A Feast for Serpents Being the substance of a sermon, preached at the Obelisk Chapel, on Sunday evening, March 21, 1813 — Key Ideas to Explore

The Serpent’s Seed and Its Diet

Church establishes his primary image early: the serpent’s seed, identified with the “children of the wicked one,” feeds on dust. He glosses this as a spiritual condition: “Man having lost the image of God, left the fountain of his bliss and satisfaction; his mind soon became vitiated—a vacancy being in it he seeks to fill the empty space with any thing, and every thing but God.” The preacher then catalogs types of dust-eaters: the miser feeding on “white and yellow dust,” the worldling chasing “that phantom, called Pleasure,” and the persecutor who “eat up my people as they eat bread.” Each type is illustrated with a chain of biblical references—Blair, David, Solomon, Isaiah—creating a dense intertextual web. The effect is cumulative: the listener or reader is meant to see every form of worldly appetite as a variation on the same serpentine meal.

Erroneous Teachers and the Poison of False Doctrine

A second movement targets those who have “left the truth and turned again like a washed swine to the mire.” Church warns against “erroneous characters” who “make a fair shew, to deceive and to damn immortal souls.” He lists their errors: arguing for universal salvation, denying election, opposing the divinity of Christ and the Spirit, and “levelling their artillery against the Trinity in Unity.” The language is martial—“artillery,” “level,” “destroy”—and the preacher positions himself as defending the fundamentals against a flood of heresy. Notably, he does not name these opponents directly, but the preface suggests they are local figures who have “agitated the public” and distressed his congregation. The sermon thus functions as both doctrinal instruction and a rallying cry for a besieged community.

The Believer’s Former Folly and Present Consolation

Church shifts tone when addressing the faithful directly. He reminds them that they too once fed on dust, but have been “changed by grace.” The believer can “look back on his former folly in forsaking the fountain and cleaving to the stream of creature satisfaction.” This retrospective view creates a contrast between past emptiness and present sustenance: the elect now “feed on the bread of eternal life, and can not be satisfied without it.” The preacher’s language becomes more pastoral, offering comfort to those who have “continued with me in my temptations” and “abode in the furnace of affliction.” The sermon’s structure thus alternates between denunciation and consolation, mirroring the dual audience of the “worldling” and the “household of faith.”

Movement Between Pulpit and Page

The printed sermon retains traces of its oral performance: direct addresses (“I wish you most decidedly to bear in mind”), rhetorical questions, and a preface that explains the circumstances of its delivery. Church notes that he writes “only for your sakes”—his congregation—and that he expects the publication to “procure me many foes.” The text thus exists at the intersection of spoken word and printed artifact, with the preacher’s voice still audible in the exclamatory style and the repeated appeals to scripture. The movement between scenes—from the preface’s personal defense, to the catalog of sinners, to the warnings against false teachers, to the consolations for the elect—creates a dynamic structure that mirrors the sermon’s own claim that the believer is “led by the providence of God” through trials.

Readers approaching this sermon should attend to its dual function: as a public rebuke of perceived enemies and as a private comfort for a specific community. Church’s reliance on the serpent-dust metaphor gives the text a memorable, almost allegorical coherence, while the rapid shifts between scriptural citation and contemporary application reveal the preacher’s rhetorical skill. The sermon rewards attention to its structure—how each section builds on the central image—and to the way Church positions himself as a faithful shepherd amid controversy.

I remember John Church’s sermon about the serpent’s dusty meal, that quiet warning against greed. Years later, while shelving, I found the other volume and saw how its simple tales hold the same seed of patience. There is a gentle fellowship between a fiery warning and a child’s first lesson. Bible Stories — Reading Companion sits beside it now, speaking softly.