To return then to the heathen philosophers, I hope you will not only give them quarter, but make their works a considerable part of your study: To these I will venture to add the principal orators and historians, and perhaps a few of the poets: by the reading of which, you will soon discover your mind and thoughts to be enlarged, your imagination extended and refined, your judgment directed, your admiration lessened, and your fortitude increased; all which advantages must needs be of excellent use to a divine, whose duty it is to preach and practise the contempt of human things. I would say something concerning quotations, wherein I think you cannot be too sparing, except from Scripture, and the primitive writers of the Church. As to the former, when you offer a text as a proof of an illustration, we your hearers expect to be fairly used, and sometimes think we have reason to complain, especially of you younger divines, which makes us fear that some of you conceive you have no more to do than to turn over a concordance, and there having found the principal word, introduce as much of the verse as will serve your turn, though in reality it makes nothing for you. I do not altogether disapprove the manner of interweaving texts of scripture through the style of your sermons, wherein however, I have sometimes observed great instances of indiscretion and impropriety, against which I therefore venture to give you a caution. As to quotations from ancient fathers, I think they are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted by those who differ from us: in other cases we give you full power to adopt the sentence for your own, rather than tell us, "as St. Austin excellently observes." But to mention modern writers by name, or use the phrase of "a late excellent prelate of our Church," and the like, is altogether intolerable, and for what reason I know not, makes every rational hearer ashamed. Of no better a stamp is your "heathen philosopher" and "famous poet," and "Roman historian," at least in common congregations, who will rather believe you on your own word, than on that of Plato or Homer. I have lived to see Greek and Latin almost entirely driven out of the pulpit, for which I am heartily glad. The frequent use of the latter was certainly a remnant of Popery which never admitted Scripture in the vulgar language; and I wonder, that practice was never accordingly objected to us by the fanatics.