Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/110

102 wherein however I have sometimes observed great instances of indiscretion and impropriety, against which I therefore venture to give you a caution.

As to quotations from ancient fathers, I think they are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted by those who differ from us: In other cases, we give you full power to adopt the sentence for ^your own, rather than tell us, as St. Austin excellently observes. But to mention modern writers by name, or use the phrase of "a late excellent prelate of our church," and the like, is altogether intolerable, and for what reason I know not, makes every rational hearer ashamed. Of no better a stamp is your "heathen philosopher," and "famous poet," and "Roman historian," at least in common congregations, who will rather believe you on your own word, than on that of Plato or Homer.

I have lived to see Greek and Latin almost entirely driven out of the pulpit, for which I am heartily glad. The frequent use of the latter was certainly a remnant of popery, which never admitted Scripture in the vulgar language; and I wonder that practice was never accordingly objected to us by the fanaticks.

The mention of quotations puts me in mind of commonplace books, which have been long in use by industrious young divines, and, I hear, do still continue so: I know they are very beneficial to lawyers and physicians, because they are collections of facts or cases, whereupon a great part of their several faculties depend; of these I have seen several, but never yet any written by a clergyman; only from what I am informed, they generally are extracts of theological and moral sentences, drawn from ecclesiastical