- Of the nature of the Transfiguration.
- Why Moses and Elias appeared.
- Why they spoke of the passion.
- Why the cloud overshadowed the vision.
- Why the disciples were bidden to be silent respecting the vision.
- How the Father is well pleased in the Son.
- The order of events in the Transfiguration.
These sermons of Matthias Faber, and indeed most of
the sermons of great preachers in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, are very simple in construction:
The system of dividing into a great number of heads,
and then subdividing, had been cast aside by the Catholic
preachers at the Reformation, as unprofitable. But
Protestant orators continued the baneful practice. It
prevailed till lately in England, and is common still in
Scotland. Dr. Neale remarks, “One would think, to
read some of the essays written on the subject, that the
construction of a sermon was like a law of the Medes
and Persians. Look at Mr. Simeon’s one-and-twenty
tedious volumes of ‘Horæ Homileticæ.’ The worthy
man evidently considered this the greatest system of
divinity which English theology had ever produced.
And of what does it consist? of several thousand sermons
treated exactly in the same ways, in obedience to
precisely the same laws, and of much about the same
length. Claude’s Essay had laid down certain rules,
and Simeon’s Discourses were their exemplification. … The preacher opens with a short view of the circumstances under which the text was spoken. This is
