her of the Hanoverian period felt bound to
protest against the superstitions of Rome on the one hand and the
fanaticism of sectaries on the other; in contrast with both of whom the
moderation of 'our happy Establishment' was extolled to the skies. To
such a morbid extent was his dread of extremes carried, so carefully had
he to guard himself against being supposed to diverge one hair's breadth
from the middle course taken up by the Church of England, that in his
fear of being over-zealous he became over-tame and colourless. Tillotson
was his model, and, like most imitators, he exaggerated the defects of
his master. So far as it is possible to group under one head so vast and
varied an amount of composition, produced by men of the most diverse
casts of mind, and extending over so long a period as a hundred years,
one may perhaps fairly characterise the typical eighteenth century
sermon as too stiff and formal, too cold and artificial, appealing more
to the reason than to the feelings, and so more calculated to convince
the understanding than to affect the heart. 'We have no sermons,' said
Dr. Johnson, 'addressed to the passions that are good for anything.'

These defects were brought out into stronger relief by their contrast to
the very different style of preaching adopted by the revived Evangelical
school. And the success of this latter school called the attention of
some of the most thoughtful divines to the deficiencies of the ordinary
style of preaching, which they fully admitted and unsparingly but
judiciously exposed. Thus Archbishop Secker, in his Charge to the
Diocese of Canterbury in 1758, in speaking of the 'new sect pretending
to the strictest piety,' wisely urges his clergy 'to emulate what is
good in them, avoiding what is bad, to edify their parishioners with
awakening but rational and Scriptural discourses, to teach the
principles not only of virtue and natural religion, but of the Gospel,
not as almost refined away by the modern refiner, but the truth as it is
in Jesus and as it is taught by the Church.' Still stronger are the
censures passed in later years upon the lack in the sermons of the day
of evangelical doctrines, by men who were very far from identifying
themselves with the Evangelical school. Thus Paley, in his seventh
charge,[682] comments upon this point. And Bishop Horsley, in his first
Charge to the Diocese of St. David's in 1709, stigmatises the
unchristian method of preaching in that digni