his whole deportment, which was ever grave and moderate. These have been the greatest divines we have had these forty years: And may we ever have a succession of such men to fill the room of those who have already gone off the stage, and of those who, being now very old, cannot hold their posts long. Of these I have writ the more fully, because I knew them well, and have lived long in great friendship with them; but most particularly with _Tillotson_ and _Lloyd_. And, as I am sensible I owe a great deal of the consideration that has been had for me to my being known to be their friend, so I have really learned the best part of what I know from them. But I owed them much more on the account of those excellent principles and notions, of which they were in a particular manner communicative to me. This set of men contributed more than can be well imagined to reform the way of preaching; which among the divines of _England_ before them was over-run with pedantry, a great mixture of quotations from fathers and ancient writers, a long opening of a text with the concordance of every word in it, and a giving all the different expositions with the grounds of them, and the entring into some parts of controversy, and all concluding in some, but very short, practical applications, according to the subject or the occasion. This was both long and heavy, when all was pye-balled, full of many sayings of different languages. The common style of sermons was either very flat and low, or swelled up with rhetorick to a false pitch of a wrong sublime. The King had little or no literature, but true and good sense; and had got a right notion of style; for he was in _France_ at a time when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon appear'd that he had a true taste. So this help'd to raise the value of these men, when the King approved of the style their discourses generally ran in; which was clear, plain, and short. They gave a short paraphrase of their text, unless where great difficulties required a more copious enlargement: But even then they cut off unnecessary shews of learning, and applied themselves to the matter, in which they opened the nature and reasons of things so fully, and with that simplicity, that their hearers felt an instruction of another sort than had commonly been observed before. So they became very much followed: And a set of these men brought off the City in a great measure from the prejudices they had formerly to the Church. 75. JAMES II. _Born 1633. Created Duke of York. Succeeded Charles II 1685. Fled to France 1688. Died 1701._ By BURNET.