peakably and
indescribably bad,' one calls to mind almost indignantly the great
preachers of the time, whose sermons have been handed down to us and may
be referred to by anyone who chooses to do so. Surely this is not a
proper description of the sermons of such men as Sherlock, Smalridge,
Waterland, Seed, Ogden, Atterbury, Mudge, Hare, Bentley, and last but
not least, Butler himself, whose practical sermons might be preached
with advantage before a village congregation at this day. Too much
stress has been laid upon a somewhat random observation of Sir William
Blackstone, who 'had the curiosity, early in the reign of George III.,
to go from church to church and hear every clergyman of note in London.
He says that he did not hear a single discourse which had more
Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero, and that it would have
been impossible for him to discover, from what he heard, whether the
preacher were a follower of Confucius, of Mahomet, or of Christ.' The
famous lawyer does not specify the churches which he visited. He may
have been unfortunate in his choice, or he may have been in a frame of
mind which was not conducive to an unbiassed judgment;[681] but we have
the best of all means of testing how far his sweeping censure may be
fairly taken as applicable to the general character of the sermons of
the day. The most celebrated of them are still in existence, and will
give their own contradiction to the charge. It is not true that the
preachers of this period entirely ignored the distinctive doctrines of
Christianity; it would be more correct to say that they took the
knowledge of them too much for granted--that they were as a rule too
controversial, and that they too often appealed to merely prudential
motives. Even Dr. Johnson, who set a very high value upon the sermons of
his Church, and declared on one occasion that 'sermons make a
considerable branch of English literature, so that a library must be
very imperfect if it has not a numerous collection of sermons,' yet
confessed that they did not effect the good they ought to do. A
sensitive dread of anything like enthusiasm was a marked characteristic
of the eighteenth century: this dread did not originate with the clergy,
but it was taken up by them and reflected in their sermons. This, of
course, was at first greatly intensified by the excitement raised by the
Methodist movement, although it was afterwards dispelled by the same
cause. The orthodox preac