XX. CHARITY, CHARITY.

IN my father’s time, there was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, a native of Carlton, in Leicestershire,³⁵³⁵Camd. Brit. in Leicestershire. where the people (through some occult cause) are troubled with a wharling in their throats, so that they cannot plainly pronounce the letter R. This scholar, being conscious of his infirmity, made a Latin oration of the usual expected length, without an R therein; and yet did he not only select words fit for his mouth, easy for pronunciation, but also as pure and expressive for signification, to show that men might speak without being beholden to the dog’s letter.

Our English pulpits, for these last eighteen years, have had in them too much caninal anger, vented by snapping and snarling spirits on both sides. But if you bite and devour one another, (saith the Apostle, Gal. v. 15,) take heed ye be not devoured one of another.

Think not that our sermons must be silent if not satirical, as if divinity did not afford smooth subjects enough to be seasonably insisted on in this juncture of time; let us try our skill whether we cannot preach without any dog letter 207or biting word: the art is half learned by intending, and wholly by serious endeavouring it.

I am sure that such soft sermons will be more easy for the tongue of the preacher in pronouncing them, less grating to the ears of pious people that hear them, and more edifying to the heart of both speaker and hearers of them.