Page:Post-Mediaeval Preachers.djvu/98

 Perhaps one of the most striking of Meffreth’s sermons, and one free from his worst defects, is that on the text, “A certain man made a great supper, and bade many,” &c.; being part of the Gospel for the second Sunday after Trinity. It is divided into three parts, the first two of which I give in abstract, as they are suggestive and beautiful.

By way of introduction, Meffreth observes that Isidore in his Natural History asserts that the tiger is a beast swift as an arrow, marked and dappled with diverse colours, and when it approaches fire or water, or a looking-glass, it becomes so sluggish that it either falls into the fire and is burned, or tumbles into the water and is drowned, or remains in a brown study in front of the mirror till the hunters capture it.

Now this has its moral significance, observes the preacher, for all human beings are tigers, set like arrows to fly swiftly to their true end and aim, eternal happiness, which they would reach, were it not for certain fires and waters and mirrors which retard them, and allow them to fall into the hands of the devils, who are the hunters.

Meffreth having proved that man’s true end and aim is eternal beatitude, shows how that he is checked, and falls short of his aim, by the fires of evil concupiscence, the water of impure affections, and the mirrors of worldly felicity. It will be seen that there is some confusion in metaphor here.

Meffreth having settled the tigers, approaches the text.

The supper, he observes, has two significations;