Sermons of Laurence Sterne

[4] This sermon was not notable for its content per se, but for its being given on the opening of the English embassy in Paris at the end of the Seven Years' War.

[4] The opening of the sermon, a summation of 2 Kings 20:13-17, surprised and shocked many guests, because the passage was viewed as an insult to the embassy's hosts, Lord and Lady Hertford.

[6] Those like David Hume and Diderot were in attendance, and Sterne had joked that the sermon would convert the French from "deism to Shandeism".

They are in the style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience."

22 June 1760[2] William Makepeace Thackeray claimed that Sterne, as a writer of comedy and sermons, was "more than rival of the Dean of St. Patrick's", referring to Jonathan Swift.