But while there were many evidences of religious torpor there were none more marked and unmistakable than the preaching of that time. The pulpit being an invariable index of the state of the national heart, it was not less the case during the present period. The preaching was of the most formal and methodical texture. It assumed a rhetorical and poetical appearance; the people calling it the _Italian style_. Petrarch had given shape to Italian thought, and through his influence Germany became sated with poetic imagery and overwrought fancy. Sagittarius founded a stipend for the preaching of a yearly sermon in the University Church "which should be more a practical illustration of Christian doctrine than of _lofty speech_." Emblematical sermons were sometimes delivered in lengthy series. Christopher Sunday descanted on the _Perpetual Heart-Calendar_, treating of genera and species, and dividing his themes into "Remarkable, Historical, and Annual events, Particular numbers, and the amounts of Roman currency, the Four Seasons, the Seven Planets, the Twelve Heavenly signs, and many aspects and useful directions." All these, this divine claimed, are to be found in the Gospel as in a perpetual calendar of the heart. Another preacher adopted as his theme for a funeral sermon, _The Secret of Roses and Flowers_. Daniel Keck preached a discourse in 1642 from Romans viii. 18, calling his subject "The Apostolic Syllogism," dividing it into _subject_, _predicate_, and _conclusion_. The subject, _suffering_, was again divided into _wicked_, _voluntary_, _stolid_ and _righteous_; and these further classed into _natural_, _civil_ and _spiritual_ suffering.