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513 John Earle Microcosmography:or,a piece of the world discovered,in essays and characters 1628 II A YOUNG RAW PREACHER Is a bird not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small standing, and time, hath made him a proficient only in boldness, out of which, and his table-book,1 he is furnished for a preacher. His collections of study are the notes of sermons, which, taken up at St. Mary’s,2 he utters in the country; and if he write brachigraphy ,3 his stock is so much the better. His writing is more than his reading, for he reads only what he gets without book.4 Thus accomplished, he comes down to his friends, and his first salutation is grace and peace out of the pulpit. His prayer is conceited,5 and no man remembers his college more at large.6 The pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale, till the clock stop him. The labor of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has made in it himself is the faces. He takes on against the pope without mercy and has a jest still in lavender7 for Bellarmine; yet he preaches heresy if it comes in his way—though with a mind, I must needs say, very orthodox. His action8 is all passion, and his speech interjections. He has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the 1 {writing tablets, notebook} 2 {Oxford’s university church} 3 {shorthand} 4 {He copies out other preachers’ sermons more than he reads, and he reads only what he then memorizes , presumably to recycle in his own sermons.} 5 {witty, rhetorically striking, and elaborate} 6 [It is customary in all sermons delivered before the university, to use an introductory prayer for the founder of, and principal benefactors to, the preacher’s individual college, as well as for the officers and members of the university in general. This, however, would appear very ridiculous when “he comes down to his friends,” or, in other words, preaches before a country congregation {Bliss’ note}.] 7 {in reserve, stored up} Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603–1638 514 people, and spits with a very good grace. [His style is compounded of twenty several men’s; only his body imitates some one extraordinary.9 ] He will not draw his handkercher out of his place, nor blow his nose without discretion. His commendation is that he never looks upon book; and indeed he was never used to it. He preaches but once a year, though twice on Sunday, for the stuff is still the same, only the dressing a little altered; he has more tricks with a sermon than a tailor with an old cloak, to turn it and piece it and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. If he have waded farther in his profession and would shew reading of his own, his authors are postils,10 and his school-divinity a catechism. His fashion and demure habit gets him in with some town precisian, and makes him a guest on Friday nights. You shall know him by his narrow velvet cape and serge facing; and his ruff, next his hair, the shortest thing about him. The companion of his walk is some zealous tradesman, whom he astonishes with strange points, which they both understand alike. His friends and much painfulness11 may prefer him to thirty pounds a year; and this, means to a chambermaid, with whom we leave him now in the bonds of wedlock— next Sunday you shall have him again. III A GRAVE DIVINE Is one that knows the burthen of his calling and hath studied to make his shoulders sufficient ; for which he hath not been hasty to launch forth of his port, the university, but expected12 the ballast of learning and the wind of opportunity. Divinity is not the beginning but the end of his studies, to which he takes the ordinary stair and makes the arts13 his way. He counts it not profaneness to be polished with human reading or to smooth his way by Aristotle to school-divinity. He has sounded both religions and anchored in the best, and is a Protestant...

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