LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 41 



tion of delivering sermons from prepared notes, 

 is a consideration that doth indeed concern all 

 those who can suffer themselves to be careless, 

 and to appear indifferent in the delivery of their 

 discourses : but as there can be no room or 

 ground for this complaint in any who have the 

 talent of reading their sermons with much life 

 and zeal, so Dr. Sharp stood clear of it, and 

 consequently of all the exceptions that have 

 been commonly made against this modern way 

 of preaching. 



It must be confessed, indeed, that his art of 

 short-hand contributed not a little to the ac- 

 ceptableness of his delivery ; for he so disposed 

 his characters as to take in a whole sentence, 

 or as much as could be distinctly pronounced 

 in the same breath, with one transient glance of 

 the eye, and so disposed those sentences dis- 

 tinctly under each other, as to be able, when 

 he had taken off his eye, without any difficulty, 

 to recover the place where it had left the page ; 

 and so expert was he at this, that he has been 

 sometimes thought to have preached by heart, 

 or to make little or no use of his notes, which 

 gave him all the outward advantages of extem- 

 porary preaching, without subjecting himself or 

 his audience to any of its disadvantages. For 

 hereby he was at liberty to execute whatever 

 is usually thought graceful, and ornamental in 



