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the learned, and many of the authors of them have, most deserv

edly, been raised to the highest

station in the Church; but the difference between such sermons, though highly valuable, and some of those of Bishop Horne is this: the former are necessarily didactic, and consisting of proof, close reasoning, and argument: in such sermons brilliant language and images would, generally speaking, be out of place, and would not correspond with, or promote their object; whereas, in particular sermons of Bishop Horne, as noticed in the Appendix to my former volume, the sublimity of his con

ceptions, and of the language in which they are expressed, is most striking. But Longinus will best explain my meaning. "Generally speaking, (he says,) it is wholly in our power to resist or yield to persuasion, but the sublime, endued with strength irresistible, triumphs over every hearer."* Instead of being deterred by the observation of a favorite lyric, but heathen, poet, made in the commencement of one of his confessedly prosaic epistles, I am rather inclined to be guided by the rule

* Longinus de Sublimitate, Sect. 1. "eye To μev πιθανον ὡς τα πολλὰ ἐφ ̓ ἡμῖν. ταῦτα δὲ, δυνασέτην και βιαν ἅμαχον προσφέροντα, παντὸς επάνω το ακροωμένες καθίσα ταμ.”

established by apostolical authority, and to think that "it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing."* Whilst I recollect Bishop Horne's peculiarly impressive mode of rousing the slumberers of the world, whilst my mind is fully impregnated with his most cogent arguments on all the great points of Christian faith, I neither wish that I had quoted less, nor

dread any censure for having quoted too copiously. Without further preface I now submit the following pages to the public. As my former volume was received with infinitely more favor than,

*Gal. iv. 18.

from the unaspiring nature of the work, I had any reason to expect, I shall be satisfied if the present undertaking should not be considered as derogating from that portion of credit, which was kindly granted to the first, and should be received by the public with equal

candor and approbation.

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