69. The style of preaching before the Reformation had been often little else than buffoonery, and seldom respectable. The German sermons of Tauler, in the fourteenth century, are alone remembered. For the most part, indeed, the clergy wrote in Latin what they delivered to the multitude in the native tongue. A better tone began with Luther. His language was sometimes rude and low, but persuasive, artless, powerful. He gave many useful precepts, as well as examples, for pulpit eloquence. Melanchthon and several others, both in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well in the Lutheran as the reformed church, endeavoured, by systematic treatises, to guide the composition of sermons. The former could not, however, withstand the formal, tasteless, and polemical spirit that overspread their theology. In the latter a superior tone is perceived. Of these, according to Eichhorn, the Swiss preachers were most simple and popular, the Dutch most learned and copious, the French had most taste and eloquence, the English most philosophy.[129] It is more than probable that in these characteristics he has meant to comprise the whole of the seventeenth century. Few continental writers, as far as I know, that belong to this its first moiety, have earned any remarkable reputation in this province of theology. In England several might be distinguished out of a large number. Sermons have been much more frequently published here than in any other country; and, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, form a large proportion of our theological literature. But it is of course not requisite to mention more than the very few which may be said to have a general reputation. [129] Eichhorn, t. vi., part ii., p. 219, et post. |Of Donne.|