"'My love,' said the Vicar, 'this fact is worth a thousand arguments--the common people heard Christ gladly. Socinianism never fails to drive them away. A religion without a Saviour is the temple without the Shechinah, and its worshippers will all desert it. Few men in the world have less pretensions as a preacher than myself,--my voice, my look, my manner, all of a very ordinary nature,--and yet, I thank God, there is scarcely a corner of our little church where you might not find a streaming eye or a beating heart. The reason is--that I speak of Christ; and if there is not a charm in the word, there is the train of fears, and hopes, and joys which it carries along with it. The people feel, and then they must listen.'" Evelyn in his _Diary_ says, in 1683, "A stranger, and old man, preached--much after Bishop Andrews' method, full of logical divisions, in short and broken periods, and Latin sentences, _now quite out of fashion_ in the pulpit, which is grown into a far more profitable way of plain and practical discourses, of which sort this nation, or any other, never had greater plenty or more profitable, I am confident." Pepys is hardly to be quoted as a judge, as he went to church to see pretty faces, not, or not mainly, to hear sermons, and his criticism is not always to be trusted. "1667, 26th May, the Lord's Day. I went by water to Westminster to the parish church, and there did entertain myself with my perspective glass up and down the church, by which I had the great pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and what with that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till the sermon was done." "1667, 20th August. Turned into St. Dunstan's church, where I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again,--which seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid in a pew close to me, and she on me; and I did go about to take her by the hand, which she suffered a little, and then withdrew. So the sermon ended, and the church broke up, and my amours ended also." "1667, 25th August, Lord's Day. Up and to church, thinking to see Betty Michell, and did stay an hour in the crowd, thinking, by the end of a nose that I saw, that it had been her; but at last the head turned towards me, and it was her mother, which vexed me. So I back to my boat." No, Pepys was no judge of a good sermon, his mind was otherwise engaged.