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Quintilian excellently observes that our meaning, ‘like the light of the sun, should thrust itself upon the eyes of the ignorant, not only without any pains to search for it, but as it were, whether he will have it or not.’ Institut. Lib. viii. cap. 2. Rollin has the same illustration. Belles Letters, vii. Luther used to say—‘To preach plainly and simply is a great art.’ Table Talk. Archbishop Usher observed—‘It requires all our learning to make things plain.—It is not difficult to make easy things appear hard; but to render hard things easy, is the hardest part of a good orator and preacher.’ ‘He is the most powerful preacher, and best orator’—said Dr. South—‘who can make himself best understood.’ Bishop Wilkins observes—‘the greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness. The more clearly we understand anything ourselves, the more easily we can expound it to others.’ Eccles. p. 168. (The character that Photius gave concerning the preaching of Athanasius will confirm this point. ‘In sermonibus ubique in locutione clarus est, et brevis, et simplex, acutus tamen et altus.’) In his sermons, his speech was universally clear, brief, simple, sharp, and yet exalted. Bishop Hurd charged his clergy to the same purpose—‘Your sermons cannot well be too plain: and I need not say to you who hear me—that to frame a discourse in this way, as it is the most useful way of preaching, so it will afford full scope and exercise for all the talents which the ablest of us may possess.’ Charges. Archbishop Tillotson is said to have been ‘in the habit of reading his sermons to an illiterate old woman of plain sense who lived with him, and of altering his words and expressions till he had brought the style down to her level. If the story is true, ‘it is’ (as Professor Campbell observes) ‘much to the prelate’s honour; for however incompetent such judges might be of the composition, the doctrine, or the arguments, they are certainly the most competent judges of what terms and phrases fall within the apprehension of the vulgar, the class to which they belong.’ On Pulpit Eloquence, Lect. iii. Compare Fenelon on Eloquence, ut supra. Perhaps however the poet’s rule—‘Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem’—expresses the whole in the fewest words: It is not smoke from the flame, but light out of the smoke.