, makes them useful and intelligible only to such,
who have been very well busied in such like employments.

Another thing, Sir, that brings great disrespect and mischief upon the
Clergy, and that differs not much from what went immediately before, is
their _packing their sermons so full of Similitudes_; which, all the
World knows, carry with them but very small force of argument, unless
there be _an exact agreement with that which is compared_, of which there
is very seldom any sufficient care taken.

Besides, those that are addicted to this slender way of discourse, for
the most part, do so weaken and enfeeble their judgement, by contenting
themselves to understand by colours, features, and glimpses; that they
perfectly omit all the more profitable searching into the nature and
causes of things themselves. By which means, it necessarily comes to
pass, that what they undertake to prove and clear out to the
Congregation, must needs be so faintly done, and with such little force
of argument, that the conviction or persuasion will last no longer in the
parishioners' minds, than the warmth of those similitudes shall glow in
their fancy. So that he that has either been instructed in some part of
his duty, or excited to the performance of the same, not by any judicious
dependence of things, and lasting reason; but by such faint and toyish
evidence: his understanding, upon all occasions, will be as apt to be
misled as ever, and his affections as troublesome and ungovernable.

But they are not so Unserviceable, as, usually, they are Ridiculous. For
people of the weakest parts are most commonly overborn with these
fooleries; which, together with the great difficulty of their being
prudently managed, must needs occasion them, for the most part, to be
very trifling and childish.

Especially, if we consider the choiceness of the authors out of which
they are furnished. There is the never-to-be-commended-enough
LYCOSTHENES. There is also the admirable piece [by FRANCIS MERES] called
the _Second Part of Wits Commonwealth_ [1598]: I pray mind it! it is the
_Second Part_, and not the _First_! And there is, besides, a book wholly
consisting of Similitudes [? JOHN SPENCER's _Things New and Old, or a
Storehouse of Similies, Sentences, Allegories, &c._, 1658] applied and
ready fitted to most preaching subjects, for the help of young beginners,
who sometimes will not make them hit handsomely.

It is very well known that such as are pos