, that a suit of clothes may be as soon
made to answer every man's back, as a fixed and invariable method may be
prescribed, that shall agree to every subject, and every man's taste. Mr.
Binning's method was singular and peculiar to himself, much after the
haranguing way.(108) He was no stranger to the rules of art, and knew well
how to make his method subservient to the subjects he handled. And though
he tells not his discourse has so many parts, yet it wanted not method, it
being _mani __ mum artis celare artem_.(109) His diction and language is
easy and fluent, neat and fine, void of all affectation and bombast. His
style is free from starch lusciousness and intricacy, every period has a
kind of undesigned negligent elegance, which arrests the reader's
attention, and makes what he says as apples of gold set in pictures of
silver, so that, considering the time when he lived, it might be said,
that he had carried the orator's prize from his cotemporaries in Scotland,
and was not at that time inferior to the best pulpit orators in England,
the English language having got its greatest embellishments and refinings
but of late years. In his Sermons, his matter gives life to his words, and
his words add a lustre to his matter. That great divine, Mr. James
Durham,(110) an excellent judge of men, gave this verdict of him, that
"there is no speaking after Mr. Binning," and truly he had the tongue of
the learned, and knew how to speak a word in season. The subject-matter of
his Sermons is mostly practical, and yet rational and argumentive, fit to
inform the understanding of his hearers, and move their affections and
when controversies come in his way, he shows great acuteness and judgment
in discussing and determining them, and no less skill in applying them to
practice. His discourses are so solid and substantial, so heavenly and
sublime, that they not only feed but feast the reader, as with marrow and
fatness. In the most of them, we meet with much of the sublime, expressed
in a most lofty, pathetic, and moving manner. Mr. M'Waid says in his
letter, "That as to the whole of Mr. Binning's writings, I know no man's
pen on the heads he hath handled more adapted for edification, or which,
with a pleasant violence, will sooner find or force a passage into the
heart of a judicious experienced reader, and cast fire, even ere he is
aware (O happy surprise!) into his affections, and set them into a flame."
And in another part of the same