Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Though harsh the precept, yet the preacher charm’d. For letting down the golden chain from high, He drew his audience upward to the sky: 20 And oft, with holy hymns, he charm’d their ears: (A music more melodious than the spheres.) For David left him, when he went to rest, His lyre; and after him he sung the best. He bore his great commission in his look: 25 But sweetly temper’d awe; and soften’d all he spoke. He preach’d the joys of heaven, and pains of hell; And warn’d the sinner with becoming zeal; But on eternal mercy lov’d to dwell. He taught the gospel rather than the law; so And forc’d himself to drive; but lov’d to draw. For fear but freezes minds: but love, like heat, Exhales the soul sublime, to seek her native seat. To threats the stubborn sinner oft is hard, Wrapp’d in his crimes, against the storm prepar’d; But, when the milder beams of mercy play, He melts, and throws his cumbrous cloak away. Lightning and thunder (heaven’s artillery) As harbingers before the Almighty fly: Those but proclaim his style, and disappear; 40 The stiller sound succeeds, and God is there. The tithes, his parish freely paid, he took; But never su’d, or curs’d with bell and book, With patience bearing wrong; but offering none: Since every man is free to lose his own. 45 The country churls, according to their kind, (Who grudge their dues, and love to be behind, ) The less he sought his offerings, pinch’d the more, And prais’d a priest contented to be poor. Yet of his little he had some to spare, so To feed the famish’d, and to clothe the bare: For mortified he was to that degree, A poorer than himself he would not see. True priests, he said, and preachers of the word, Were only stewards of their sovereign Lord; u Nothing was theirs; but all the public store: I…
