and delicacy; who pretend to be charmed with what they call beauties and nature in claffical authors, and in other things would blush not to be reckoned amongst found and impartial critics. But so far has negligence and prepoffeffion stopped their ears against the voice of the charmer, that they turn over thofe awful facred pages with inattention and unbecoming indifference, unaffected amidst ten thoufand sublime and noble paffages, which, by the rules of fome criticism and reason, may be demonstrated to be truly eloquent and beautiful,

Indeed the opinion of false Greek and bar

barous language, in the Old and New-Teftament, had, for fome ages, been a ftumblingblock to another fet of men, who were profeffedly great readers and admirers of the ancients. The facred writings were, by these perfons, rudely attacked on all fides; expreffions which came not within the compafs of their learning, were branded with barbarism and folecifm; words which fcarce fignified any thing but the ignorance of those who laid fuch groundless charges on them.-Prefumptuous man!-Shall he, who is but duft and

ashes, dare to find fault with the words of that

Being, who first inspired man with language, and taught his mouth to utter; who opened the lips of the dumb, and made the infant eloquent?-These persons, as they attacked the inspired writings on the foot of critics and men of learning, accordingly have been treated as fuch: and tho' a fhorter way might have been gone to work, which was,— that as their accufations reached no farther than the bare words and phrafeology of the Bible, they, in no wife, affected the fentiments and foundness of the doctrines, which were conveyed with as much clearnefs and perfpicuity to mankind, as they could have been, had the language been written with the utmost elegance and grammatical nicety. And even though the charge of barbarous idioms could be made out; yet the cause of christianity was thereby no ways affected, but remained juft in the state they found it.-Yet, unhappily for them, they even mifcarried in their favourite point; there being few, if any at all, of the Scripture expreffions, which may not be justified by numbers of parallel modes of

speaking, made use of amongst the purest and most authentic Greek authors,―This, an able hand amongst us, not many years ago, has fufficiently made out, and thereby baffled and expofed all their prefumptuous and ridiculous affertions.-Thefe perfons, bad and deceitful as they were, are yet far out-gone for a third fet of men.-I wish we had not too many inftances of them, who, like foul ftomachs, that turn the sweetest food to bitterness, upon all occafions endeavour to make merry with facred Scripture, and turn every thing they meet with therein into banter and burlesque. But as men of this stamp, by their excess of wickednefs and weakness together, have entirely difarmed us from arguing with them as reafonable creatures, it is not only making them too confiderable, but likewife to no purpose to spend much time about them; they being, in the language of the Apostle, creatures of no understanding, fpeaking evil of the things they know not, and fhall utterly perish in their own corruption.-Of these two laft, the one is difqualified for being argued with, and the other has no occafion for it; they being al

ready filenced.-Yet those that were first mentioned, may not altogether be thought unworthy of our endeavours;- being perfons, as was hinted above, who, though their tastes are fo far vitiated that they cannot relish the facred Scriptures, yet have imaginations capable of being raised by the fancied excellencies of claffical writers.-And indeed these perfons claim from us fome degree of pity, when, thro' the unfkilfulness of preceptors in their youth, or fome other unhappy circumstance in their education, they have been taught to form falfe and wretched notions of good writing.-When this is the cafe, it is no wonder they should be more touched and affected with the dreffed-up trifles and empty conceits of poets and rhetoricians, than they are with that true fublimity and grandeur of fentiment which glow throughout every page of the inspired writings. By way of information, fuch fhould be inftructed:

:

There are two forts of eloquence, the one indeed scarce deserves the name of it, which confifts chiefly in laboured and polished periods, an over-curious and artificial arrange

ment of figures, tinfel'd over with a gaudy embellishment of words, which glitter, but convey little or no light to the understanding. This kind of writing is for the most part much affected and admired by the people of weak judgment and vicious tafte, but is a piece of affectation and formality the facred Writers are utter ftrangers to.-It is a vain and boyish eloquence; and it has always been efteemed below the great geniufes of all ages, fo much more fo, with refpect to those writers who were acted by the fpirit of infinite wisdom, and therefore wrote with that force and majesty with which never man writ.-The other fort of eloquence is quite the reverse to this, and which may be faid to be the true characteriftic of the holy Scriptures; where the excellence does not arife from a laboured and far fetched elocution, but from a furprizing mixtnre of fimplicity and majesty, which is a double character, fo difficult to be united, that it is feldom to be met with in compositions merely human. We fee nothing in holy writ of affectation and fuperfluous ornament.-As the infinite wife Being has condefcended te ftoop