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.ÿþThis dispassionate, practical, and moderate Anglicanism accepted and jus-tified as God-given the existing social, political, and economic ordering ofsociety.It taught a human obligation to obey, to do one s duty, and acceptone s station.It prized decorum, order, and benevolence but expected littleor nothing by way of sacrifice.It argued a case for Christianity on groundsof enlightened self-interest: Religion is the most excellent Glory which canbrighten and regale the Mind of Man.It dignifies human Nature. 38 In oneof his notable sermons, Tillotson asserted, It is more for a man s health, andmore for his reputation, and more for his advantage in all other worldly re-spects to lead a virtuous than a vicious course of life. 39 Put aside as remnantsof darker times of a medieval Christianity saturated with superstitionwere mystery, passion, understanding of religion as experience, and the accep-tance of conflict and struggle.40Style complimented content.The ideal Anglican sermon was a carefullyreasoned discourse balanced, ordered, dispassionate, and polished. Dis-course was the term widely employed to characterize the sermon, and itimplied more an essay-like presentation than a prophetic proclamation or athoroughgoing exegesis of the scriptural text.41 Stripped away also was much,if not all, of the florid language, the elaborate metaphors and similes andclever conceits, that marked the pulpit productions of the seventeenth-centuryLaudian church.Following Tillotson, eighteenth-century Anglicans created a plain style of their own, not identical to that of Puritan preachers a centuryearlier but not dissimilar in intent.The model Anglican discourse, however,was characterized by a level of abstraction that would have been puzzling, ifnot repugnant, to William Perkins or John Cotton.It minimized historicalcontext, narrative in the guise of the illustrative story, anecdotes, or examplesdrawn from everyday occupations.The titles assigned by Robert Paxton tohis sermons typify an Anglican sensibility: Of Anger, Of Living a GoodLife, Of Patience, Of Humility, Of Imitating God, Of Repentance, Of Loving One Another, Of Salvation, Of Angels, and Of Peace. 42The Anglican discourse essayed elevated language, impersonal, detached, anduniversal.The emotional temperature aimed at was certainly cool.A moderncritic has labeled it Christianity without tears! 43Mid-century evangelical opponents were harsh in their judgments of allthis.The apostle of Presbyterianism in the Old Dominion, Samuel Davies,charged that Anglican ministers offered nothing but languid harangues onmorality or insipid speculations, omitting or but slightly touching upon the.The Sermon 207
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