Teaching Christianity
them. They implement them because they are eloquent, they do not apply them in order to be eloquent.
5. So then, infants only become speakers by learning the speech and pronunciation of speakers; why cannot people become eloquent without any formal training in the art of public speaking, but simply by reading and hearing the speeches of the eloquent and, as far as they have the chance to follow this up, by imitating them? Why, we have surely all experienced examples of this, have we not? I mean, we know a great many people, quite innocent of the rules of rhetoric, who are much more eloquent than a great many people that have learned them; but we don't know anybody like this who has not read and heard the debates and the style of eloquent speakers.
Even the art of grammar, after all, in which we learn about correctness of speech, would not need to be taught to boys, if they had the good fortune to grow up and live among people who spoke correctly. That is to say, without knowing any of the names of grammatical faults, their own sound habits of speech would enable them to point out and avoid faulty grammar on the lips of any speaker, in the way townspeople, even though illiterate, will find fault with the speech of rustics.
4, 6. The interpreter and teacher of the divine scriptures, therefore, the defender of right faith and the hammer of error, has the duty of both teaching what is good and unteaching what is bad; and in this task of speaking it is his duty to win over the hostile, to stir up the slack, to point out to the ignorant what is at stake and what they ought to be looking for. When, though, he finds them friendly, attentive, willing to learn, or renders them so himself, further tactics have to be employed, as the case requires. If the listeners need to be instructed, this calls for the narrative style, provided, at least, that they need to be informed about the subject being dealt with, while for the clearing up of doubts and the establishment of certainty, reasoned arguments and documentary proofs are needed.[4]
But if the listeners are to be moved rather than instructed, so as not to become sluggish in acting upon what they know, and so as to give a real assent to things they admit are true, more forceful kinds of speaking are called for. Here what is necessary is words that implore, that rebuke, that stir, that check, and whatever other styles may avail to move the audience's minds and spirits. And in fact practically nobody, when it comes to public speaking, neglects doing the things I have said.
5, 7.[5] Some people, of course, do it all in a dull, unattractive and cold sort of way, while others do it with wit, elegance and feeling. In any case, those who can speak and discuss things wisely, even though they cannot do so eloquently, must now undertake the task we are concerned with[6] in such a way as to benefit their listeners, even though less than they would have benefited them if they could also speak eloquently. Beware, on the other hand, of those whose unwisdom has a flood of eloquence at its command, and all the more so, the more their audience takes pleasure in things it is profitless to hear, and assumes that because they hear them speaking fluently, they are are also speaking the truth. This consideration did not even escape those who thought the art of rhetoric was worth teaching; for they admitted that "wisdom without eloquence is of little use to society, while eloquence without wisdom is frequently extremely prejudicial to it, never of any use." [7] If those therefore who have propounded the rules of eloquence have been obliged, in the very books in which they have done this, to make such a confession at the instigation of truth, even though they were ignorant of the true, that is to say the heavenly, wisdom which comes down from the Father of lights (Jas 1:17); how much more ought we to have no other opinion, seeing that we are sons and ministers of this wisdom?