Blog Journeys of a Lifelong Learner

Many preachers in our days are like Heraclitus, who was called the dark doctor. They affect sublime notions, obscure expressions, and uncouth phrases, making plain truths difficult, and easy truths hard. "They darken counsel with words without knowledge." Studied expressions and high notions in a sermon, are like Ashael’s carcass in the way, that did only stop men, and make them gaze, but did no ways profit or edify them. It is better to present truth in her native plainness than to hang her ears with counterfeit pearls.

It is more a weakness than a virtue in strong Christians, when a weak saint is fallen, to aggravate his fall to the uttermost, and to present his sins in such a dreadful dress as shall amaze him. He who shall lay the same strength to the rubbing of an earthen dish, as he does to the rubbing of a pewter-platter, instead of cleaning it will surely break it to pieces. The application is easy.

From Smooth Stones (Spurgeon’s collected sayings of Thomas Brooks)