that followed, when metaphysical reasonings, mystical divinity, yea, Aristotelian categories, and reading the lives of saints, were substituted in the place of sermons. The pulpit became a stage, where ludicrous priests obtained the vulgar laugh by the lowest kind of wit, especially at the festivals of Christmas and Easter. But the glorious reformation was the offspring of preaching, by which mankind were informed: there was a standard, and the religion of the times was put to trial by it. The avidity of the common people to read Scripture, and to hear it expounded, was wonderful; and the Papists were so fully convinced of the benefit of frequent public instruc tion, that they who were justly called unpreaching prelates, and whose pulpits. to use an expression of Latimer, had been bells without clappers for many a a long year, were obliged for shame to set up regular preaching again. The church of Rome has produced some great preachers since the reformation, but not equal to the reformed preachers; and a question naturally arises here, which it would be unpardonable to pass over in silence, concerning the singular effect of the preaching of the reformed, which was general, national, universal reformation. tianity was maintained, though under gradual decay, during the first three centuries. The next five centuries produced many pious and excellent preachers both in the Latin and Greek churches, though the doctrine continued to degenerate. The Greek pulpit was adorned with some eloquent orators. Basil, bishop of Cæsarea, John Chrysostom, preacher at Antioch, and afterwards patriarch (as he was called) of Constantinople, and Gregory Nazianzen, who all flourished in the fourth century, seem to have led the fashion of preaching in the Greek church: Jerom and Augustin did the same in the Latin church. For some time, preaching was common to bishops, elders, deacons, and private brethren in the primitive church in process, it was restrained to the bishop, and to such as he should appoint. They called the appointment ordination; and at last attached I know not what ideas of mystery and influence to the word, and of dominion to the bishop who pronounced it. When a bishop or preacher travelled, he claimed no authority to exercise the duties of his function, unless he were invited by the churches where he attended public worship. The first preachers differed much in pulpit action; the greater part used very moderate and sober gesture. They delivered their sermons all ex- In the darkest times of popery there tempore, while there were notaries who had arisen now and then some famous took down what they said. Sermons in popular preachers, who had zealously those days were all in the vulgar tongue. inveighed against the vices of their The Greeks preached in Greek, the times, and whose sermons had produced Latins in Latin. They did not preach sudden and amazing effects on their auby the clock (so to speak,) but were ditors; but all these effects had died short or long as they saw occasion, away with the preachers who produced though an hour was about the usual them, and all things had gone back into time. Sermons were generally both the old state. Law, learning, commerce, preached and heard standing; but some- society at large, had not been improved. times both speaker and auditors sat, -Here a new scene opens; preachers especially the aged and the infirm. The arise less popular, perhaps less indefafathers were fond of allegory; for Ori-tigable and exemplary; their sermons gen, that everlasting allegorizer, had set them the example. Before preaching, the preacher usually went into a vestry to pray, and afterwards to speak to such as came to salute him. He prayed with his eyes shut in the pulpit. The first word the preacher uttered to the people, when he ascended the pulpit, was "Peace be with you," or "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you all;" to which the assembly at first added, "Amen:" and. in after times, they answered, " And with thy spirit." Degenerate, however, as these days were in comparison with those of the apostles, yet they were golden ages in comparison with the times produce less striking immediate effects; and yet their auditors go away, and agree by whole nations to reform. Jerome Savonarola, Jerome Narni, Capistran, Connecte, and many others, had produced by their sermons great immediate effects. When Connecte preached, the ladies lowered their headdresses, and committed quilled caps by hundreds to the flames. When Narmi taught the populace in Lent, from the pulpits of Rome, half the city went from his sermons, crying along the streets, Lord have mercy upon us; Christ have mercy upon us; so that in only one passion week, two thousand crowns worth of ropes were sold to make scourges with; and when he preached before the pope to cardinals and bishops, and painted the crime of non-residence in its own colours, he frightened thirty or forty bishops who heard him, instantly home to their dioceses. In the pulpit of the university of Salamanca he induced eight hundred students to quit all worldly prospects of honour, riches, and pleasures, and to become penitents in divers monasteries. Some of this class were martyrs too. We know the fate of Savonarola, and more might be added: but all lamented the momentary duration of the effects produced by their labours. Narni himself was so disgusted with his office, that he renounced preaching, and shut himself up in his cell to mourn over his irreclaimable contemporaries; for bishops went back to court, and rope-makers lay idle again. his Testament hanging at one end of his leathern girdle, and his spectacles at the other, and without ceremony instructed the people in rustic style from a hollow tree; while the courtly Ridley in satin and fur taught the same principles in the cathedral of the metropolis. Cranmer, though a timorous man, ventured to give king Henry the Eighth a New Testament, with the label, Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge; while Knox, who said, there was nothing in the pleasant face of a lady to affray him, assured the queen of Scots, that, "If there were any spark of the Spirit of God, yea, of honesty and wisdom in her, she would not be offended with his affirming in his sermons, that the diversions of her court were diabolical crimes, evidences of impiety or insanity." These men were not all accomplished scholars; but they all gave proof enough that they were honest, hearty, and disinterested in the cause of religion. Our reformers taught all the good doctrines which had been taught by these men, and they added two or three more, by which they laid the axe to the root of apostasy, and produced general information. Instead of appealing to All Europe produced great and expopes, and canons, and founders, and cellent preachers, and some of the more fathers, they only quoted them, and re- studious and sedate reduced their art of ferred their auditors to the Holy Scrip- public preaching to a system, and taught tures for law. Pope Leo X. did not rules of a good sermon. Bishop Wilknow this when he told Prierio, who kins enumerated, in 1646, upwards of complained of Luther's heresy. Friar sixty who had written on the subject. Martin had a fine genius! They also || Several of these are valuable treatises, taught the people what little they knew full of edifying instructions; but all are of Christian liberty; and so led them on a scale too large, and, by affecting to into a belief that they might follow their treat of the whole office of a minister, own ideas in religion, without the con- leave that capital branch, public preachsent of a confessor, a diocesan, a pope, ing, unfinished and vague. or a council. They went farther, and laid the stress of all religion on justify- || ing faith. This obliged the people to get acquainted with Christ, the object of their faith; and thus they were led into the knowledge of a character altogether different from what they saw in their old guides; a character which it is impossible to know, and not to admire and imitate. The old papal popular sermons had gone off like a charge of gun-powder, producing only a fright, a bustle, and a black face; but those of the newe learninge, as the monks called them, were small hearty seeds, which, being sown in the honest hearts of the multitude, and watered with the dew of heaven, softly vegetated, and imperceptibly unfolded blossoms and fruits of inestimable value. These eminent servants of Christ excelled in various talents, both in the pulpit and in private. Knox came down like a thunder-storm; Calvin resembled a whole day's set rain; Beza was a shower of the softest dew. Old Latimer, in a coarse frieze gown, trudged afoot, One of the most important articles of pulpit science, that which gives life and energy to all the rest, and without which all the rest are nothing but a vain pa rade, is either neglected or exploded in all these treatises. It is essential to the ministration of the divine word by public preaching, that preachers be allowed to form principles of their own, and that their sermons contain their real sentiments, the fruits of their own intense thought and meditation. Preaching cannot be in a good state in those communities, where the shameful traffic of buying and selling manuscript sermons is carried on. Moreover, all the animating encouragements that arise from a free unbiassed choice of the people, and from their uncontaminated, disinterested applause, should be left open to stimulate a generous youth to excel. Command a man to utter what he has no inclination to propagate, and what he does not even believe; threaten him, at the same time, with all the miseries of life, if he dare to follow his own ideas, and to promulge his own sentiments, and you pass a sentence of death on all he says. He does declaim; but all is languid and cold, and he lays his system out as an undertaker does the dead. Since the reformers, we have had multitudes who have entered into their views with disinterestedness and success; and, in the present times, both in the church and among dissenters, names could be mentioned which would do honour to any nation; for though there are too many who do not fill up that important station with proportionate piety and talents, yet we have men who are conspicuous for their extent of knowledge, depth of experience, originality of thought, fervency of zeal, Consistency of deportment, and great usefulness in the Christian church. May their numbers still be increased, and their exertions in the cause of truth be eminently crowned with the divine blessing! See Robinson's Claude, vol. ii. preface; and books recommended under article MINISTER. PREADAMITE, a denomination given to the inhabitants of the earth, Conceived by some people to have lived before Adam. Isaac de la Pereyra, in 1655, published a book to evince the reality of Preadamites, by which he gained a considerable number of proselytes to the opinion; but the answer of Demarets, professor of theology at Groningen, published the year following, put a stop to its propress, though Pereyra made a reply. His system was this. The Jews he calls Adamites, and supposes them to have issued from Adam; and gives the title Preadamites to the Gentiles, whom he supposes to have been a long time before Adam. But this being expressly contrary to the first words of Genesis, Pereyra had recourse to the fabulous antiquities of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and to some idle rabbins, who imagined there had been another world before that described by Moses. He was apprehended by the inquisition in Flanders, and very roughly used, though in the service of the dauphin. But he appealed from their sentence to Rome, whither he went in the time of Alexander VII., and where he printed a retraction of his book of Preadamites. The arguments against the Preadamites are these. The sacred history of Moses assures us that Adam and Eve were the first persons that were created on the earth, Gen. i. 26. Gen. ii. 7. Our Saviour confirmed this when he said, "From the beginning of the creation God made them, male and female," Mark, x. 6. It is undeniable that he speaks this of Adam and Eve, because in the next verse he uses the same words as those in Gen. ii. 24 "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife." It is also clear from Gen. iii. 20, where it is said, that "Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living ;' that is, she was the source and root of all men and women in the world; which plainly intimates that there was no other woman that was such a mother. Finally, Adam is expressly called twice, by the apostle Paul, the first man, 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47. PRECEPT, a rule given by a superior: a direction or command. The precepts of religion, says Saurin, are as essential as the doctrines; and religion, will as certainly sink if the morality be subverted as if the theology be undermined. The doctrines are only proposed to us as the ground of our duty. See DOCTRINE. PREDESTINARIANS, those who believe in predestination. See PRE DESTINATION. PREDESTINATION is the decree of God, whereby he hath for his own glory fore-ordained whatever comes to pass. The verb predestinate is of Latin original (prædestino,) and signifies in that tongue to deliberate before-hand with one's self how one shall act, and, in consequence of such deliberation, to constitute, fore-ordain, and predetermine, where, when, how, and by whom any thing shall be done, and to what end it shall be done. So the Greek word poop, which exactly answers to the English word predestinate, and is rendered by it, signifies to resolve beforehand with one's self what shall be done, and before the thing resolved on is actually effected; to appoint it to some certain use, and direct it to some determinate end. This doctrine has been the occasion of considerable disputes and controversies among divines. On the one side it has been observed, that it is impossible to reconcile it with our ideas of the justice and goodness of God, that it makes God to be the author of sin, destroys moral distinction, and renders all our efforts useless. Predestinarians deny these consequences, and endeavour to prove this doctrine from the consideration of the perfections of the divine nature, and from Scripture testimony. If his knowledge, say they, be infinite and unchangeable, he must have known every thing from eternity. If we allow the attribute of prescience, the idea of a decree must certainly be be lieved also; for how can an action that is really to come to pass be foreseen, if|| it be not determined? God knew every thing from the beginning; but this he could not have known if he had not so determined it. If, also, God be infinitely wise, it cannot be conceived that he would leave things at random, and have no plan. He is a God of order, and this order he observes as strictly in the moral as in the natural world, however confused things may appear to us. To conceive otherwise of God, is to degrade him, and is an insult to his perfections. If he, then, be wise and unchangeable, no new idea or purpose can arise in his mind; no alteration of his plan can take place, upon condition of his creatures acting in this or that way. To say that this doctrine makes him the author of sin, is not justifiable. We all allow omnipotence to be an attribute of Deity, and that by this attribute he could have prevented sin from entering into the world, had he chosen it; yet we see he did not. Now he is no more the author of sin in one case than the other. May we not ask, Why does he suffer those inequalities of Providence? Why permit whole nations to lie in idolatry for ages? Why leave men to the most cruel barbarities? Why punish the sins of the fathers in the children? In a word, Why permit the world at large to be subject to pains, crosses, losses, evils of every kind, and that for so many thousands of years? And, yet, will any dare call the Deity unjust? The fact is,|| our finite minds know but little of the nature of divine justice, or any other of his attributes. But, supposing there are difficulties in this subject (and what subject is without it?) the Scripture abounds with passages which at once prove the doctrine, Matt. xxv. 34. Rom. viii. 29, 30. Eph. i. 3, 6, 11. 2 Tim. 1. 9. 2 Thess. ii. 13. 1 Pet. i. 1, 2. John, vi. 37. John, xvii. 2 to 24. Rev. xiii. 8. Rev. xvii. 8. Dan. iv. 35. 1 Thess. v. 19. Matt. xi. 26. Exod. iv. 21. Prov. xvi. 4. Acts, xiii. 48. The moral uses of this doctrine are these. 1. It hides pride from man.-2. Excludes the idea of chance. -3. Exalts the grace of God.-4. Renders salvation certain.-5. Affords believers great consolation. See DECREES OF GOD; NECESSITY; King, Toplady, Cooper, and Tucker, on Predestination; Burnet on 17 Art. Whitby and Gill on the Five Points; Wesley's Pred. considered; Hill's Logica_Wesleiensis; Edwards on the Will; Polhill on the Decrees; Edwards's Veritas Redux; Saurin's Sermons, vol. v. ser. 13; Dr. Williams's Sermon on Pred. PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS CHRIST, is his existence before he was born of the Virgin Mary. That he really did exist before is plain from John, iii. 13. John, vi. 50, &c. John, xvii. John, viii. 58. 1 John, i. 4: but there are various opinions respecting this existence. Some acknowledge, that in Jesus Christ there is a divine nature, a rational soul, and a human body. His body, they think, was formed in the Virgin's womb; his human soul, they suppose, was the first and most excellent of all the works of God; was brought into existence before the creation of the world, and subsisted in happy union in heaven with the second person in the Godhead, till his incarnation. These divines differ from those called Arians, for the latter ascribe to Christ only a created deity, whereas the former hold his true and proper divinity: they differ from the Socinians, who believe no existence of Christ before his incarnation: they differ from the Sabellians, who only own a trinity of names: they differ, also, from the generally received opinion, which is, that the human soul began to exist in his mother's womb, in exact conformity to that likeness unto his brethren, of which St. Paul speaks, Heb. ii. 17. The writers in favour of the pre-existence of Jesus Christ's human soul recommend their thesis by these arguments. 1. Christ is represented as his Father's messenger, or angel, being distinct from his Father, sent by his Father long before his incarnation, to perform actions which seem to be too low for the dignity of pure Godhead. The appearances of Christ to the patriarchs are described like the appearances of an angel, or man really distinct from God; yet such a one, in whom God, or Jehovah, had a peculiar indwelling, or with whom the divine nature had a personal union. 2. Christ, when he came into the world, is said, in several passages of Scripture, to have divested himself of some glory which he had before his incarnation. Now if there had existed before this time nothing but his divine nature, this divine nature could not properly divest itself of any glory. I have glorified thee on earth; I have finished the work thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich, John, xvii. 4, 5. 2 Cor. viii. 9. It cannot be said of God that he became poor: he is infinitely self-sufficient; he is necessarily and eternally rich in perfections and glories. Nor can it be said of Christ as man, that he was rich, if he were never in a richer state before, than while || he was on earth. and characters of Godhead. And the spectators, and sacred historians, it is evident, considered him as true and proper God: they paid him the highest worship and obedience. He is properly styled the angel of God's presenceThe (messenger or) angel of the covenant, Isa. lxxii. 1. Mal. iii. 1. with the patriarchs, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, who redeemed the Israelites from Egypt, who conducted them through the wilderness, who gave the law at Sinai, and transacted the affairs of the ancient church. It seems needful that the soul of Christ should pre-exist, that it might have an The same angel of the Lord was the opportunity to give its previous actual particular God and King of the Israelconsent to the great and painful under-ites. It was he who made a covenant taking of atonement for our sins. It was the human soul of Christ that endured the weakness and pain of his infant state, all the labours and fatigues of life, the reproaches of men, and the sufferings of death. The divine nature is in capable of suffering. The covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son is therefore represented as being made before the foundation of the world. To suppose that simple deity or the divine essence, which is the same in all the three personalities, should make a covenant with itself, is inconsistent. Christ is the angel to whom God was in a peculiar manner united, and who in this union made all the divine appearances related in the Old Testament. God is often represented in Scripture as appearing in a visible manner, and assuming a human form. See Gen. iii. 8. xvii. 1. xxviii. 12. xxxii. 24. Exod. ii. 2, and a variety of other passages. The Lord Jehovah, when he came down to visit men, carried some ensign of divine majesty: he was surrounded with some splendid appearance. Such a light often appeared at the door of the tabernacle, and fixed its abode on the ark, between the cherubims. It was by the Jews called the Shekinah, i. e. the habitation of God. Hence he is described as dwelling in light, and clothed with light as with a garment. In the midst of this brightness there seems to have been sometimes a human shape and figure. It was probably of this heavenly light that Christ divested himself when he was made flesh. With this he was covered at his transfiguration in the Mount, when his garments were white as the light; and at his ascension into heaven, when a bright cloud received, or invested him: and when he appeared to John, Rev. i. 13. and it was with this he prayed his Father would glorify him. Sometimes the great and blessed God appeared in the form of a man or angel. It is evident that the true God resided in this man or angel; because on account of this union to proper deity, the angel calls himself God, the Lord God. He assumes the most exalted names The angels who have appeared since our blessed Saviour became incarnate, have never assumed the names, titles, characters, or worship, belonging to God. Hence we may infer that the angel who, under the Old Testament, assumed divine titles, and accepted religious worship, was that peculiar angel of God's presence, in whom God resided, or who was united to the Godhead in a peculiar manner; even the pre-existent soul of Christ, who afterwards took flesh and blood upon him, and was called Jesus Christ on earth. Christ represent himself as one with the Father: I and the Father are one, John, x. 30. xiv. 10, 11. There is, we may hence infer, such a peculiar union between God and the man Christ Jesus, both in his pre-existent and incarnate state, that he may be properly called God-man in one complex person. Among those expressions of Scripture which discover the pre-existence of Christ, there are several from which we may derive a certain proof of his divinity. Such are those places in the Old Testament, where the angel who appeared to the ancients is called God, the Almighty God, Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts, I am that I am, &c. Dr. Watts supposes, that the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul of Christ explains dark and difficult scriptures, and discovers many beauties and proprieties of expression in the word of God, which on any other plan lie unobserved: For instance, in Col. i. 15, &c. Christ is described as the image of the invisible God. the first-born of every creature. His being the image of the invisible God cannot refer merely to his divine nature; for that is as invisible in the Son as in the Father: therefore it seems to refer to his pre-existent soul in union with the Godhead. Again: when man is said to be created in the |