* Few harangues from the pulpit,
except in the days of your league in France or in the days of our
Solemn League and Covenant in England, have ever breathed less of
the spirit of moderation than this lecture in the Old Jewry.
Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in
this political sermon, yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have
little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the
healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and
civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion
of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does
not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the
character they leave and of the character they assume. Wholly
unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and
inexperienced in all its affairs on which they pronounce with so
much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions they
excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be
allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.
* Psalm CXLIX.
This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had
to me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without
danger. I do not charge this danger equally to every part of the
discourse. The hint given to a noble and reverend lay divine, who is
supposed high in office in one of our universities,* and other lay
divines "of rank and literature" may be proper and seasonable,
though somewhat new.
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