when it is said, " I will praise Thee among much people,"^ no
142 Oy CITKISTIAN DOCTRINE. [BOOK IV.
beauty of expression here spoken of, that not only is it not our duty to do, but it is our duty to shun and abhor, many and heinous deeds of wickedness and baseness which wicked and base men have with great eloquence recommended, not with a view to gaining assent, but merely for the sake of being read with pleasure. But may God avert from His Church what the prophet Jeremiah says of the synagogue of the Jews:
" A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests applaud them witli their hands ;^ and my people love to have it so : and what will ye do in the end thereof?"' eloquence, which is the more terrible from its purity, and the more crushing from its solidity ! Assuredly it is " a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces." For to this God Himself has by the same prophet compared His own word spoken through His holy prophets.^ God forbid, then, God forbid that with us the priest should applaud the false prophet, and that God's people f^hould love to have it so. God forbid, I say, that with us tliere should be such terrible madness ! For what shaU we do ill the end thereof? And assuredly it is preferable, even though what is said should be less intelligible, less pleasing, and less persuasive, that truth be spoken, and that what is just, not what is iniquitous, be listened to with pleasure. But tliis, of course, cannot be, unless what is true and just be expressed with elegance.
31. In a serious assembly, moreover, such as is spoken of when it is said, " I will praise Thee among much people,"^ no pleasure is derived from that species of eloquence which indeed says nothing that is false, but which buries small and unimportant truths under a frothy mass of ornamental words, such as would not be graceful or dignified even if used to adorn great and fundamental truths. And something of tliis sort occurs in a letter of the blessed Cyprian, which, I think, came there by accident, or else was inserted designedly with this view, that posterity might* see how the wholesome discipline of
Christian teaching had cured him of that redundancy of language, and confined him to a more dignified and modest form
"And the priests hoar rule by thoir moans." (A. V.)
Jcr. V. 30, 31 (LXX.). => Jer. xxiii. 29. * Ts. xixv. IS.