The eighth requisite is the delicacy of the victuals, and this he applies to the varied delights the redeemed will have in the society of the saints and of the angels in their differing orders and ranks.
The ninth requisite is duration. The banquet of Ahasuerus lasted but seven days, whilst that of Christ will be for ever and ever.
And lastly, a feast must be peaceful and calm. When Ahasuerus made his banquet, he prepared “beds of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble.” How much sweeter will be the rest of the redeemed in the green pastures of Paradise, beside the ever-flowing waters of comfort!
In another sermon on the same Gospel, Meffreth strangely inverts the subject just given, and makes the certain man to be the devil, and he describes with equal power the great feast of emptiness which he prepares. The properties of a feast are of course in this case wanting in every particular. For abundance of light there is outer darkness; for sweetness of music there are never-ending cries of despair; for calm and tranquillity there is strife and discord, and instead of those who are at that fearful feast having delicacy or variety of food, they are themselves the food on which the never-dying worm so sweetly feeds.
The commencement of the second sermon for the same Sunday after Trinity is so thoroughly characteristic of Meffreth’s worst style, that I must give it in his own Latin.
“Experientia, quæ est rerum magistra,”—note this pompous and stately beginning, and see what it introduces—“sæpe ostendit, quod mus, quandoque intrat promptuarium macilentus, ibique invenit lardum, carnes vel caseum et hujusmodi (and all that sort of thing) comedit, et impinguatur, cumque dominus venit quærens murem, vult fugere per foramen arctum, per quod intravit, sed præ pinguetudine non potest exire, sicque capitur et necatur.
“Moraliter. Per mures hic ad præsens intelliguntur homines, quia, sicut mus ab humo dicitur, eo quod ex humore terræ nascatur. Nam humus terra dicitur. Sic enim homo ab humo est dictus, eo quod de limo terræ est formatus. Gen. i.” After a few words about minding earthly things, and a quotation from Boetius, he continues,—“Si enim inter mures videres unum aliquem, jus sibi atque potestatem præ cæteris vendicantem, id est, usurpantem super alios mures. O quanto movereris cachinno, id est, risu, quia derisibile esset, et talis potestas terrena scilicet derisibilis, quæ non extendit se ad corpus. Quid vero si tu corpus spectes hominis, quid est imbecillius, id est, debilius homine? quasi diceret, nihil; quos scilicet homines muscarum sæpeque morsus in secreta, id est;”—another id est, Meffreth is intent upon being intelligible,—“in interiora hominis quæque reptantium, id est, serpentium, necat introitus.” The construction of this sentence is very confused. “In quo declarat, quod homo est mure debilior, imo parvissimo mure, quia musculus est diminutivum a mure. Iste quidem homo ad instar muris macilentus et nudus intrat in promptuarium hujus mundi. Juxta illud Job i. Nudus ingressus sum in hunc mundum et nudus revertar illuc. Cui alludet Apost., 1 Tim. vi., Nihil intulimus in hunc mundum, haud, id est, non dubium, quia nec auferre quid possumus.”
Having brought us into the larder of this world, Meffreth ought to have followed out the moral application, but he becomes apparently lost over the “lardum, carnes vel caseum et hujusmodi,” and never leaves them throughout his sermon.
An Advent discourse opens with the following statement: “Naturalists say that the Balustia, a certain flower of the pomegranate, is cold and dry, and has astringent and stiptic properties, wherefore it is used against dysentery and bloody flux of the stomach. It also restrains choleric vomiting, if it be cooked in vinegar and laid upon the collar-bone—so say medical men.”
“Expert naturalists say that every irrational animal, when it feels itself becoming weak and helpless, at once seeks a remedy for its languor, which may restore it to health.… In like manner, says Isidorus (lib. xii.), stags, when they feel themselves burdened with infirmity, snuff the serpents from their holes with the breath of their nostrils, and having overcome the noxiousness of the poison, reinvigorate themselves with their food. Aristotle (lib. vi.) says of animals, that bears are wont to eat crabs and ants for medicinal purposes. Avicenna relates in his book viii. of animals, that it was related to him by a faithful old man, that he had seen two little birds squabbling, and that one was overcome; it therefore retired and ate of a certain herb, then it returned to the onslaught; which, when the old man observed frequently, he took away the herb. Now when the birdie came back and found it not, it set up a great cry and died. And Avicenna says, ‘I inquired the name of the plant, and conjectured it to be of the species which is called Lactua agrestis.’” (Dom. Sexagesima i.)