Slander

Isaac Barrow
18 pages (2008/1899); 145KB download
WOWIO Books; ISBN: WOWIO-00471

DESCRIPTION

Isaac Barrow argues that until we know where our faults lie we will not correct them.
Therefore, “it is requisite that men should be particularly acquainted with their sins, and by proper arguments be dissuaded from them.”

Barlow selects the sin of slander “to describe, and dissuade from, being in nature as vile, and in practice as common, as any other whatever that has prevailed among men.”

David J. Brewer comments about this sermon about slander by Isaac Barrow: “It is not often that a sermon, however eloquent it may be, becomes a literary classic, as has happened to those preached by Barrow against Evil Speaking. Literature—that which is expressed in letters—has its own method, foreign to that of oratory—the art of forcing one mind on another by word of mouth. Literature can rely on suggestion, since it leaves those who do not comprehend at once free to read over again what has attracted their attention without compelling their understanding. All great literature relies mostly on suggestion. This is the secret of Shakespeare’s strength in ‘Hamlet,’ as it is the purpose of Burke’s in such speeches as that at the trial of Hastings, to compel immediate comprehension by crowding his meaning on the hearer in phalanxed sentences, moving to the attack, rank on rank, so that the first are at once supported and compelled by those which succeed them. It is not easy to find the secret by virtue of which sermons that made Barrow his reputation for eloquence escaped the fate of most eloquent sermons so far as to find a place in the standard ‘Libraries of English Classics,’ but it lies probably in their compactness, clearness, and simplicity. . . .”