Ars Prædicandi: Theories and Practice

Ars Prædicandi: Theories and Practice

Gregory Kneidel
The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon
Edited by Hugh Adlington, Peter McCullough, and Emma Rhatigan
Print Publication Date: Aug 2011 Subject: Literature, Literary Studies - 1500 to 1700
Online Publication Date: Sep 2012 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199237531.013.0001
Abstract and Keywords
This article is primarily concerned with the theories and practice of the Christian Scrip
tures. It is divided into two main sections, the first being the theory and practice of Scrip
tures before 1200, where it examines Augustine's legacy and contribution to the history
of preaching. The second part of the article is on the theory and practice of Scriptures af
ter 1200. Here the article discusses the theoretical manuals and standardization of
preaching that emerged, and introduces the thematic sermon.
Keywords: Christian Scriptures, theories and practice, Augustine, history of preaching, theoretical manuals, the
matic sermon
At several points in the Christian Scriptures, Jesus's disciples are told to go out and
preach (see Matt. 10:27, Mark 16:15, Luke 9:12). But they are never told explicitly how to
do it. While in practice there were innumerable sermons of various sorts delivered in the
first millennium of the Christian Church, it was not until about 1200 that preaching be
gan to be theorized as a technê or ars—that is, as a ‘set of rules that provide a definite
method and system of speaking’ (Ars est præceptio, quae dat certam viam rationemque
dicendi) ([Cicero] 1968: I.ii.3). The first section of this chapter will survey a few key dis
cussions of preaching prior to 1200 in order to highlight some of the essential theoretical
issues that would shape later treatises on the art of preaching. The second section will
turn to the artes prædicandi or sermon manuals composed during the medieval and early
modern periods. These manuals typically addressed (albeit unevenly) all the canons of
classical rhetoric—that is, inventio, the discovery of things to say; dispositio, the arrange
ment of these discovered things; elocutio, the choice of style; memoria and actio, the
memorization and the delivery of the speech. Since most of these canons will be dis
cussed in greater detail elsewhere in this volume, I will focus primarily on the canon of
dispositio or overall sermon structure. I hope to show that Jewish, classical, and early
Christian rhetorical traditions were received and revised in the wake of both the Renais
sance and the Reformation, so that, by the end of the seventeenth century, flexible ver
sions of four basic sermon structures—the homily, the thematic sermon, the classical ora
tion, and the doctrine-use scheme—had been theorized for the use of English preachers.
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Augustine's Legacy: Theory and Practice be

fore 1200
Several Church Fathers discussed preaching in treatises written between the apostolic
and medieval periods. Among the best known were John Chrysostom's On the Priesthood
(p. 4) (c.382) and Gregory the Great's Book of Pastoral Rule (c.591). But these were tracts
primarily on church governance, and they touch on preaching only within the purview of
the Christian priest's or bishop's broader qualifications, obligations, and powers. The
closest one gets to a rhetorical manual in the classical, Ciceronian sense is Augustine's
On Christian Doctrine (bks 1–3, c.396; bk 4, 427), and even it provided very little system
atic, prescriptive, how-to guidance on the composition and delivery of sermons. What it
offered instead was a massively influential theoretical justification for adapting basic con
cepts from the pagan rhetorical arts to Christian ends. So, for example, Augustine defines
the Christian preacher's officia or duties as essentially those of the classical orator: to
teach, delight, and move (docere, delectare, and flectere, or movere) (1958: 136). The
style of his preaching can be classified, provisionally at least, using a lexicon—low or sub
dued, moderate, elevated or grand—borrowed from classical sources (1958: 145–64). And
his ability to move his audience is both validated and enhanced by the fact that he himself
is moved, the fire of godly passion in his heart enflaming the hearts of his listeners, just
as Horace had recommended (see Augustine 1958; 145, 150–1; cf. Shuger 1988: 227–40).
Using an allegorical argument first devised by Origen, Augustine compared the pagan
arts of discourse (that is, grammar, logic, rhetoric) to the so-called spoils of Egypt: just as
the fleeing Israelites plundered the golden idols and jewellery of their Egyptian masters
so that they had the raw materials with which later to honour their Lord as they wander
through the desert, so too could Christian orators plunder the ideas and techniques of
their pagan predecessors so that they had language skills with which to serve their Lord
as they built up the worldly church (1958: 74–5; cf. Exod. 3–22, 12–35). Because of its ex
plicitly syncretic agenda and broad influence, On Christian Doctrine has been lauded as
both the last great treatise of the classical rhetorical tradition and the very foundation of
Christian eloquence (Fumaroli 1980: 70–1).
But the story of Augustine's seminal contribution to the history of preaching is not quite
so easily told. Augustine himself admitted that some crucial adjustments had to be made
if Ciceronian rhetoric was to serve Christian ends, including the basic concession that
rhetoric could only serve. It was useful but by no means essential. To take a more con
crete example, while pagan rhetoricians dictated that an orator's style should suit his
subject matter, Augustine reasoned that, for Christian orators, there simply could be no
low or even moderate subject matter:
Among our orators… everything we say, especially when we speak to the people
from the pulpit, must be referred, not to the temporal welfare of man, but to his
eternal welfare and to the avoidance of eternal punishment, so that everything we
say is of great importance, even to the extent that pecuniary matters, whether
they concern loss or gain, or large or small amounts of money, should not be con
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sidered ‘small’ when they are discussed by the Christian teacher. (1958: 143–4;
see also Mazzeo 1962: 183–6)
From concessions such as these, modern commentators have discerned a kind of false
consciousness in Augustine's attempt to baptize classical rhetoric. Most crucially, they
have charged that his ultimate goal is not to teach, delight, or move a specific group of
listeners, but to contemplate silently God's eternal, immutable truth. Joseph Mazzeo, in
(p. 5) his 1962 essay on Augustine's ‘Rhetoric of Silence’, was one of the first to highlight
the incongruities between Augustine's Ciceronian rhetoric and his Platonizing theology,
and Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle has recently given his argument a more polemic formula
tion. Augustine, she writes:
set the stage for the clerical resort to rhetoric as a sop to the laity. With intellectu
alist bias, Augustine reduced Scripture, already lamented as crude, to divine baby
talk… Rhetoric was a condescension to the flesh, to motivate persons from the
corporeal to the spiritual. Its metaphor of service was female and pejorative, a
breast-feeding mother (contemplation was male and chaste). Ciceronian precepts
were her toys. Truth was apprehended by contemplation, which ascended to the
Word beyond words: to silence. (Boyle 2001: 665–6)
For Boyle, Augustine merely gave theological flavouring to the ancient attack on rhetoric
by philosophy, and he sided with philosophy. But if ‘Augustine was ultimately, profoundly
antirhetorical’ (Boyle 2001: 666), then a lot depends on the adverbs ‘ultimately’ and ‘pro
foundly’, which hugely discount the preacher's other, more proximate and communal
goals. Such goals are hard to articulate using the antitheses (for example, temporal ver
sus eternal, mutable versus immutable, image versus idea, spoken versus silent, flesh ver
sus spirit, words versus Word) that Augustine derived from one strand of Pauline thinking
and that were, as Boyle insists, strongly coded in terms of gender, sex, and class differ
ence. These antitheses recur in, and at times threaten to undermine, the Christian ars
prædicandi altogether. But the preacher's other goals, which might be called ecclesiasti
cal as opposed to theological, could be formulated in equally Pauline and more rhetorical
ly conducive terms: harmony, edification, accommodation, participation, and, above all,
charity. Moreover, although it takes modern critics (typically ratiocinating silently and in
solitude at their computers) only a handful of sentences to deconstruct Augustine's logic,
there is ample evidence in On Christian Doctrine that Augustine thought that preachers in
the pulpit should desire neither contemplative silence nor, as their pagan counterparts
had, congratulatory applause. Instead, he writes, the lasting effect of preaching is shown
‘through [the audience's] groans, sometimes even through tears, and finally through a
change of their way of life’ (Augustine 1958: 161; see also Schaeffer 1996 and John
Chrysostom 1885: 73).
Embedded within such critiques of Augustine's anti-rhetorical rhetoric are assumptions

about three topics—sacred scripture, priestly authority, and audience psychology—that
figured centrally in medieval and early modern theories of preaching as well. It has been
recognized that Christian oratory differs from classical rhetoric because it takes as one of
Page 3 of 18

its primary tasks the explication of a sacred text. That is, the idea that an authoritative,
apodictic truth resides within a written text is alien to the classical rhetorical tradition
that trafficked instead, even in its forensic aspects, in opinions, beliefs, and probabilities
(Murphy 1974: 269–75; Edwards 2004: 3–26). Scripturalism is thus a measure both of the
departure Christian rhetoricians took from their pagan predecessors and of the debt they
owed to Jewish synagogue worship and rabbinical commentaries, which likewise centred
on a sanctified written text. (The pagan grammarian, steeped in detailed philological un
derstandings of canonical literary texts such as Homer and Virgil, is (p. 6) another medi
ating figure.) Scripturalism also gave form to one of the most long-standing structures of
sermon discourse: the homily, a word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase explanation of the
meaning (or levels of meaning) of a lengthy scriptural passage. Jesus himself presumably
used this form to teach the elders in the Temple in Jerusalem at the tender age of 12; he
adapted it later when he had to explain his own parables to his somewhat baffled disci
ples (Matt. 13). It is the form of numerous patristic sermons, including influential series
by John Chrysostom on Paul's Epistles, Augustine on the Gospels, and Bernard on the
Song of Songs.1 As a compositional form, the homily defers to the written sequence of the
scriptural text, so that it is sometimes treated as an inartistic, formless form (Spencer
1994: 235–6). Importantly, it also assumes that the scriptural text, no matter how perfect
and divinely inspired, is or has become obscure. The Word is Truth; but it also needs care
ful explaining. (The tension between these two positions led, among other things, to the
idea that the Bible is self-interpreting—that is, that obscure biblical texts can be ex
plained by other, less obscure biblical texts.) Thus, as most later sermon rhetoricians
would, Augustine devotes much of On Christian Doctrine to hermeneutics or the discov
ery of clear Christian meaning out of scriptural texts whose meaning is clouded by com
plex allegories, logical contradictions, and stylistic barbarisms.
Indeed, Augustine argues that obscure scriptural texts are ‘useful and healthful’ because
the ‘more these things seem to be obscured by figurative words, the sweeter they become
when they are explained’ (1958: 132, 128–9). This counter-intuitive, pro-obscurity argu
ment is striking, not least because, as Peter Brown has recently observed, Augustine
seems to be attempting to create a God in his own image and likeness:
We cannot help noticing the extent to which the ‘Divine eloquence’ of God is the
eloquence of a Late Roman writer. For no one else would have made such a cult of
veiling his meaning. Such a man lived among fellow-connoisseurs, who had been
steeped too long in too few books. He no longer needed to be explicit: only hidden
meaning, rare and difficult words and elaborate circumlocutions, could save his
readers from boredom, from fastidium, from that loss of interest in the obvious,
that afflicts the overcultured man. He would believe… that the sheer difficulty of a
work of literature made it more valuable—a sinister way of thinking in an age
when educated men tended to form a caste, rebuffing the outsider by their posses
sion of the ancient authors. (P. Brown 2000: 256–7; emphasis added)
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Although he is talking here specifically of scriptural interpretation, Brown's characteriza

tion of Augustine—as an ‘overcultured man’ who cited or even invented the veiled mean
ing of scripture in order to ‘form a caste’ with other ‘educated men’ and, in so doing, to
rebuff ‘the outsider’—speaks also to an important but sometimes concealed goal of theo
rizing preaching as an art: the creation of a distinct preaching caste. That is, rules about
how to preach helped to delimit who could preach. Like Paul and later church (p. 7) offi
cials, Augustine wrote against opponents who claimed the authority to preach on purely
notional or non-artistic grounds such as esoteric knowledge (gnôsis or scientia), divine in
spiration (pneuma or spiritus), or the receipt of an extraordinary gift (charisma or gratia).
Augustine censures ‘those who exult in divine assistance’ and those who disparage any
hermeneutic principles and rhetorical precepts as ‘superfluous’; ‘although they may right
fully rejoice in the great gift God has given them, they should remember that they have
learned at least the alphabet from men’ (1958: 4; emphasis added). This argument ab
origine discredits preachers who claim to operate beyond the pale of merely human peda
gogy or institutional training. At the same time, however, the godly preacher is not simply
the product of such a pedagogy or training. As Mazzeo explains, for Augustine ‘skill in
speaking… precedes the rules, and eloquent men embody only those rules which are
merely generalizations based on their practice. One cannot use rules to become eloquent
and, if you do speak well, it is not by thinking of the rules as you speak’ (Mazzeo 1962:
177; cf. Augustine 1958: 119–21). Theologically, the idea that eloquence precedes the
rules of art prevents the preacher from stealing God's show by arrogantly claiming for
himself the artistic achievements that are rightfully not his but His. Professionally, the
same idea creates a barrier to entry that is all the more effective for being nebulously de
fined (if you have to ask what the rules are, you probably should not be playing). This idea
had a long history in the related principle that the height of any art is to conceal itself
(ars est celare artem) and would have a lasting legacy as a kind of sermonic sprezzatura
or calculated effortlessness that some preaching traditions would valorize and others dis
credit. Taken to its extreme, this argument for concealing evidence of artistic effort or hu
man learning threatened to sever efficacy from ethics altogether. Augustine framed the
issue in moral terms: ‘it may happen that an evil and wicked man may compose a sermon
in which truth is preached which is spoken by another not wicked but good’ (1958: 167).
Questions about the vital link between rhetorical efficacy and professional ethics were
chronic. They recurred, for example, in the late sixteenth century when Puritans and con
formists debated the value of having unlearned preachers read sermons taken regularly
from the First and Second Book of Homilies (1547 and 1571; see Null, Chapter 17, this
vol.), which were promulgated by the Elizabethan church's more learned bishops (and
which, incidentally, were not homilies in the formal sense). Augustine raises the spectre
of hypocrisy (bad man, good sermon) because the preacher was also ‘an example to oth
ers’ (1958: 166). Just as for Milton the poet is himself a poem, so too, from Paul onwards,
the preacher has himself been a sermon. He should, according to the Franciscan slogan,
preach constantly and use words only if necessary.
The psychological and spiritual status of a preacher's audience or, in a more pastoral con
text, his congregation was a perennial concern of theories of preaching. Like other
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rhetorics, theories of preaching needed to explain why we need preaching in the first
place; why we need to be taught, delighted, and moved; why, in short, we get things
wrong. In the Christian context the answer was, of course, the Fall and its deleterious ef
fects on all the faculties of human psychology (for example, senses, understanding, will,
memory, and, most centrally if elusively, emotions). Again, from the earliest days of the
church, it was recognized that different members of the same church could be afflicted
differently. (p. 8) Paul struggled to reconcile the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ in Corinth; Au
gustine talked of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ grades of spiritual and scriptural understanding
(1958: 94); Gregory the Great organized his Book of Pastoral Care around some thirty-
seven different antithetical character types that a preacher is likely to encounter (for ex
ample, novice and learned; habitual and wilful sinners). Updating this tradition near the
end of the sixteenth century, the Puritan rhetorician William Perkins determined that ‘the
divers condition of men and people’ was ‘sevenfold’: ‘Unbeleevers who are both ignorant
and unteachable’; ‘Some are teachable, but yet ignorant’; ‘Some have knowledge, but are
not as yet humbled’; ‘Some are humbled’; ‘Some doe beleeve’; ‘Some are fallen’; ‘There is
a mingled people’ (Perkins 1607: 102–22).2 In his truncated catalogue, Perkins does not
recognize, as Gregory does, differences in social status (for example, rich and poor, mas
ters and servants, single and married). But recent historicizing scholarship has demon
strated that these differences mattered and, whether or not they were acknowledged in
theory, they had taken institutional form as venues and occasions where one group could
be reasonably assumed to predominate (for example, in rural parishes or outdoor pulpits,
at court or in parliament, before clerical, academic, or other professional societies). Gre
gory also classifies listeners according to what we might now call personality traits (for
example, talkative and silent; obstinate and fickle; fearful and brazen). These traits could
be difficult to discern and, Gregory says, it is ‘indeed a serious labour for the preacher to
keep an eye in his public preaching to the hidden affections and motives of individuals,
and, after the manner of the palaestra, to turn himself with skill to either side’ (1885: 70;
in the original the last clause reads ‘in diversi lateris arte se vertere’). Just as it served
the preaching caste to veil the meaning of scripture (so it could be expertly unveiled), so
too did it serve the preaching caste to differentiate the motives of listeners (so they could
be expertly discerned). Gregory's wrestler–preacher must be prepared to take on all-com
ers, pick up on their tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses, and skilfully adapt his tactics
to succeed against anyone (the more common analogies were to a physician and his pa
tients, or to a tailor and his clients). This emphasis on the preacher's discernment and
versatility would be underscored centuries later by George Herbert (see App. I.12):
When [a country parson] preacheth, he procures attention by all possible art, both
by earnestnesse of speech, it being naturall to men to think, that where is much
earnestness, there is somewhat worth hearing; and by a diligent, and busy cast of
his eye on his auditors, with letting them know, that he observes who marks, and
who not; and with particularizing of his speech now to the younger sort, then to
the elder, now to the poor, and now to the rich. This is for you, and This is for you;
for particulars ever touch, and awake more then generals. (1945: 232–3; emphasis
added)
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Gregory's and Herbert's scriptural model for this skilled, prudent, and tactical minister—
who is at the same time artful and earnest and diligent—was Saint Paul, who (p. 9) fa
mously boasted that he had become ‘all things to all men, that [he] might by all means
save some’ (1 Cor. 9:22). But one of the legacies of Paul's totalizing rhetoric of ecclesiasti
cal incorporation (‘So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members
one of another’ (Rom. 12:5)) was that sermon theorists also recognized the danger (to
wards which Herbert's ‘This is for you, and This is for you’ seems to veer) of excessive ac
commodating and of minute particularizing—that is, the danger that charitable admonish
ing of particular individuals could lapse into divisive score-settling and scandal-monger
ing. The communal whole had to be edified as well as the individual part and, in the
event, most often ‘there is a mingled people’.
These then are some of the key recurrent issues—concerning scripture, preacher, and au
dience—that would come to shape theories and practices of preaching in early modern
England. How could scriptures be at the same time sacred, authoritative, and obscure?
How could a caste of skilled preachers distinguish themselves from the non-preaching
laity, from classically trained rhetors, and even from God Himself, whose divine artistry
precedes and exceeds all human art? And how could the spiritual, social, psychological
differences of a sermon audience be recognized and accounted for, in terms of both the
individual believer and the communal church? These questions were discussed and even
controverted in the early church. But they were broached primarily in treatises about
what, not how, to preach. One reason was that, as James J. Murphy has pointed out, be
fore 1200 the Christian preaching tradition lacked any ‘analytic spirit that would have en
abled a rhetorical observer to distill a number of critical experiences into a statement of
theory’ (1974: 311).
From Medieval to Early Modern: Theory and

Practice after 1200
It was precisely an ‘analytic spirit’ that was suddenly manifested when, ‘within twenty
years of 1200’, ‘a whole new rhetoric of preaching leaped into prominence, unleashing
hundreds of theoretical manuals’ that standardized a ‘form of preaching’ (Murphy 1974:
310). The form that these artes prædicandi created is most often called the thematic ser
mon, and historians have struggled to understand where it came from and why it ap
peared when it did. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) had made annual confession com
pulsory, thus presumably necessitating more preaching to encourage compliance; such
preaching could be provided by Dominican and Franciscan friars, whose orders were
founded in 1216 and 1223, respectively. The thematic sermon was also closely linked to
university culture (it is sometimes called the ‘university’ or ‘school’ sermon): the artes
were written in Latin and assumed preaching would be done in Latin; they betrayed
affinities with scholastic theological disputation, and their standards were used to evalu
ate the competence of candidates for theological degrees. Murphy has argued that the
main components of the thematic sermon existed first outside the universities and were
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subsequently codified by academicians into a prescriptive form. Whether or not this

(p. 10) was the case, the success of the Dominicans and Franciscans indicates that the
form characterized not just learned Latin but popular vernacular preaching as well.
It is dangerous to discuss a single form of the thematic sermon: hundreds of artes, each
presumably with at least some minimal variations to offer, were written; yet few have
been edited by modern scholars and fewer still translated. Nuances aside, the primary
impact of the thematic sermon on later, early modern preaching can be stated in fairly ba
sic terms. First, it foregrounds a single scriptural passage (the theme or thema); and, sec
ond, it structures the body of the sermon according to the all-important artistic division of
the theme. Whereas the patristic homily addresses a fairly lengthy scriptural passage
(usually derived from liturgical readings) and then proceeds to explicate this passage sys
tematically according to the order of the text (secundum ordinem textus), the thematic
sermon foregrounds a shorter scriptural verse that is usually announced after an intro
ductory prelude (the antetheme) and then followed by a brief prayer. Then comes the divi
sio, which splits the theme into parts (between two and four; more parts were possible
but felt to be egregious) that are then often further subdivided into subparts. These parts
and subparts provide the skeletal structure of the sermon. Each part or subpart can be di
lated or filled out by various kinds of proofs—scriptural interpretations, pagan and patris
tic authorities, elaborate allegories and personifications, moral exempla, popular fables.
‘The net effect,’ according to Murphy, ‘is a series of mini-sermons, each complete with its
own proposition (the statement of subdivision) and its own proofs, yet relating to the orig
inal theme because all the divisions and subdivisions have been derived from it’ (1974:
316). A concluding peroration reiterates or recombines the original terms of the division
in a way that underscores the relationship of all these mini-sermons to the sermon's
theme.
From an artistic perspective, God (or the devil) was in the divisio. It could be made by
treating in seriatim words or clauses from the thematic text. Or, in what was technically
called a distinctio, it could be made by using terms not derived from the thematic text, in
which case the burden was then on the preacher—and his concordances and dictionaries
—to link his precise terms to those of the scriptural theme (Spencer 1994: 233–5). The
two approaches could be mixed, as in John Fisher's famous 1521 sermon against the ‘per
nicious doctryn of Martin Luther’ (see App. I.1). Fisher's theme is John 15:26, which he
Englishes as: ‘whan the comforter shall come whom I shall sende unto you, the spyryte of
trouthe that yssueth from my father, he shall bere wytnesse of me.’ Fisher's antetheme
picks up on John's language of impeding danger and promised presence and it compares
Luther to an approaching thunderstorm. Then he states the division, which partitions the
theme into three ‘instruccyons’, which ‘shall undermyne. iii. great groundes wher upon
Martyn dothe stable in maner all his articles, and the fourth shall answere to the defence
that is made for hym by his adherentes’ (Fisher 2002: 77–8). After a brief prayer, Fisher
proceeds to the first instruction, which corresponds roughly to the first two clauses of the
theme (‘When the comforter shall come… from my father’). After the subparts of the first
part are dilated (some with even further subdivisions), Fisher proceeds to the ‘seconde in
struccyon’, on his theme's final clause, ‘he shall bere wytnesse or gyve evydence of
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me’ (2002: 83). This part is not subdivided further. The third ‘instruccyon’ (p. 11) takes up
the next scriptural verse (John 15:27). It is further subdivided according to the three per
sons of the Holy Trinity. Fisher jokes that if there were a fourth person of the Holy Trinity,
‘we myght yet be in some doute wheder Martyn Luther had met with this spiryte by the
waye and conveyed hym from us’ (2002: 90). Luther, a heretical, anti-Trinitarian fourth
wheel, returns soon thereafter when Fisher breaks off from his pattern of scriptural divi
sions to begin his fourth ‘instruccyon’, which offers counter-arguments to ‘thre poyntes’
English heretics often make in Luther's defence (2002: 92). Fisher's sermon is thus struc
tured by his theme; but it also marshals all sorts of arguments in order to associate his
central term (heresy) with the exact terms of his scriptural theme.
Whether the division and subdivisions followed the text's words (ad verbum), its sense (ad
rem), or, as in Fisher's sermon, both, the theory was that the division made the audience
more attentive because it offered signals for listeners to watch for as the sermon devel
oped—in theory with attentiveness but often, no doubt, with dread. To do that, the divi
sion and the subdivisions had to be memorable and, to make them more memorable and,
not coincidentally, to demonstrate the preacher's technical competence, the division could
be phrased in highly contrived, ornate figures of speech such as homoioptoton, ho
moioteleuton, isocolon, paronomasia, polyptoton. Sometimes the parts of the division
were made to rhyme; at others, their key terms formed acrostics. The rules for elegantly
formulating the division of the theme became so arcane and so far removed from practi
cal effect that one historian has compared them to breed standards applied by judges at a
dog show (Edwards 2004: 221). As the lynchpin of the sermon's structure and the fetish
of its practitioners, the division eventually also became the focal point of attacks on the
thematic form. On the one hand, the division catered to the intellectual prejudices of cler
ics by imitating the features of scholastic disputation (making distinctions, posing ques
tions, quibbling over terms). On the other hand, it also tolerated and even encouraged the
introduction of all manner of non-scriptural proofs—the much maligned allegories, per
sonifications, legends, exempla, fables, and lore—that played to popular tastes. Among
the clerics, it was too scholastic; among the people, it was too vulgar.
These two critiques of the thematic sermon gained momentum in the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries thanks to the Renaissance's pursuit of eloquence and the Reformation's
pursuit of godliness. Walter O’Malley has shown that the first challenge to the dominance
of the thematic sermon was offered by the cultural elite in fifteenth-century Rome, who,
especially in their funeral orations and sermons delivered in the papal courts, revived the
topoi and organizational principles of the classical demonstrativum genus (that is, speech
es of praise and blame).3 For O’Malley, this revival led to a fundamental shift from
scholasticism to humanism, from theology to history, and from minute disputation over
abstract subtleties to rousing praise of exemplary lives (O’Malley 1979: 36–76). Extending
O’Malley's findings, Frederick J. McGinness has (p. 12) shown that a continuity between
early Italian humanists and late-seventeenth-century pulpit orators was established
through ‘a new genre of preaching materials, the “ecclesiastical rhetoric” (rhetorica ec
clesiastica)’ that ‘became prominent in the mid 1570s’ and ‘almost overnight… virtually
displaced the older medieval preaching handbooks’ (1995: 49), especially in Italy, Spain,
Page 9 of 18

and other Roman Catholic regions. These ecclesiastical rhetorics, produced by learned
humanist churchmen such as Luis de Granada, Diego de Estella, Agostino Valier, Ludovi
co Carbone, Carlo Reggio, and Nicholas Caussin, championed the ideal preacher as a
‘culture hero’ whose pursuit of eloquence led him to follow the paths blazed by ‘the ora
tor-statesmen of Athens and Rome’ (McGinness 1995: 16; see also Caplan and King 1949).
In the first half of the sixteenth century, church reformers, Catholic and Protestant alike,
also rejected the thematic sermon, though for different reasons (see also Wooding
Kostyanovsky, Chapter 16, this volume). Chief among these Catholic reformers was
Desiderius Erasmus. His massive Ecclesiastes, sive de ratione concionandi (1535) sig
nalled a permanent shift away from the medieval ars prædicandi towards the early mod
ern rhetoricæ ecclesiasticæ, and so it exerted an influence on the later history of the art
of preaching exceeded only by Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. Erasmus laid out an art
of preaching on a Ciceronian model. Book One covers the ‘dignity, purity, prudence, and
other virtues of the preacher [ecclesiastes]’; Book Two concerns invention; Book Three
discusses memory, delivery, and elocution; and Book Four catalogues frequently used sub
jects. He also advocates structuring sermons according to the model of the classical
genus deliberativum so that they contain the following basic parts: exordium, narration,
division, confirmation, refutation, and conclusion (see McCullough 2006). But in Book
One of Ecclesiastes Erasmus explains at length that the proper model for the Christian
preacher is not the ‘culture hero’ on the order of the great statesmen of classical antiqui
ty, but rather Christ himself, whose dual nature allows him to reconcile the conflicting im
peratives that commanded the humanist preacher to be both prudently circumspect and
devoutly pure. In effect, Erasmus tries to integrate the humanist rhetorical curriculum in
to the medieval imitatio Christi tradition, and Ecclesiastes reads like a monumental re
fusal to perceive any fundamental fissure between classical humanism and Christian
piety. Over and over again, Erasmus recognizes the potential conflicts between the
preacher's worldly methods and spiritual ends; but over and over again he asserts that
these conflicts are surmountable, because human art and divine inspiration cooperate to
guide the Christ-like preacher who is wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove.
Though a generation younger, Erasmus's counterpart as a sermon reformer among

Protestants was Luther's protégé, Philipp Melanchthon. Between 1529 and 1553 he pub
lished four, much shorter but seminally influential tracts on preaching. These too look to
ancient models but with greater reservations. In the earliest, Melanchthon repudiates the
genre of demonstrative oratory: the Italian preachers, like declaimers in their school ex
ercises (in ludo), exploited its topoi to adorn their cult of saints and to exalt works-right
eousness (1968: 6). Melanchthon likewise rejects judicial oratory: why should the preach
er use the procedures of courtroom argumentation (in foro) when he could simply point to
the indisputable witness of scripture (‘certissima scripturæ testimonia’) (p. 13) (1968: 6–
7)? Of the three classical genres, there remained only deliberative rhetoric, the genre
most explicitly concerned with exhorting listeners to good deeds (see Melanchthon 1968:
51). For this reason, deliberative rhetoric would become a mainstay in the later rhetorica
ecclesiastica, even though it often travelled under more properly scriptural nomencla
ture. Later sermon theorists would describe the redargutive sermon—a term borrowed
Page 10 of 18

from a Latin verb that the King James Version of the Bible translates once as ‘to stop the
mouths of’ (Titus 1:11)—as one designed ‘to confute or overthrow an error or
heresy’ (Bernard 1607: 6). A further taxonomy of sermon types was drawn from the con
cluding clause of Paul's statement that ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness’ (2 Tim.
3:16; cf. 1 Cor. 14:3; cf. Hyperius 1577: 54v; Perkins 1607: 126–9). The sermon ‘for doc
trine’ (pros didaskalian or ad docendum) was so important that Melanchthon elevated it
to its own genus (1968: 7–10). Under its title he defended the ancient homily as the form
closest to catechism and so best suited to indoctrination. But Melanchthon does not ad
vise imitating ancient homilists. Instead, he recommends instructing and exhorting, tasks
that he combines and recombines in various ways. In one tract, Melanchthon states that
the preacher should first divide, then define, and lastly argue (‘concionator primum divi
dat, deinde definiat, postremo argumentetur’ (1968: 17)); the first two tasks focus on doc
trine and the last on exhortation (1968: 51; cf. 7–14). Melanchthon's late tract On the Sys
tem of Preaching (1553) begins with the plain assertion that the most useful of all rules of
preaching is that the sermon on any text should go back and forth from thesis (a general
doctrine or belief) to hypothesis (a particular activity or case) (1968: 59, 59 n. 1; Kreitzer
2001: 49–52). Later he states that this back and forth movement between hypothesis and
thesis in effect structures the whole of the sermon, from the beginning to the middle and
end (Melanchthon 1968: 75).
Later Protestant sermon rhetoricians—Andreas Hyperius (see App. I.6), Niels Hem
mingsen (see App. I.4), Gerhard Vossius, and, most influentially, Bartholomaus Kecker
mann—developed Melanchthon's initial attempts to reform, not reject, the classical
rhetorical tradition according to Protestantism's scriptural ideals. Also in Melanchthon's
writings can be discerned the germ of the dominant sermon form among English Puritans
from the late sixteenth century onwards, the doctrine-use scheme that resembles his the
sis-to-hypothesis pendulum (cf. Morrissey 2002: 693). The doctrine-use scheme put great
faith in method, though its idea of method owes less to Melanchthon than to the French
dialectician Peter Ramus. The influence of Ramist method is everywhere apparent in
William Perkins's seminal Puritan preaching manual, The Arte of Prophecying (1592;
trans. 1607; see App. I.8), which summarizes the ‘sacred and only methode of Preaching’
this way:
1. To read the Text distinctly out of the Canonicall Scriptures.

2. To give the sense and understanding of it being read, by the Scripture it selfe.
3. To collect a few and profitable points of doctrine out of the naturall sense.
4. To applie (if he have the gift) the doctrines rightly collected to the life and man
ners of men, in a simple and plaine speech. (Perkins 1607: 148)
Page 11 of 18

Fig. 1 Diagram for sermon ‘explication’ from John

Wilkins, Ecclesiastes (1646).
Fig. 2 Diagram for sermon ‘confirmation’ from John

In keeping with steps 1 and 2, Perkins spends a good portion of The Arte
(p. 14)
discussing rules for biblical interpretation; he recommends especially the familiar inter
pretative trinity of comparison with the ‘analogie of faith’, explication of ‘circumstances’,
and ‘collation or comparing of places’ (1607: 32). After reading and explaining the text,
the preacher cuts it into doctrinal bits ‘whereby the word is made fit to edifie the people
of God’ (1607: 90). Although Melanchthon had written that one of the preacher's tasks
was to divide the scriptural text, Perkins employs a more precise term, ‘right cutting’ (or
thotomia) (cf. 2 Tim. 2:15), that ‘is a Metaphor taken… from the Levites, who might not
Page 12 of 18

cut the members of the sacrifices without due consideration’ (1607: 90). This ‘right cut
ting’ consists of two parts: resolution, ‘whereby the place propounded is, as a weavers
web, resolved (or untwisted and unloosed) into sundrie doctrines’ (1607: 91); and applica
tion, ‘whereby the doctrine rightlie collected is diversly fitted according as place, time,
and person doe require’ (1607: 99). The basic types of application are mental (that is, in
fluencing how we think) or practical (that is, influencing how we act), and its chief aim is
to (p. 15) distinguish a ‘sentence of the Law’ that declares ‘the disease of sinne’ from a
statement ‘of the Gospel’ that ‘speaketh of Christ and his benefits’. The binary opposition
of law and gospel gives a theological grounding to Perkins's methodical division-making,
even if this binary opposition teeters a bit when Perkins admits that ‘many sentences,
which seem to belonge to the Law, are by reason of Christ, to bee understood not legal
ly… but with the qualification of the Gospell’. Nevertheless, Perkins insists that the
‘Law… is the first in the order of teaching; and the Gospell second’ (1607: 100–1).
Perkins's preacher delivers good news and bad news, and the bad news always comes
first.
Fig. 3 Diagram for sermon ‘application’ from John

Both the method and the theology that Perkins endorses can be discerned in a sermon by
his contemporary, Samuel Hieron, entitled A Remedie for Securitie. Hieron takes as his
text James 4:9: ‘Let your Laughter be turned into mourning, and your Joy into heaviness.’
His puritanical attack on the ‘sinne of Securitie’ (Hieron 1609: 1)—a term that, for all its
modern political, military, and financial connotations, translates literally as ‘carelessness’
and tracks back eventually to the Epicurean ideal of ataraxia—follows Perkins's law-then-
gospel ordering by ironically inverting the usual value of (p. 16) James's key terms: the
first main part of the sermon offers ‘a Restraint from something which is evill; Laughter
and Joy’, and the second main part offers ‘a perswasion to a Good contrarie thereunto,
Mourning and Heavines’ (Hieron 1609: 2). Each of these main parts is further subdivided
Page 13 of 18

(there is a ‘Holy Joy’ and a ‘Hellish Joy’; there is a ‘Worldly Mourning’ and a ‘Godly
Mourning’ (1609: 2, 10)) and each of the four subparts is cloyed with scriptural refer
ences, some of which are arranged within lists of ‘reasons’ or ‘respects.’ At the conclu
sion of each of the two main parts, Hieron explains the uses that make the doctrines of
evil joy and godly mourning ‘agreeth with the Times’ (1609: 8). After finishing the two
main parts that he had initially laid out following the division of the text, Hieron enumer
ates by way of peroration God's four ‘motives’ for promoting a gospel of mourning and
heaviness in the first place. Hieron even ‘applies’ God's benign motives to those of his
particular audience, a group of Plymouth merchants. These merchants’ ‘trading stands
upon exchange’, and they admire the prosperous man ‘who can put away some ill-condi
tioned ware for a more current commodity’. That is just what God has done and wants us
to do: ‘Behold here the best excha[n]ge (p. 17) which you ever made, Let your Laughter
be turned into Mourning, and your Joy into Heavines’ (1609: 25–6).
As Hieron's brief and rather depressing concluding gesture towards his audience's busi
ness activities suggests, the tension between preaching ‘rightly’ and preaching ‘diversely’
is especially taut in Puritan sermon rhetoric. The comparison that Perkins makes between
a preacher cutting his text and the Levite priest cutting his sacrifice posits a model
preacher who is qualitatively different from Gregory's wrestler, Erasmus's Christ, or the
Catholic rhetorica ecclesiastica tradition's ‘culture-hero’. Even though Perkins's preacher
‘cuts the members of’ his text with ‘due consideration’ (‘non temere’ in the Latin origi
nal), this must mean consideration for ceremonial law, which by definition does not vary,
rather than consideration for the audience's spiritual, social, or psychological needs,
which very likely do. In keeping with his ritualistic imagery, Perkins argues that the me
thodical movement from text to doctrine to use largely eliminates the need for a canon of
dispositio in the classical sense. Method, not art, structures the sermon, just as ceremoni
al laws, not priestly discretion, structure a ritual. In keeping with the Ramist programme
of impoverishing the classical canons of rhetoric, Perkins likewise argues that method
eliminates the need for anything resembling a canon of memory, especially the pictorial
medieval ars memoria. This kind of ‘artificial memorie, which standeth upon places and
images’, is easy to use but ‘not to be approoved’ because the ‘animation of the image,
which is the key of memory, is impious’. It is impious because it ‘requireth absurd, inso
lent and prodigious cogitations, and those especially, which set an edge upon and kindle
the most corrupt affections of the flesh’; Perkins concludes that the preacher should ‘dili
gentlie imprint in his mind by the helpe of disposition either axiomaticall, or syllogisticall,
or methodicall the severall doctrines of the place he meanes to handle, the several
proofes and applications of the doctrines, the illustrations of the applications, and the or
der of them all’ (1607: 130–1; emphasis added). Ramist method and the doctrine-use
scheme supplant the canons of disposition and memory and (according to Perkins) there
by protect the preacher and listener alike from ‘the most corrupt affections of the flesh’
that are enflamed when their minds turn to images instead of to method.
So, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, four basic sermon forms—the homily, the
thematic sermon, the classical oration, and the doctrine-use scheme—had been theorized,
taught to, and practised by English preachers. Some preachers, of course, especially
Page 14 of 18

those associated with the radical sects that flourished in the tumult of the Civil War years,
rejected these sermon forms altogether and opted instead to mimic scriptural or prophet
ic forms instead. Many preachers added wrinkles to Perkins's ‘sacred and only Method of
preaching’—for example, reasons or proofs were required after a statement of doctrine;
use and application were distinguished; objections or questions, along with correspond
ing answers, could be interposed, giving the sermon a touch of catechesis. But, while no
one had nice things to say about the thematic sermon, English sermon theorists devoted
most of their energy to refining or recombining the structuring elements of the other
three forms. Richard Bernard, for example, takes an omnibus approach and outlines, in
his rather homespun sermon manual The Faithfull Shepheard (p. 18) (see App. I.9), the
following sermon structure: prayer, preface, text, analysis, doctrine, use, application, pre
vention of objections, and conclusion (Bernard 1607: 13–81). Later in the century, the Lat
itudinarian John Wilkins graphically presents three ‘chief parts’ of a sermon, which he en
titles explication (Fig. 1), confirmation (Fig. 2), and application (Fig. 3) (see also Dixon,
Chapter 23, this volume).
This schematic presentation owes much to Ramus, but Wilkins's terms are borrowed from
Perkins and ultimately derive from Melanchthon. Yet Wilkins also adds briefly that these
three chief parts should be stitched together with a preface, transitions, and a conclusion
(1646: 7); and he notes later that he has chosen not to dwell on the possible help to be
found in the three classical genres of oratory, not because they are not helpful but be
cause they are already too well known to his readers (1646: 104). And at the end of the
century, Gilbert Burnet, to take one final example, writes that ‘Sermons are reduced to
the plain opening the Meaning of the Text, in a few short Illustrations of its Coherence
with what goes before and after, and of the Parts of which it is composed; to that is joined
the clear stating of such Propositions as arise out of it, in their Nature, Truth, and Rea
sonableness’ (1692: 216–17). Burnet goes on to explain that a preacher should aim ‘to
make some Portions of Scripture to be rightly understood, to make those Truths contain’d
in them, to be more fully apprehended; and then to lay the Matter home to the Con
sciences of the Hearers, so directing all to some good and practical end’ (1692: 217). This
is essentially consonant with the sermon form outlined by Perkins and Wilkins, but Bur
net, while singling out John Chrysostom's homiletic form as exemplary, is also happy to
steer the aspiring preacher to the rhetorical manuals of Cicero and Quintilian and, if the
preacher can manage the Greek, to the orations of Demosthenes as well (1692: 181, 225;
cf. Anon. 1655, and Chappell 1656). Burnet was also a noted church historian, and it is in
teresting that he still feels compelled to contrast the ‘due Simplicity’, ‘native Force’,
‘Strength of Reason’, and ‘Softness of Persuasion’ of contemporary English preaching
with the pre-Reformation thematic sermon, whose ‘Mystical Applications of Scripture’,
‘Accumulation of Figures’, ‘Cadence in the Periods’, ‘playing upon the Sounds of Words’,
‘Loftiness of Epithets’, and ‘Obscurity of Expression’ had not been practised, much less
championed, in England for at least a century and a half (1692: 215; see also Rapin 1672:
67–160; Fénelon 1750: 102–52). Perhaps Burnet insists on these differences—which are,
by and large, stylistic—because, in terms of dispositio or overall sermon structure, there
is surprisingly little to choose between the thematic sermon and the doctrine-use scheme,
Page 15 of 18

especially after its harder edges had been smoothed out with refining touches borrowed
from the humanist rhetorical tradition.
Bibliography
Anon. (1655). Officium concionatoris in quo praecepta utilissima de invenienda
habendáque concione.
Augustine (1958). On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson Jr. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
(p. 19) Bernard, R. (1607). The Faithfull Shepheard.
Boyle, M. (2001). ‘Religion’, in T. Sloane (ed.), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 662–72.
Brown, P. (2000). Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Burnet, G. (1692). A Discourse of the Pastoral Care.
Caplan, H., and H. King (1949). ‘Latin Tractates on Preaching: A Book-List’, Harvard The
ological Review, 42/3: 185–206.
Care, H. (1683). The Darkness of Atheism Expelled by the Light of Nature, trans. H. Care.
Chappell, W. (1656). The Preacher or Art and Method of Preaching.
Chomarat, J. (1981). Grammaire et rhétorique chez Erasme. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
[Cicero] (1968). Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. Harry Caplan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Edwards, O. (2004). A History of Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
Erasmus, D. (1535). Ecclesiastes, sive de ratione concionandi. Basle.
Fénelon, F. (1750). Dialogues concerning Eloquence, trans. William Stevenson.
Fisher, J. (2002). English Works, ed. Cecilia Hatt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ford, J. (2001). ‘Preaching in the Reformed Tradition’, in L. Taylor (ed.), Preachers and
People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period. Leiden: Brill, 65–88.
Fumaroli, M. (1980). L’Age de l’éloquence: rhétorique et ‘res literaria’ de la Renaissance

au seuil de l’époque classique. Geneva: Droz.
Gregory the Great (1885). Book of Pastoral Rule, in P. Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers (Series 2), xii. New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
Page 16 of 18

Herbert, G. (1945). Works, ed. F. E. Hutchinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hieron, S. (1609). Three Sermons. Cambridge.
Hyperius, A. (1577). The Practise of Preaching, trans. John Ludham.
John Chrysostom (1885). On the Priesthood, in P. Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fa
thers (Series 1), ix. New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co.
Kinneavy, J. (1986). ‘A Sophistic Strain in the Medieval Ars Prædicandi and the Scholastic
Method’, Medieval Perspectives, 1: 16–30.
Kreitzer, B. (2001). ‘The Lutheran Sermon’, in L. Taylor (ed.), Preachers and People in the
Reformations and Early Modern Period. Leiden: Brill, 35–64.
Lanham, R. (1976). The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
McCullough, P. (2006). ‘Donne as Preacher’, in Achsah Guibbory (ed.), The Cambridge

Companion to John Donne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 167–81.
McGinness, F. (1995). Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mazzeo, J. (1962). ‘St Augustine's Rhetoric of Silence’, Journal of the History of Ideas,
23/2: 175–96.
Melanchthon, P. (1968). Supplementa Melanchthoniana 5.2, ed. Paul Drews and Ferdi
nand Cohrs. Leipzig, 1929. Repr. Frankfurt: Minerva G. M. B. H.
Morrissey, M. (2002). ‘Scripture, Style and Persuasion in Seventeenth-Century English

Theories of Preaching’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 53/4: 686–706.
Murphy, J. (1974). Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint
Augustine to the Renaissance. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
O’Malley, J. (1979). Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Re
form in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521. Durham, NC: Duke Univer
sity Press.
(p. 20) Perkins, W. (1607). The Arte of Prophecying, trans. Thomas Tuke.
Rapin, R. (1672). Reflections upon the Eloquence of these Times, trans. N. N.
Schaeffer, J. (1996). ‘The Dialectic of Orality and Literacy: The Case of Book 4 of
Augustine's De doctrina christiana’, PMLA 111/5: 1133–45.
Shuger, D. (1988). Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English
Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Page 17 of 18

Spencer, H. (1994). English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Valadés, D. (1989). Rhetorica Christiana (1579). Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma

de México.
Wilkins, J. (1646). Ecclesiastes, or a Discourse concerning the Gift of Preaching.
Worcester, Thomas, S. J. (2001). ‘The Catholic Sermon’, in L. Taylor (ed.), Preachers and
People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period. Leiden: Brill, 3–34.
Notes:
(1) Mazzeo infers that Augustine addresses all the parts of rhetorical composition (i.e., in
ventio, elocutio, memoria, actio) except dispositio in On Christian Doctrine, because he
would have taken the word-by-word, verse-by-verse homily as the assumed sermon form
(Mazzeo 1962: 176 n. 5). See also Edwards (2004: 27–48).
(2) By ‘unbeleevers’, Perkins does not mean pagans or heathens who have never heard of
Christianity. Theories of preaching to non-Christians seem to have arisen because of mis
sionary activities in the New World (cf. Valadés 1989: 163–227) and, later in England, the
development of deism (cf. Care 1683: 67–82).
(3) For a countering argument—that the medieval ars prædicandi derived its penchant for
subtle distinctions and exquisite wordplay from ancient demonstrative rhetoric—see Kin
neavy (1986).
Gregory Kneidel
Gregory Kneidel is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut.

He is author of Rethinking the Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Literature
(2008) and is working on a book on Donne and law.
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Ars Prædicandi: Theories and Practice

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Ars Prædicandi: Theories and Practice

Abstract and Keywords

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Augustine's Legacy: Theory and Practice be­

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Embedded within such critiques of Augustine's anti-rhetorical rhetoric are assumptions

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Although he is talking here specifically of scriptural interpretation, Brown's characteriza­

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

From Medieval to Early Modern: Theory and

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

subsequently codified by academicians into a prescriptive form. Whether or not this

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Though a generation younger, Erasmus's counterpart as a sermon reformer among

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

1. To read the Text distinctly out of the Canonicall Scriptures.

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Fig. 1 Diagram for sermon ‘explication’ from John

Fig. 2 Diagram for sermon ‘confirmation’ from John

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Fig. 3 Diagram for sermon ‘application’ from John

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

(p. 19) Bernard, R. (1607). The Faithfull Shepheard.

Boyle, M. (2001). ‘Religion’, in T. Sloane (ed.), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford

Burnet, G. (1692). A Discourse of the Pastoral Care.

Chappell, W. (1656). The Preacher or Art and Method of Preaching.

Edwards, O. (2004). A History of Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Erasmus, D. (1535). Ecclesiastes, sive de ratione concionandi. Basle.

Fénelon, F. (1750). Dialogues concerning Eloquence, trans. William Stevenson.

Fumaroli, M. (1980). L’Age de l’éloquence: rhétorique et ‘res literaria’ de la Renaissance

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Herbert, G. (1945). Works, ed. F. E. Hutchinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hieron, S. (1609). Three Sermons. Cambridge.

Hyperius, A. (1577). The Practise of Preaching, trans. John Ludham.

McCullough, P. (2006). ‘Donne as Preacher’, in Achsah Guibbory (ed.), The Cambridge

McGinness, F. (1995). Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome.

Morrissey, M. (2002). ‘Scripture, Style and Persuasion in Seventeenth-Century English

Rapin, R. (1672). Reflections upon the Eloquence of these Times, trans. N. N.

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

Valadés, D. (1989). Rhetorica Christiana (1579). Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma

Wilkins, J. (1646). Ecclesiastes, or a Discourse concerning the Gift of Preaching.

Gregory Kneidel is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut.

Subscriber: CEU Library; date: 14 May 2020

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Augustine's Legacy: Theory and Practice be

Although he is talking here specifically of scriptural interpretation, Brown's characteriza