I’ve been studying the English sermon as a part of my morning ritual lately. I first started this study about four years ago, when I thought homiletics would feature more prominently in my dissertation on the Romantics (e.g., Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb revived an interest in the 17th-c. English sermon). Although most of my research didn’t make it into the final draft of the dissertation, the foray taught me how prominent the sermon was in literary culture until the 20th century.

Joseph Addison recommended them. Jane Austen had her favorites (Hugh Blair among them). Samuel Johnson wrote them (for John Taylor). The written sermon was a major part of popular literary culture.

If the lower classes in Protestant England were reading anything other than the King James Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, it was most likely a cherished book of sermons or meditations. For many decades, devotional literature was the most lucrative genre for the publishing industry.

Two things I’m noticing in these anthologies pictured: (1) The sermons included in anthologies are seldom representative of their authors’ whole œuvre. The sermons included are chosen to appeal to modern taste. John Donne’s last sermon, “Death’s Duel,” preached at White Hall in 1630, is a common anthology piece and is excellent, but in many respects stylistically stands apart from his other sermons.

(2) Anthologies tend to prefer Caroline preachers at the expense of the Puritans. Personally, I find the 17th-century Puritan and dissenting sermon the high-water mark of English homiletics. John Owen — a font of erudition. Richard Baxter — homely and eloquent (and a favorite of Johnson). Thomas Goodwin — angelic and rapturous. John Bunyan — beloved by even High Church Anglicans. Thomas Adams — "the prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians,” as Southey called him.

Of course, some Puritan preaching is insufferably clinical and pedantic (see Thomas Manton’s, for instance), but, for the most part, many of the Puritans are on par with the best of the Caroline Divines, even Jeremy Taylor (a rightful darling of the anthologist). Their omission from anthologies is either because of the popular prejudice against Puritans or the fact that there are so many to choose from, and thus easier to choose the sermons that appealed to the literary elite.

One of these days, if I ever teach rhetoric again, I’ll probably teach it alongside the English sermon. The arts of rhetoric enjoyed the longest life in this genre.