Fléchier. 55. Fléchier (the third name of the seventeenth century, for Massillon belongs only to the next), like Bossuet, has been more celebrated for his funeral sermons than for any others; but, in this line, it is unfortunate for him to enter into unavoidable competition with one whom he cannot rival. The French critics extol Fléchier for the arrangement and harmony of his periods; yet, even in this, according to La Harpe, he is not essentially superior to Bossuet; and, to an English ear, accustomed to the long swell of our own writers, and of the Ciceronian school in Latin, he will probably not give so much gratification. He does not want a moral dignity, or a certain elevation of thought, without which the funeral panegyric must be contemptible; but he has not the majestic tone of Bossuet; he does not, like him, raise the heroes and princes of the earth in order to abase them by paintings of mortality and weakness, or recall the hearer in every passage to something more awful than human power, and more magnificent than human grandeur. This religious solemnity, so characteristic in Bossuet, is hardly felt in the less emphatic sentences of Fléchier. Even where his exordium is almost worthy of comparison, as in the funeral discourse on Turenne, we find him degenerate into a trivial eulogy, and he flatters both more profusely and with less skill. His style is graceful, but not without affectation and false taste. La Harpe has not ill compared him to Isocrates among the orators of Greece, the place of Demosthenes being, of course, reserved for Bossuet.[749]
[749] The native critics ascribe a reform in the style of preaching to Paolo Segneri, whom Corniani does not hesitate to call, with the sanction, he says, of posterity, the father of Italian eloquence. It is to be remembered, that in no country has the pulpit been so much degraded by empty declamation, and even by a stupid buffoonery. “The language of Segneri,” the same writer observes, “is always full of dignity and harmony. He inlaid it with splendid and elegant expressions, and has thus obtained a place among the authors to whom authority has been given by the Della Crusca dictionary. His periods are flowing, natural, and intelligible, without the affectation of obsolete Tuscanisms, which pass for graces of the language with many.” Tiraboschi, with much commendation of Segneri, admits that we find in him some vestiges of the false taste he endeavoured to reform. The very little that I have seen of the sermons of Segneri, gives no impression of any merit that can be reckoned more than relative to the miserable tone of his predecessors. The following specimen is from one of his most admired sermons:—E Cristo non potrà ottenere da voi che gli rimettiate un torto, un affronto, un aggravio, una parolina? Che vorreste da Christo? Vorreste ch’egli vi si gettasse supplichevole a’ piedi a chiedergli questa grazia? Io son quasi per dire ch’egli il farebbe; perchè se non dubiti di prostrarsi a’ piedi di un traditore, qual’era Guida, di lavarglieli, di asciugarglieli, di baciarglieli, non si vergognerebbe, cred’io, di farsi vedere ginocchioni a’ piè vostri. Ma vi fa bisogno di tanto per muovervi a compiacerlo? Ah Cavalieri, Cavalieri, io non vorrei questa volta farvi arrossire. Nel resto io so di certo, che se altrettanto fosse a voi domandato da quella donna che chiamate la vostra dama, da quella, di cui forsennati idolatrate il volto, indovinate le voglie, ambite le grazie, non vi farete pregar tanto a concederglielo. E poi vi fate pregar tanto da un Dio per voi crocefisso? O confusione! O vitupero! O vergogna! Raccolta di Prose Italiane (in Classici Italiani), vol. ii., p. 345.
This is certainly not the manner of Bossuet, and more like that of a third-rate Methodist among us.
English sermons—Barrow. 56. The style of preaching in England was less ornamental, and spoke less to the imagination and affections, than these celebrated writers of the Gallican church; but in some of our chief divines it had its own excellencies. The sermons of Barrow display a strength of mind, a comprehensiveness and fertility, which have rarely been equalled. No better proof can be given than his eight sermons on the government of the tongue; copious and exhaustive without tautology or superfluous declamation, they are, in moral preaching, what the best parts of Aristotle are in ethical philosophy, with more of development and a more extensive observation. It would be said of these sermons, and indeed, with a few exceptions, of all those of Barrow, that they are not what is called evangelical; they indicate the ascendancy of an Arminian party, dwelling far more than is usual in the pulpit on moral and rational, or even temporal, inducements, and sometimes hardly abstaining from what would give a little offence in later times.[750] His quotations also from ancient philosophers, though not so numerous as in Taylor, are equally uncongenial to our ears. In his style, notwithstanding its richness and occasional vivacity, we may censure a redundancy and excess of apposition; it is not sufficient to avoid strict tautology; no second phrase (to lay down a general rule not without exception) should be so like the first, that the reader would naturally have understood it to be comprised therein. Barrow’s language is more antiquated and formal than that of his age; and he abounds too much in uncommon words of Latin derivation, frequently such as appear to have no authority but his own.
[750] Thus, in his sermon against evil speaking (xvi.), Barrow treats it as fit “for rustic boors or men of coarsest education and employment, who, having their minds debased by being conversant in meanest affairs, do vent their sorry passions and bicker about their petty concernments in such strains, who also, not being capable of a fair reputation, or sensible of disgrace to themselves, do little value the credit of others, or care for aspersing it. But such language is unworthy of those persons, and cannot easily be drawn from them, who are wont to exercise their thoughts about nobler matters,” &c. No one would venture this now from the pulpit.
South. 57. South’s sermons begin, in order of date, before the Restoration, and come down to nearly the end of the century. They were much celebrated at the time, and retain a portion of their renown. This is by no means surprising. South had great qualifications for that popularity which attends the pulpit, and his manner was at that time original. Not diffuse, not learned, not formal in argument like Barrow, with a more natural structure of sentences, a more pointed, though by no means a more fair and satisfactory turn of reasoning, with a style clear and English, free from all pedantry, but abounding with those colloquial novelties of idiom, which, though now become vulgar and offensive, the age of Charles II. affected, sparing no personal or temporary sarcasm, but, if he seems for a moment to tread on the verge of buffoonery, recovering himself by some stroke of vigorous sense and language; such was the witty Dr. South, whom the courtiers delighted to hear. His sermons want all that is called unction, and sometimes even earnestness, which is owing, in a great measure, to a perpetual tone of gibing at rebels and fanatics; but there is a masculine spirit about them, which, combined with their peculiar characteristics, would naturally fill the churches where he might be heard. South appears to bend towards the Arminian theology, without adopting so much of it as some of his contemporaries.
Tillotson. 59. The sermons of Tillotson were, for half a century, more read than any in our language. They are now bought almost as waste paper, and hardly read at all. Such is the fickleness of religious taste, as abundantly numerous instances would prove. Tillotson is reckoned verbose and languid. He has not the former defect in nearly so great a degree as some of his eminent predecessors; but there is certainly little vigour or vivacity in his style. Full of the Romish controversy, he is perpetually recurring to that “world’s debate;” and he is not much less hostile to all the Calvinistic tenets. What is most remarkable in the theology of Tillotson is his strong assertion, in almost all his sermons, of the principles of natural religion and morality, not only as the basis of all revelation, without a dependence on which it cannot be believed, but as nearly coincident with Christianity in its extent, a length to which few at present would be ready to follow him. Tillotson is always of a tolerant and catholic spirit, enforcing right actions rather than orthodox opinions, and obnoxious, for that and other reasons, to all the bigots of his own age.
Expository Theology. 60. It has become necessary to draw towards a conclusion of this chapter; the materials are far from being exhausted. In expository, or, as some call it, exegetical theology, the English divines had already taken a conspicuous station. Andrès, no partial estimator of Protestant writers, extols them with marked praise.[751] Those who belonged to the earlier part of the century form a portion of a vast collection, the Critici Sacri, published by one Bee, a bookseller, in 1660. This was in nine folio volumes; and in 1669, Matthew Pool, a nonconforming minister, produced his Synopsis Criticorum, in five volumes, being, in great measure, an abridgment and digest of the former. Bee complained of the infraction of his copyright, or rather his equitable interest; but such a dispute hardly pertains to our history.[752] The work of Pool was evidently a more original labour than the former. Hammond, Patrick, and other commentators, do honour to the Anglican church in the latter part of the century.
[751] I soli Inglesi, che ampio spazio non dovrebbono occupare in questo capo dell’esegetica sacra, se l’istituto della nostr’opera ci permettesse tener dietro a tutti i più degni della nostra stima? Vol. xix., p. 253.
[752] Chalmers.