sometimes to occasion
misunderstandings among friends. Although the common domestics in some
gentlemen's families have more opportunities of improving their minds
than the ordinary sort of tradesmen.

It is usual for clergymen who are taxed with this learned defect, to
quote Dr. Tillotson, and other famous divines, in their defence; without
considering the difference between elaborate discourses upon important
occasions, delivered to princes or parliaments, written with a view of
being made public, and a plain sermon intended for the middle or lower
size of people. Neither do they seem to remember the many alterations,
additions, and expungings, made by great authors in those treatises
which they prepare for the public. Besides, that excellent prelate
above-mentioned, was known to preach after a much more popular manner in
the city congregations: and if in those parts of his works he be any
where too obscure for the understandings of many who may be supposed to
have been his hearers, it ought to be numbered among his omissions.

The fear of being thought pedants hath been of pernicious consequence to
young divines. This hath wholly taken many of them off from their
severer studies in the university, which they have exchanged for plays,
poems, and pamphlets, in order to qualify them for tea-tables and
coffee-houses. This they usually call "polite conversation; knowing the
world; and reading men instead of books." These accomplishments, when
applied to the pulpit, appear by a quaint; terse, florid style, rounded
into periods and cadences, commonly without either propriety or meaning.
I have listen'd with my utmost attention for half an hour to an orator
of this species, without being able to understand, much less to carry
away one single sentence out of a whole sermon. Others, to shew that
their studies have not been confined to sciences, or ancient authors,
will talk in the style of a gaming ordinary, and White Friars[3], when I
suppose the hearers can be little edified by the terms _palming,
shuffling, biting, bamboozling_ and the like, if they have not been
sometimes conversant among pick-pockets and sharpers. And truly, as they
say, a man is known by his company, so it should seem that a man's
company may be known by his manner of expressing himself, either in
public assemblies, or private conversation.

[Footnote 3: See note on "Alsatia," p. 100. [T. S.] ]

It would be endless to run over the several defects of st