The British Pulpit (Volume 3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: without eloquence profited states but very little; but that eloquence without wisdom profited them not at all, and generally proved highty jijurious. If, therefore, those who taught the precepts of eloquence, even 'Jhough ignorant of the true, that is, the celestial wisdom ' which cometh down from the Father of Lights/ were compelled, by the instigations of: ruth, to make such a confession, and that, too, in the very books in which heir principles were developed; are we not under far higher obligations io acknowledge the same thing, who are the sons and daughters of this .ieavenly wisdom ? Now a man speaks with greater or less wisdom, according to the proficiency he has made in the knowledge of the sacred .Scriptures. I do not mean simply in reading them and committing them to memory, but in rightly understanding them, and diligently searching into their meaning. There are those who read them and yet neglect them ?who read them to remember the words, but neglect to understand them. To these, without an v doubt, those persons are to be preferred, who, retaining iess the words of the Scriptures, search after their genuine signification with the inmost feelings of the heart. But better than both is he. who can repeat them when he pleases, and at the same time understand them as they ought to be understood "?Augnstinu de arte Pr' dicandi. Translated from the Latin. Luther s favourite maxim was " fionn-a Textuarius, Bonus The.ologus" or, " One well acquainted witii Hie Scriptures, makes a good theologian." There is one thing, above all others, which ought never to be lost sight of by the man who aspires to be " an able minister of the New'Testament." This all-nnpartant consideration is, that the end and object of all his labours is to recover man from his lapsed state, and to i...