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First understand the proposition well, of which you intend to speake, then draw from thence some general reason, which may contain the most material thing in the proposition; then amplifie, and adorn this reason, with Sentences, Examples, Simili∣tudes, &c. then bring in the proposition it self, as some particular assumption of that general discourse.
For Example, suppose you were to mak•• an Exordium to a funerall Oration, up∣on the death of some noble man, accord∣ing to these directions, you might per∣form it in this manner.
This is a lesson so well known to all that all must die, that he would surely b•• thought to be beside himself that shoul•• but think himself immortal. For men alas! like running waters may not al∣waies continue in one place: one da•• thrusts out another, one yeare devouret•• another, and one wave overwhelmet•• another: And like as earthen vessels a〈…〉〈…〉 quickly broken and easily shivered into many pieces; so are our bodies soo•• dissolved, and quickly reduced to earth from whence we were taken; we may be killed with too much joy, we may be op∣pressed with too much sorrow, we may die praying and fall down laugh∣ing; we may be throttled with a hair, or strangled with a flie. And thus on a sudden we are and we are not 〈◊〉〈◊〉 alive to day and dead to morrow, and every hour we hasten nearer and nearer our end. There needs no other or far∣ther testimony to prove the assertion, than that the many instances of mortality
which so daily and so hourly happen that it is hard to turn our eyes from them; yea even this sad occasion of our present meeting shews us, that whatsoever dif∣ference there is or may be in our way of living, in this there is none, in this we are equall, the certain uncertainty of our dying: If either wealth or honour, if ei∣ther Friends, or Physick could vanquish death, or prevent the grave, we had not met this day to lament the death of this Honourable person; we had not seen this spectacle of mortality, but death alas re∣spects no persons, will have no denyal un∣to his summons, whether it be in the even∣ing of our dayes, when our hoary haires may seem to proclaim us as fit for his stroak, as the corn is for the sickle, when white for the Harvest; or whether he come in the morning of our life, when our bones are full of marrow and our bloud runs briskly in our veines, which is his case whose funerall obsequies we are now to perform. As a green Apple is sometimes rudely pulled from off that tree on which it grew, so was this branch cut down, before he had lived one half of the age of man. He was indeed born of noble and unspotted
Parents, but as if that wisedome were not tied to years, his discretion did a∣dorn his birth more, than his birth him, &c.