Wesley’s strictures were printed in 1758; and till then we must leave the subject.
The only pieces published by Hervey in 1756, were a “Recommendatory Letter,” prefixed to his favourite book, “Marshall’s Gospel Mystery of Sanctification”; and a “Preface” to “Jenks’s Meditations,” the latter of which was reprinted, in two volumes, by Hervey’s expressed desire.[245] Besides these, however, he preached three sermons, which he subsequently committed to the press, with the titles,—“The Time of Danger;” “The Means of Safety” and “The Way of Holiness.”[246]
Hervey’s published sermons are few in number, principally because the sermons he preached were never written.
“I have never,” said he, “since I was minister at Weston, used written notes; so that all my public Discourses are vanished into air; unless the blessed Spirit has left any traces of them, on the hearts of the hearers. And, though I have many Discourses, that were written before I discontinued the use of notes, they are all penned in short-hand, and are intelligible to none but the writer. I sometimes speak to my people an hour together; but I always blame myself for it. It detains the congregation too long. It renders the Discourse tiresome to be heard, and almost impossible to be remembered. This is one of the inconveniences attending the extempore method of preaching. We forget how the time passes away.”[247]
The reason, why he wrote and published the three sermons above mentioned, he states in a letter to Lady Frances Shirley,—
“I am inclined,” said he, “to print two or three Sermons, preached on the late Fast-Days. These, for some particular reason, I happened to take down in short-hand. As I have seen no Discourses, on this occasion, that were sufficiently evangelical, I have a strong desire, for the supply of this one defect only, to appear on the stage.” “Here,” he observed to Mr. Ryland, “I shall make a sacrifice of all my reputation (if I ever had any), with the elegant and polite; and let it go, freely let it go, if any honour may redound to the Lord our Righteousness.”
At the time, England was at war with France; and many of the sermons preached on the day of national humiliation were published; but Hervey was not satisfied. He writes:—
“The author pretends to nothing refined or extraordinary; he affects neither brilliant thought, nor polished style; equally remote from nice criticism and profound learning, his Discourses are studiously plain, and brought down to the level of the meanest capacity. ‘What then is his motive?’ This is the very truth. In several of the sermons, published on this occasion, the one thing needful seems to be overlooked. Christ and His free grace,—Christ and His great salvation,—are either totally omitted, or but slightly touched. Till these doctrines are generally inculcated, the most eloquent harangues from the pulpit, or the most correct dissertations from the press, will be no better than a pointless arrow, and a broken bow.”
Space forbids giving an outline of Hervey’s sermons.[248] Suffice it to say, that, they are able and eloquent, and intensely earnest and faithful. If such were a fair specimen of his pulpit performances, Hervey’s preaching must have been as remarkable as his writings; and, had he possessed Whitefield’s voice and elocution, the effects would have been something marvellous. Mr. Ryland, who visited him at Weston-Favel twice a year, observes,—
“He loved simplicity in his manner of preaching. He had no complicated and perplexed conceptions; no crowd of thoughts to overwhelm his own understanding, or the conceptions of his hearers. In all his sermons, you might discern a clear and easy arrangement; nothing tedious; no long-winded periods; no perplexing parentheses; no tiresome circumlocutions; but everything adapted to the weakest memory of his auditors. He despised and avoided all boisterous noise,—all rude and violent vociferation in the pulpit. His subjects were always serious and sublime; they might well be ranged under three heads,—Ruin, Righteousness, and Regeneration. He always steered a middle course, between a haughty positivity, and a sceptical hesitation. He made it an invariable rule to be thoroughly convinced of the truth and importance of his subject, before he proceeded to state and defend it; but, when he was once in possession of a truth, he held it with the greatest fortitude and tenaciousness. He considered very minutely the state of all his hearers. He did not preach to a promiscuous auditory, as though they were all converted to Christ; nor did he treat true believers as though they were in an unregenerate state.”