Manuductio ad ministerium. Directions for a candidate of the ministry

But I will take this Opportunity to tell you, That there is no where to be found any such Rhetoric, as there is in our Sacred Scriptures. Even a Pagan Longinus himself, will confess, The Sublime, shining in them. There can be nothing so Beautiful, or so Affectuous as the Figures every where used in them. They are Life. All mere Humane Flourishes are but Chaff to the Wheat that is there. Yea, they are an Hammer that breaks the Rocks to Pieces. In them the GOD of Glory Thunders, yea, does it very marvellously! There is in them that Voice of the Lord which is full of Majesty. For the Pulpit-Oratory, which is what you have in View, there can be nothing more advisable, than to be a Master of Scripture-Phrases, and employ them with an agreeable Ingenuity, on all fit Occasions. ⟨p. 35⟩I will add, I know not but a Lamy, in his L'Art de Parler, may give you some hints that may be not unuseful to you.

But I will take this Opportunity to tell you, That there is no where to be found any such Rhetoric, as there is in our Sacred Scriptures. Even a Pagan Longinus himself, will confess, The Sublime, shining in them. There can be nothing so Beautiful, or so Affectuous as the Figures every where used in them. They are Life. All meer Humane Flourishes are but Chaff to the Wheat that is there. Yea, they are an Hammer that breaks the Rocks to Pieces. In them the GOD of Glory Thunders, yea, does it very marvellously! There is in them that Voice of the Lord which is full of Majesty. For the Pulpit-Oratory, which is what you have in View, there can be nothing more adviseable, than to be a Master of Scripture-Phrases, and employ them with an agreeable Ingenuity, on all fit Occasions. ⟨p. 35⟩I will add, I know not but a Lamy, in his L'Art de Parler, may give you some hints that may be not unuseful to you.

Nor can I encourage you to spend very much Time, in that which goes under the Name of LOGIC. If my excellent Friend Langius, in his Noble Medicina Mentis, [which I commend unto you, to be diligently perused, as an Introduction to all your Studies of the Sciences,] had not compelled me to a Contempt of the Vulgar Logic, learnt in our Colleges, as a sort of mere Morology, yet a little serious Recollection would have brought me to it. What is there usually got by the Vulgar Logic, but only to be furnished with a Parcel of Terms, which instead of leading the Mind into the Truth, enables one rather to carry on Altercations, and Logomachies, by which the Force of Truth may be at Pleasure, and by some little Trick, evaded. The Power and Process of Reason is Natural to the Soul of Man; And those Masters of Reason, who argue the most Rationally, and make the most Rational Researches into the true State of Things, and who take the most Reasonable Measures for their Conduct, and who in all things arrive to the most notable Discoveries, I pray, what sort of Logicians are they? Either they never once read a Page of any Burgesdicius, or else they have unlearnt and forgot all their Vulgar Logic. I am sure, they rarely trouble their Heads to recall the Old Rules which they have recited unto their Tutors. To exhibit in the pompous Form of an Art, what every One does by mere Nature and Custom, and fabricate it into such a