There is, I believe, a mistake in this title; Joseph de Barzia was not a Jesuit; at all events, the brothers Bächer have not included him in their catalogue.
Compendium excitatoris Christiani; lingua primum Hispanica vulgatum ipsomet ab Auctore Rdo. D. Josepho de Barzia Episcopo Gaditano, nunc demum Latine versum a R. P. Petro Gummersbach, Soc. Jesu; Coloniæ, 1724, 4to.
Manductio ad excitationem Christianorum; seu, Sermones Missionales. Auctore Jos. de Barzia; Augustæ Vindelic., 1732, 2 vols. in one, 8vo. Ibid. 1737, 2 vols. in one, 8vo.
The sermons of De Barzia are model mission-discourses; they are interesting, pointed, full of illustration and anecdote, and are eminently qualified to arrest the attention, and arouse the consciences of the hearers.
The good Bishop possessed the art of never suffering the attention of his audience to flag. He carefully avoided wearing his subject thread-bare, and the moment he saw that his shot had taken effect, he opened a new battery from another point altogether, yet aimed at the same object.
His knowledge of the Bible is wonderful, even for a Roman Catholic Post-Mediæval preacher; his sermons teem with Scriptural illustrations of the most apposite character, culled from every portion of Holy Writ. It is not that he affects quotations from Scripture in the manner of Helmesius, who, in an Advent sermon, could make one hundred and seventy-five quotations, but that he found in his Bible an inexhaustible store of illustration for every subject which he handled.
The majority of Mediæval sacred orators, and their immediate followers, seemed to think, and consequently speak, in Scripture terms, but De Barzia preaches to unlettered men, who knew little or nothing of their Bibles, beyond the broad outlines of sacred history, and who would not recognize quotations from the prophetic books or the Epistles. He therefore avoids these to a considerable extent, unless he can point them out severally as words of Scripture, and confines himself chiefly to the narrative portions of the inspired volume. He selects an incident which can bear upon his subject, relates it in the most vigorous style, and then applies it with force and effect.
And these happy selections show such thorough acquaintance with the sacred writings, that it is impossible not to see that Holy Scripture formed the staple of the good Bishop’s meditations, night and day. His sermons are eminently practical; they are not dogmatic. De Barzia makes no attempt to instruct in Catholic doctrine, he presupposes that his hearers are orthodox, he does not suggest the possibility of there being a heretic among them, he makes no attempt to arm them for the conflict of the faith, but he goes straight as an arrow to their consciences, and stirs them to the perception of their moral obligations.
In this he differs widely from the German and French preachers of his age, who seldom preached without firing a broadside at heresy, and generally took the opportunity to furnish their hearers with arguments in favour of Catholic doctrines and practices.
De Barzia is more subjective than the other preachers of his day, and he excels in sermons calculated to strike terror into the impenitent heart. Each man has his special line, and his was the declaration of God’s judgments. Marchantius would melt the stony heart with love, De Barzia shatter it with fear. And yet his soul was full of tenderness and the love of God, which exude from him occasionally, as the aromatic gum from the frankincense.