awake so very regularly as soon as it ceaseth, and with much
devotion receive the blessing, dozed and besotted with indecencies I
am ashamed to repeat.


I proceed, secondly, to reckon up some of the usual quarrels men
have against preaching, and to show the unreasonableness of them.

Such unwarrantable behaviour as I have described among Christians in
the house of God in a solemn assembly, while their faith and duty
are explained and delivered, have put those who are guilty upon
inventing some excuses to extenuate their fault; this they do by
turning the blame either upon the particular preacher or upon
preaching in general. First, they object against the particular
preacher: his manner, his delivery, his voice, are disagreeable;
his style and expression are flat and slow, sometimes improper and
absurd; the matter is heavy, trivial, and insipid, sometimes
despicable and perfectly ridiculous; or else, on the other side, he
runs up into unintelligible speculation, empty notions, and
abstracted flights, all clad in words above usual understandings.

Secondly, They object against preaching in general. It is a perfect
road of talk; they know already whatever can be said; they have
heard the same a hundred times over. They quarrel that preachers do
not relieve an old beaten subject with wit and invention, and that
now the art is lost of moving men's passions, so common among the
ancient orators of Greece and Rome. These and the like objections
are frequently in the mouths of men who despise the foolishness of
preaching. But let us examine the reasonableness of them.