Preaching and Preachers [pp. 454-483]

Preaching and Preachers.
If we retrace our steps to the last point of departure, in
order to consider the preaching of the Nonconformists, we shall
find abundant cause to believe, that even after being politically
defeated and overthrown at the Restoration, they continued to
possess learning, eloquence, and piety, such as were worthy of
that great Church of England, of which they were really
though not nominally a part. It is somewhat remarkable, that
notwithstanding the extraordinary theological interest which
characterized the Puritans, and the voluminous works which
proceeded from their great men, these less frequently took
the precise form of sermons, than was the case with their
churchly oppressors. Most of them, it is true, left numerous
sermons, but the great mass of their religious writings were
given to the public in the shape of treatises and protracted
works. This did not certainly arise from any undervaluing of
the pulpit; indeed, an over-estimate of this instrument was
universally laid to their charge; they preached more frequently,
more fervently, and at greater length, than the beneficed
divines, and these exercises were attended by greater throngs
of animated hearers. But the sermon, as a species of literary
creation, was less an object of separate regard. They were
more accustomed to the effusion of thought and feeling in
language suggested at the moment of delivery; and even when
they studied for successive months and years on particular
books of Scripture, or heads of theology, and preached constantly on the same, the utterances of the church were not
identical with the labours of the study, and the latter continued to retain that form which we now observe in their published works. Of some great treatises we know assuredly, and
of others we have the strongest presumption, that they contain
the substance of a series of pulpit discourses. This we suppose
may be affirmed concerning the greatest works of the most eminent Puritan divines. We need scarcely add, that they had
among them some of the mightiest preachers whom the Church
has ever seen. Whether we judge by extant remains, or by
the testimony of coevals, Richard Baxter was one of these.
In our judgment, the English language was never more dexterously wielded by any writer. The thing most observable is, that
it is the language of the common people, that which does not
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