ABSTRACT
Philip Doddridge's regular preaching has left little imprint on the historical record but his considerable published output, together with evidence from surviving correspondence, provides material for an examination of Doddridge's approach to the preaching of the evangelical truths to which he held. This chapter examines the different audiences which Doddridge aimed to reach through his preaching, and then to assess his preaching by examining the topics which feature most prominently in his published work and the style and manner in which he sought to communicate his views. Isabel Rivers writes of Doddridge as a 'highly influential contributor to the principal genres of eighteenth-century religious literature', instancing 'polemical essays, sermons, devotional works, biographies, hymns, and academic lectures'. The first religious publication by John Wilkins, a principal figure among Latitudinarian divines who ended his career as Bishop of Chester, was his Ecclesiastes, on the subject of preaching.
