PRINTER'S MARK OF PHILIPPE LE NOIR.
The early printers, in order to distinguish their work, used a special mark or plate which, as in the case before us, sometimes took the form of a sort of rebus, or punning device. The negroes who support the initial shield in this mark are gorgeous and Oriental in attire, and the design, as a whole, is one of the most picturesque examples of this kind of composition.
"At Everton some were shrieking, some roaring aloud.... The most general was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life; and, indeed, almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter anguish. Great numbers wept without any noise; others fell down as dead.... I stood upon the pew-seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, fresh, healthy countryman, but in a moment, when he seemed to think of nothing else, down he dropt, with a violence inconceivable.... I heard the stamping of his feet, ready to break the boards, as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom of the pew.... I saw a sturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared above his fellows; ... his face was red as scarlet; and almost all on whom God laid his hand, turned either very red or almost black."[519]
Elsewhere, a woman, disgusted with this madness, wished to leave, but had only gone a few steps when she fell into as violent fits as others. Conversions followed these transports; the converted paid their debts, foreswore drunkenness, read the Bible, prayed, and went about exhorting others. Wesley collected them into societies, formed "classes" for mutual examination and edification, submitted spiritual life to a methodic discipline, built chapels, chose preachers, founded schools, organized enthusiasm. To this day his disciples spend very large sums every year in missions to all parts of the world, and on the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio their shoutings repeat the violent enthusiasm and the conversions of primitive inspiration. The same instinct is still revealed by the same signs; the doctrine of grace survives in uninterrupted energy, and the race, as in the sixteenth century, puts its poetry into the exaltation of the moral sense.
[Section V.—The Pulpit]
A sort of theological smoke covers and hides this glowing hearth which burns in silence. A stranger who, at this time, had visited the country, would see in this religion only a choking vapor of arguments, controversies, and sermons. All those celebrated divines and preachers, Barrow, Tillotson, South, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Burnet, Baxter, Barclay, preached, says Addison, like automatons, monotonously, without moving their arms. For a Frenchman, for Voltaire, who did read them, as he read everything, what a strange reading! Here is Tillotson first, the most authoritative of all, a kind of father of the Church, so much admired that Dryden tells us that he learned from him the art of writing well, and that his sermons, the only property which he left his widow, were bought by a publisher for two thousand five hundred guineas. This work has, in fact, some weight; there are three folio volumes, each of seven hundred pages. To open them, a man must be a critic by profession, or be possessed by an absolute desire to be saved. And now let us open them. "The Wisdom of being Religious"—such is his first sermon, much celebrated in his time, and the foundation of his success:
"These words consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense;... So that they differ only as cause and effect, which by a metonymy, used in all sorts of authors, are frequently put one for another."[520]
This opening makes us uneasy. Is this great orator a teacher of grammar?
"Having thus explained the words, I come now to consider the proposition contained in them, which is this:
That religion is the best knowledge and wisdom.
"This I shall endeavour to make good these three ways:—
"1st. By a direct proof of it;
"2d. By shewing on the contrary the folly and ignorance of irreligion and wickedness;
"3d. By vindicating religion from those common imputations which seem to charge it with ignorance or imprudence. I begin with the direct proof of this...."[521]