Asahel’s Carcass

“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 Asahel’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” (Thomas Brooks, Smooth Stones Taken From Ancient Brooks, 177).