3.;) when, in a fond imitation, as he says, of Latimer’s famous card sermons, he followed out the metaphor of _dealing_; that men should play _above-board_, or avoid dissimulation; not _pocket_ the cards, or improve their gifts; _follow suit_, that is, wear the surplice, and conform to ceremonies.[313] Jeremy Taylor sometimes narrowly escapes the like extravagance. South approaches it still more frequently, and almost with as little ceremony as would have been used a century earlier; and even in the majestic and sober Barrow, expressions, if not figures, occasionally startle us, as below the dignity of the pulpit and the gravity of the Christian teacher. Even he does not scruple to talk of “time rendering God’s goodness more precious, as it doth gold and wine,”--of the difficulty of curing a wounded reputation, and “spreading the plaster so far as the sore hath reached,”--of “the fox who said that the grapes were sour, because he could not reach them; and that the hare was dry meat because he could not catch it,”--of the man who would have his sickle in another’s corn, or an oar in another’s boat, being in no condition to wonder if his fingers be rapped,”--of “liberality being the most beneficial traffic that can be, seeing that it is bringing our wares to the best market, and letting out our money to the best hands; God repaying us with vast usury, an hundred to one being the rate he allows at present, and above a hundred millions to one the rate he will render hereafter, so that if we will be merchants this way, we shall be sure to thrive.”[314] Soon after this time pulpit oratory began to go upon stilts; and, becoming more remote from the conceptions and phraseology of the vulgar, lost much of its interest with them, and influence over them, and at length made way for the field preacher, who spoke to them once again, as it were, in the Hebrew tongue, to which they gave the more silence. Whilst, however, we may regret the want of the nervous asperity of style and profusion of matter of the days of Barrow, we may congratulate ourselves upon our escape from the old-wives’ tales of the days of Latimer. They had their origin in a very different state of society, and a very different condition of the church. Something must be ascribed to the general rudeness of an age when bear-baiting was the amusement which a queen provided for the foreign ambassadors, and of which herself and her court were willing spectators;--when a fool was a part of the establishment even of the most refined households, and his uncouth jokes were paid for by the year;--when the martyr in prison could in all sober sadness address words of comfort to his fellow-sufferer, “_Green_,” as a dainty dish for the Lord’s own tooth; or to _Philpot_, as “a pot filled with the most precious liquor;”--and when at the stake, not think it out of character, or out of season, to crack a jest upon his own dress or his own corpulence. Something,