West, Samuel:

CHRIST THE GRAND SUBJECT OF THE GOSPEL MINISTRY. A SERMON PREACHED AT THE ORDINATION OF THE REVEREND MR. SAMUEL WEST, TO THE PASTORAL OFFICE OVER THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN NEEDHAM. APRIL 25TH, 1764. BY SAMUEL WEST, A.M. PASTOR OF THE CHURCH IN DARTMOUTH. TO WHICH ARE ANNEXED, THE CHARGE BY HIS FATHER, THE REVEREND MR. THOMAS WEST, OF ROCHESTER. AND THE RIGHT HAHD [sic] OF FELLOWSHIP, BY THE REV. MR. BALCH, OF DEDHAM.

Boston: Samuel Kneeland, 1764. [4], 28pp. With the half title. Stitched, untrimmed, forecorners turned. small hole in last leaf slightly affecting a couple of letters, else Very Good.

West says "the great concern" of ministers is "to preach the gospel of Christ in its native purity and simplicity, avoiding that parade of words and shew of learning, which tends to obscure rather than to set in a just light the true faith of Christ."
He warns young West to avoid the "affected ornaments of rhetorick, which only serve to amuse the mind, and draw it off from the simplicity of the gospel." This is one of the scarcer ordination sermons of the 1760's:
FIRST EDITION. Evans 9869. ESTC W37368 [Harvard, Yale, AAS, Huntington with a total of 7 copies]. Item #22512

Price: $375.00