Another cause of this neglect is a heart set upon worldly things.
Men whose minds are much enslaved to earthly affairs all the week
cannot disengage or break the chain of their thoughts so suddenly as
to apply to a discourse that is wholly foreign to what they have
most at heart. Tell a usurer of charity, and mercy, and
restitution--you talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his
senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep and dreaming
of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the cares of the world
choke the good seed; that we must not encumber ourselves with much
serving; that the salvation of his soul is the one thing necessary;
you see, indeed, the shape of a man before you, but his faculties
are all gone off among clients and papers, thinking how to defend a
bad cause or find flaws in a good one; or he weareth out the time in
drowsy nods.

A third cause of the great neglect and scorn of preaching ariseth
from the practice of men who set up to decry and disparage religion;
these, being zealous to promote infidelity and vice, learn a rote of
buffoonery that serveth all occasions, and refutes the strongest
arguments for piety and good manners. These have a set of ridicule
calculated for all sermons and all preachers, and can be extremely
witty as often as they please upon the same fund.

Let me now, in the last place, offer some remedies against this
great evil.

It will be one remedy against the contempt of preaching rightly to
consider the end for which it was designed. There are many who
place abundance of merit in going to church, although it be with no