Clergymen and Doctors: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches.Anonymous
History
Clergymen and Doctors: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches.
Anonymous
Clergy; Medicine -- Anecdotes; Medicine -- Humor; Pastoral theology -- Anecdotes; Physicians
Izaak Walton relates about Bishop Sanderson, that once "his dear and
most intimate friend, the learned Dr. Hammond, came to enjoy a quiet
rest and conversation with him for some days at Boothby Pannel, and did
so, and having formerly persuaded him to trust his excellent memory,
and not read, but try to speak a sermon as he had writ it; Dr.
Sanderson became so compliant as to promise that he would. And to that
end they two went early the Sunday following to a neighbour minister,
and requested to exchange a sermon; and they did so. And at Dr.
Sanderson's going into the pulpit, he gave his sermon (which was a very
short one) into the hands of Dr. Hammond, intending to preach it as it
was writ; but before he had preached a third part, Dr. Hammond (looking
on his sermon as written) observed him to be out, and so lost as to the
matter, especially the method, that he also became afraid for him; for
it was discernible to many of that plain auditory. But when he had
ended this short sermon, as they two walked homeward, Dr. Sanderson
said with much earnestness, 'Good Doctor, give me my sermon, and know
that neither you, nor any man living, shall ever persuade me to preach
again without my books.' To which the reply was, 'Good Doctor, be not
angry; for if ever I persuade you to preach again without book, I will
give you leave to burn all the books that I am master of.'" Elsewhere
Walton says:--"Though they were much esteemed by them that procured and
were fit to judge them, yet (Dr. Sanderson's sermons) were the less
valued because he read them, which he was forced to do; for though he
had an extraordinary memory (even the art of it), yet he was punished
with such an innate, invincible fear and bashfulness, that his memory
was wholly useless as to the repetition of his sermons, so as he had
writ them; which gave occasion to say, when some of them were first
printed and exposed to censure (which was in the year 1632), that the
best sermons that ever were read were never preached." Aubrey says,
that when he was a freshman at college, and heard Dr. Sanderson read
his first lecture, he was out in the Lord's Prayer.
CHRISTIAN NAMES AMONG THE PURITANS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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