"[77] 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.
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,[78] and other lay-divines "of _rank_ and
literature," may be proper and seasonable, though somewhat new.
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