I heard at another time a grave divine, of fourscore years of age at least, so sour and hard-favoured, that one would be apt to mistrust that it was Scotus Redivivus; he taking upon him to treat of the mysterious name, JESUS, did very subtly pretend that in the very letters was contained, whatever could be said of it: for first, its being declined only with three cases, did expressly point out the trinity of persons, then that the nominative ended in S, the accusative in M, and the ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery, viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was the _summus_, or beginning, the _medius_, or middle, and the _ultimus_, or end of all things. There was yet a more abstruse riddle to be explained, which was by dividing the word JESUS into two parts, and separating the S in the middle from the two extreme syllables, making a kind of pentameter, the word consisting of five letters: and this intermedial S being in the Hebrew alphabet called sin, which in the English language signifies what the Latins term _peecatum_, was urged to imply that the holy Jesus should purify us from all sin and wickedness. Thus did the pulpiteer cant, while all the congregation, especially the brotherhood of divines, were so surprised at his odd way of preaching, that wonder served them, as grief did Niobe, almost turned them into stones. I among the rest (as Horace describes Priapus viewing the enchantments of the two sorceresses, Canidia and Sagane) could no longer contain, but let fly a cracking report of the operation it had upon me. These impertinent introductions are not without reason condemned; for of old, whenever Demosthenes among the Greeks, or Tully among the Latins, began their orations with so great a digression from the matter in hand, it was always looked upon as improper and unelegant, and indeed, were such a long-fetched exordium any token of a good invention, shepherds and ploughmen might lay claim to the title of men of greatest parts, since upon any argument it is easiest for them to talk what is least to the purpose. These preachers think their preamble (as we may well term it), to be the most fashionable, when it is farthest from the subject they propose to treat of, while each auditor sits and wonders what they drive at, and many times mutters out the complaint of Virgil:--