Teaching Christianity (continued)
pleasure. Accordingly those three objects, that listeners should understand what they hear, should enjoy hearing it, and should comply with it, are also to be aimed at in this mode of speaking, in which giving pleasure has pride of place.
58. Finally, where the need is to move and sway the audience with the grand manner (which is necessary when they admit that what is being said is true and that it is being said very pleasantly, and still do not wish to do what they are being told), the speaker must undoubtedly employ the grand manner. But who will be moved if they do not know what is being said? And who will be constrained to listen if they are not also being entertained? So it is that in this mode also, where stubborn hearts need to be swayed to obedience by the very grandeur of the style, unless the speaker is listened to with understanding and with pleasure, he cannot be listened to with compliance.
The preacher's lifestyle carries more weight than his style of oratory
27, 59. But for us to be listened to with obedient compliance, whatever the grandeur of the speaker's utterances, his manner of life carries more weight. For the man who speaks wisely and eloquently, while living a worthless kind of life, does indeed instruct many who are eager to learn, although, as it is written, he is unprofitable to his own soul (Sir 37:19), which is why the apostle says, Whether from ulterior motives or for the sake of the truth, let Christ be proclaimed (Phil 1:18). Now Christ is the truth,[65] and yet the truth can be proclaimed even by the not truth, that is, so that things that are right and true may be preached by a twisted and deceitful heart. This of course is how Jesus Christ is proclaimed by those who seek what is their own, and not what is of Jesus Christ (Phil 2:21).
But since good people who are believers listen