“5. Attend, also, my young brother, to your outward appearance in the pulpit. Beware of a proud, haughty appearance, with wandering eyes, and unfeeling countenance, so that the people utterly fail to see the man of God in you. We must, in order hereunto, have something like unto Moses, when he had been on the mount with God, that will indicate seriousness, love to souls, a spirit of prayer, zeal for Christ, and longing for the salvation of men; like unto those who have felt the fear of perdition ourselves, and the infinite value of salvation by God’s grace; and that we wrestle with God in order to be useful to souls. These things must be imprinted on our appearance and deportment, having transformed us, in some measure, to a heavenly form and habit. Our outward conversation should be consistent herewith, or men will despise us as hypocrites, without the fear of God.
“6. Avoid, my dear brother, all foolish bodily gestures.
“7. We now come to the part of the subject upon which you are most anxious to have my thoughts: that refers _to the delivery of your sermons_. It is difficult to put general rules of rhetoric into execution. After reading all that has been said by Blair, Williams, Fuller, and the Archbishop of Cambray (Fenelon), who have spoken at length of Cicero and Demosthenes, it is easy, by endeavouring to follow them, to lose the spirit of the work, and thus, by seeking the form, to forfeit the life. Preach the gospel of the grace of God intelligibly, affectionately, and without shame—all the contents of the great box, from predestination to glorification. It was the closing, and concealing, of this box that occasioned the opening of the venomous Mohammedan box, as well as that of Popery, together with all the vain legality that is to be found among Protestants, established and dissenting. It may be said, that they seek justification; but it is by the deeds of the law. The locking up, and the losing, of the doctrine of grace, through the merits of Christ, utterly destroyed the Jewish Church; for it was in the chest, which they locked up by their false interpolations of Scripture, that the ‘things which belong to their peace’ were contained; ‘but now,’ says the Redeemer, ‘they are concealed from their eyes;’ shut up under unbelief. ‘The things that pertain to their peace’ belong also to our peace, as Gentiles. The Deity of Christ, etc.; Redemption, etc. Excuse this digression, for the river of God’s throne moved me along.