The next chapter (xiv) warns against resting in the second stage.[20] To make the pleasing of the audience an end in itself is the typical vice of sophistic. If preaching tolerates it, “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” Augustine quotes, not these words of St. Paul, but Jeremiah, and rises to denunciation of mere pleasing. “Far from us be that madness.” One of Cyprian’s rare descriptive passages is adduced to show how “the wholesomeness of Christian preaching has recalled his diction from [sophistic] redundancy and held it to a graver eloquence of less display.” As the ultimate objection to the sophistic ideal is moral, so is the preacher’s ultimate resource. Since his strength is derived from a source deeper than human skill, his best preparation is prayer. Augustine is not above enforcing this reminder by playing upon the words _orare_, _orator_, _oratio_. Nevertheless human skill is to be cultivated. Prayer itself proves the folly (xvi) of making no other preparation. He who abjures human lore of preaching because God gives us our messages might equally well abjure prayer because God knows us and our needs. The Pauline counsels specify how Timothy should preach. As God heals through doctors and medicines, so he gives the gospel to men by men and through man. The transition (xvii) to the final task of moving men to action is another full and explicit iteration of all three, and at the same time a preparation for the next section on the corresponding three typical styles. Since the subject matter of preaching is always great, at least in implication (xviii), does it not always demand a great style? No; for a great matter (xix) may at the time rather demand exposition; and this in turn demands a restrained style. Again, a great matter may at the time rather demand praise or blame; and here enters the second task of so adapting the style as to win sympathy.