Preaching and Preachers [pp. 454-483]

Preaching and Preachers.
be well for every student acquainted with the ancient languages,
to peruse a few discourses of Basil, Chrysostom, and Augustine. He will discover amidst all the elegance of the goldentongued Greek, an admirable simplicity in the exposition of
Scripture in regular course, as for example, in the numerous
sermons on the Romans; and a fidelity of direct reproof,
worthy of imitation in all ages. What are called the Sermones
of Augustine are not only shorter-perhaps from abridgment
by the notary-but in every respect more scattering, planless,
and extemporaneous, but at the same time full of genius, full
of eloquence, full of piety, all clothed in a latinity, which,
though not Augustan, and sometimes even provincial and Punic,
carries with it a glow and a stateliness of march, which oftener
reminds us of the Roman orator than the elaborate exactness
of Lactantius, the " Christian Cicero." If, sometimes he indulges in a solecism, for the sake of the plebs Christiana of
Carthage, it is not unconsciously; and we seem to see him
smile when he says in apology, "Dum omnes instruantur,
grammatici non timeantur." He even begs pardon for the
formfenerat; though this is used by Martial and occurs continually in the Digests. And of a blessed neologism he thus
speaks: "Christ Jesus, that is Chrzstus SALVATOR. For this
is the Latin of JESUS. The grammarians need not inquire how
Latin it is, but the Christians how true. For salus is a Latin
noun. Salvare and salvator, indeed, were not Latin, before the
Saviour (Salvator) came; when he came to the Latins he made
this word Latin."* But we check our hand, on a subject,
which from its tempting copiousness, is better fitted for a monograph. On this period of patristical eloquence much remains
to be written. There are good things in F6n6lon, Maury,
Gisbert, Theremin, and above all in Villemain; but we
have reason to long for a work of research and taste, which
shall present the modern and English reader with adequate
specimens and a complete history and criticism of the great pulpit orators of the Greek and Latin Churches.
Pursuing our ramble among old Churches, we leap without
further apology into the middle age, in order to say that in
this period, about which there is so much dispute and so little
knowledge, preaching could not but suffer a great decadence
* Serm. ccxcix,
460
[JULY,