A Sermon is a discourse. This is the privilege of man. It is by this faculty that he is above the brutes, and it is to persuade you to use this faculty that these discourses are chiefly written. Many seem to think that poor people, or those who work to maintain themselves, have not this faculty and that you ought to be led and governed like the brutes, without knowing why or how. But this is worse than sinking you from your station, it is degrading you from your species.
Judgment depends upon good sense and information.
Good sense is born with us, and is found in every rank of life, in one as much as another. This you cannot but have observed. But there is none of you so low as that he may not acquire a competent degree of information, even in matters of general importance, if he earnestly desire and seek for it. You can all of you get information enough concerning your respective trades and handicrafts, and yet many of them are very difficult and full of mystery to those who have never taken the pains to enquire into their principles. The clay that is wrought into shape under the hands of the potter, seems to the stander-by to be swelled, and rounded, and touched into form, as it were by enchantment.