Book of Collections on the Art of Preaching

IT WILL BE VERISIMILAR and credible if its circumstances are observed just as the nature of the business and the opinion of the listeners demand, as much as it must be believed by the necessity of salvation from Holy Scripture.

ON THE DIVISION

DIVISION is a brief enumeration of the things about which we are going to speak, so that the listener holds certain things in their mind; having heard these, they understand that the sermon is complete. The division ought to be absolute, few, to be sub-distributed, and ordered.

ABSOLUTE, so that nothing is lacking or redundant in it, assuming no word except what is necessary.

FEW, so that it proposes genera without species in such a way that it does not mix species as if they were unlike the genus. Nor, by assuming superfluous things or dividing into the most minute parts and making more members than is enough, does it fall into the same obscurity against which division was invented.

TO BE SUB-DISTRIBUTED, from genera simply exposed to species, when the cause demands it, to be executed singularly and most conveniently.

ORDERED, so that each thing is carried through in speaking just as it was exposed through the division, or that those things which the listener seems to desire most are distributed last. Although division may not be tied by number as if by law, yet it is fitting that it should not be contained in a number of more than three parts.

For Cicero says it is dangerous to say more or less than is needed.

And it brings to the listeners a suspicion of premeditation and artifice, which is a thing that abrogates faith in the preacher.

ON THE CONFIRMATION

CONFIRMATION is the approval of the proposed reading, according to the exposition of the distributed members.