son, I think, to
suppose that it was in reality neither intended for a sermon nor
actually delivered from the pulpit.

No other of his sermons has quite so much vivacity as this. But in
the famous discourse upon an unlucky text--the sermon preached at
the chapel of the English Embassy, in Paris--there are touches of
unclerical raillery not a few. Thus: "What a noise," he exclaims,
"among the simulants of the various virtues!... Behold Humility,
become so out of mere pride; Chastity, never once in harm's way; and
Courage, like a Spanish soldier upon an Italian stage--a bladder full
of wind. Hush! the sound of that trumpet! Let not my soldier run!'
tis some good Christian giving alms. O Pity, thou gentlest of human
passions! soft and tender are thy notes, and ill accord they with so
loud an instrument."

Here, again, is a somewhat bold saying for a divine: "But, to avoid
all commonplace cant as much as I can on this head, I will forbear to
say, because I do not think, that 'tis a breach of Christian charity
to think or speak ill of our neighbour. We cannot avoid it: our
opinion must follow the evidence," &c. And a little later on,
commenting on the insinuation conveyed in Satan's question, "Does Job
serve God for nought?" he says: "It is a bad picture, and done by a
terrible master; and yet we are always copying it. Does a man from
real conviction of heart forsake his vices? The position is not to be
allowed. No; his vices have forsaken him. Does a pure virgin fear God,
and say her prayers? She is in her climacteric? Does humility clothe
and educate the unknown orphan? Poverty, thou hast no genealogies.
See! is he not the father of the child?" In another sermon he launches
out into quaintly contemptuous criticism of a religious movement which
he was certainly the last person in the world to understand--to wit,
Methodism. He asks whether, "when a poor, disconsolated, drooping
creature is terrified from all enjoyment, prays without ceasing till
his imagination is heated, fasts and mortifies and mopes till his body
is in as bad a plight as his mind, it is a wonder that the mechanical
disturbances and conflicts of an empty belly, interpreted by an empty
head, should be mistook for workings of a different kind from what
they are?" Other sermons reflect the singularly bitter anti-Catholic
feeling which was characteristic even of indifferentism in those
days--at any rate amongst Whig divines. But in most of them one is
liable