# "If he were above most, it was only because most were below it"



## jw (Dec 27, 2021)

I love this little bit about the Rev. Stephen Charnock:

Charnock could not be described at this part of his life as specially a popular preacher. On account of his memory failing, he had to read his sermons; and on account of his weak eyesight he had to read them with a glass, and his delivery was without the flow and impressiveness which it had in his younger years. Besides, his compositions were too full of matter, and were far too elaborate to be relished by the unthinking multitude, who complained of his discourses as being “but morality or metaphysics,” their only fault being that they were too thoughtful. Adams and Veal say, ‘Yet it may withal be said that if he were sometimes deep, he was never abstruse; he handled the great mysteries of the gospel with much clearness and perspicuity, so that in his preaching, if he were above most, it was only because most were below it.’ Those who were educated up to him, as many of the middle classes were in that age, when the word of God and theological treatises were so studied, and when the public events of the times compelled men to think on profound topics, waited upon his ministry with great eagerness, and drank in greedily the instruction which he communicated from sabbath to sabbath. Mr Johnson tells us that ‘many able ministers loved to sit at his feet, for they received by one sermon of his those instructions which they could not get by many books or sermons of others.’​
Stephen Charnock, _The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock_, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson; G. Herbert, 1864–1866), _xxiii–xxiv_.


----------

