, he began thus:— "I deny, and, whatever the Catholic Church may say, I shall always deny, that in the One, self-existent GOD, there are three Persons, FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST." He paused, and of course, attention was instantly aroused. The Bishop of this place looked at the Archbishop of that, the officials of the Inquisition. turned their heads towards each other, some of the grandees arose, as if about to leave the church, when the preacher quietly continued; "Thus, my brethren, speaks the Arian, thus speaks the Sabellian; but we, who have been built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets-" and so forth. One of Sterne's sermons begins in the same offensive way. A story is related of a popular dissenting preacher in Wales, who, finding that he had for some time been addressing his congregation to very little purpose, ascended the pulpit one Sunday morning, and, looking around him, said, "My brethren, I should like to ask you a question,

which you cannot answer, nor I neither. My brethren, what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Saying which, he left the pulpit and the church. This is exactly the thing which some of the more eccentric of medieval preachers would have done; such, for example, as in Italy, Jacobus de Benedictis, whose familiar appellation of Jacopone reveals something of his character; and, to go to a different part of the world, Basil, surnamed Iorodevie, that is, mad (for CHRIST's sake), at Moscow. If there were ever any one who understood how to move and to lead a popular audience, it was Hugh Latimer; and every one knows that his sermons abound with the broadest farce, and teem with expressions which a modern writer could not for a moment venture to transfer to his pages. I am, let it be remembered, neither defending, nor yet condemning, the practices of which I have been speaking; all I say is, that they have been used by the preachers who have been most efficacious, either for good or for evil. Neither can there be any doubt, that English Priests, generally, have so reverent a fear of degrading the dignity of the Establishment, of getting off their stilts, of remembering that, after all, they are men speaking to men, of teaching religion as if they really believed in it, that a few examples of an opposite extreme (granting it an extreme) may not have been without their use.

I will take another instance from Vieyra, whom I regard as the more valuable writer, because, while as to time he almost stands on the debateable ground betwixt the mediæval age and our own, he unites (the reader who is not acquainted with his works may think it impos

sible) much of the character of S. Jerome on the one hand, and Swift on the other. In occasional turns of thought and collocation of words, Andrewes comes nearer to him than any other English writer; but if Andrewes possesses his piety and his learning, Andrewes has not half his wit, nor the tenth part of his eloquence. One of the most curious sermons ever preached, is the discourse to the fishes, from which I have given copious extracts, which he delivered at Maranhão, a few days before embarking for Portugal on business connected with the missions in Brazil. Maranhão, in the course of a few years, became a reformed town, but whether the Sermon to the Fishes were the cause of its reformation, may, perhaps, reasonably be doubted.

It is now time to turn to the third distinguishing feature of medieval sermons, on which we must dwell a little more at length.

Every one who has studied the ritual and the calendar of the Church, must have speedily convinced himself that its whole aim and design is to be dramatic. It is not the mere reciter of events which happened centuries ago, nor their expounder, nor, as the Puritans would have said, their improver. It sets them forth before the eyes of man as if they were now happening; as if they were scenes in which we ourselves were taking a part; as if they were events occurring in our own times, and in which we bore a living interest. The Church would not represent to us the cycle of events in our LORD's Life and Death, as if they had occurred, once for all, eighteen centuries ago; but would have us regard them as if they happened again and again every year, and were occurrences to which we should look forward,

rather than look back. This characteristic remains very strongly impressed on our own Prayer Book: where, before each recurring Festival, we pray in some sort that the event may happen, as a future thing, which we are really commemorating as a past occurrence. Thus, for example, on the Sunday after Ascension, the Church, as if forgetful that the Day of Pentecost is really past, prays, in the very same words that the Apostles might have used during the actual ten days which succeeded our LORD's Ascension, "We beseech Thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us Thine HOLY GHOST to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our SAVIOUR CHRIST has gone before." In the Prayer-books of Protestant Europe this dramatic treatment of the subject is almost universally lost; and it must be confessed that, in one or two instances, our own Collects have been, in like manner, rendered tame and prosaic. Never so strikingly as in that for the Fourth Sunday in Advent. The ancient Church, directing her prayer to God the Son, besought Him to appear and to be born for her sake: "O LORD, raise up, we pray Thee, Thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us." We have utterly destroyed the point of the Collect by addressing it to the FATHER, and concluding it, "through the satisfaction of Thy Son our LORD."

What is true, then, of the ritual and office-books of the medieval Church, is equally true of the sermons which formed a part of it. Here, also, the events which the Church was setting before her children were spoken of as present, or as future; the hearers were not called on, as so often now, to remember that the Church sets