CIX.

PRAYER.

1. If I were a minister, I should think myself most in my office, reading of prayers, and dispensing the sacraments; and 'tis ill done to put one to officiate in the Church, whose person is contemptible out of it. Should a great lady that was invited to be a gossip, in her place send her kitchen-maid, 'twould be ill taken; yet she is a woman as well as she; let her send her gentle-woman at least.

2. You shall pray, is the right way, because according 10 as the Church is settled, no man may make a prayer in public of his own head.

3. 'Tis not the original Common-prayer Book. Why, shew me an original Bible, or an original Magna Charta.

4. Admit the preacher prays by the spirit, yet that very prayer is common-prayer to the people; they are tied as much to his words, as in saying Almighty and most merciful Father. Is it then unlawful in the minister, but not unlawful in the people?

5. There were some mathematicians, that could with one 20 fetch of their pen make an exact circle, and with the next touch, point out the centre; is it therefore reasonable to banish all use of the compasses? Set forms are a pair of compasses.

6. God hath given gifts unto men. General texts prove nothing: let him shew me John, William, or Thomas in the text, and then I will believe him. If a man has a voluble tongue, we say, he hath the gift of prayer. His gift is to pray long, that I see; but does he pray better?

7. We take care what we speak to men, but to God we 30 may say any thing.

8. The people must not think a thought towards God,

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but as their pastors will put it into their mouths. They will make right sheep of us.

9. The English priests would do that in English, which the Romish do in Latin, keep the people in ignorance; but some of the people out-do them at their own game.

10. Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us. If your boy should ask you a suit of clothes, and give you reasons (otherwise he cannot wait 10 upon you, he cannot go abroad but he shall discredit you) would you endure it? You know it better than he; let him ask a suit of clothes.

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II. If a servant that has been fed with good beef, goes into that part of England where salmon is plenty, at first he is pleased with his salmon, and despises his beef; but after he has been there awhile, he grows weary of his salmon, and wishes for his good beef again. We have awhile been much taken with this praying by the spirit, but in time we may grow weary of it, and wish for our Common-prayer.

12. 'Tis hoped we may be cured of our extemporary prayers, the same way the grocer's boy is cured of his eating plums, when we have had our bellies full of them.

CX.

PREACHING.

1. NOTHING is more mis-taken than that speech, preach the gospel; for 'tis not to make long harangues, as they do now-a-days, but to tell the news of Christ's coming into the

1. 23. Preaching.] There are frequent instances of a demand for 'preaching ministers,' and of complaints that ministers do not preach often enough, and that some, bishops especially, do not preach at all. See, e. g. a formal complaint in the House of Commons that there was a deficiency of preaching ministers, a matter which was thought

world; and when that is done, or where 'tis known already, the preacher's work is done.

2. Preaching, in the first sense of the word, ceased as soon as ever the gospels were written.

3. When the preacher says, this is the meaning of the Holy Ghost in such a place, in sense he can mean no more but this; that is, I by studying of the place, by comparing one place with another, by weighing what goes before, and what comes after, think this is the meaning of the Holy Ghost; and for shortness of expression I say, the ro Holy Ghost says thus, or this is the meaning of the Spirit of God. So the judge speaks concerning the king's proclamation, this is the intention of the king; not that the king has any other way declared his intention to the judge, but the judge examining the contents of the proclamation, gathers by the purport of the words the king's intention, and then for shortness of expression says, this is the king's intention.

4. Nothing is text but as it was spoken in the Bible, and meant there for person and place; the rest is application, 20 which a discreet man may do well; but 'tis his scripture, not the Holy Ghost's.

5. Preaching by the spirit, as they call it, is most esteemed by the common people, because they cannot abide art or learning, which they have not been bred up in. Just as in the business of fencing; if one country fellow amongst the rest, has been at school, the rest will undervalue his skill, or tell him he wants valour [You come with your school-tricks: there's Dick Butcher has ten times more mettle in him]. So they say to the preachers, You come 30 with your school-learning: there's such a one has the spirit.

so important and so pressing that a Committee of the House was appointed to enquire about and to find a remedy for it. Commons Journals, ii. p. 54. See also note on 'Lecturers,' p. 103.

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6. The tone in preaching does much in working on the people's affections. If a man should make love in an ordinary tone, his mistress would not regard him: and therefore he must whine. If a man should cry fire, or murder, in an ordinary voice, nobody would come out to help him.

7. Preachers will bring any thing into the text. The young masters of arts preached against non-residency in the university; whereupon the heads made an order, that 10 no man should meddle with any thing but what was in his text. The next day one preached upon these words, Abraham begat Isaac; when he had gone a good way, at last he observed, that Abraham was resident, for if he had been non-resident, he could never have begot Isaac; and so fell foul upon the non-residents.

8. I could never tell what often preaching meant, after a church is settled, and we know what is to be done: 'tis just as if a husbandman should once tell his servants what they are to do, when to sow, when to reap; and afterwards one 20 should come and tell them twice or thrice a day what they know already; You must sow your wheat in October, you must reap your wheat in August, &c.

9. The main argument why they would have two sermons a day, is, because they have two meals a day; the soul must be fed as well as the body. But I may as well argue, I ought to have two noses, because I have two eyes; or two mouths, because I have two ears. What have meals and sermons to do one with another?

10. The things between God and man are but a few, 30 and those, forsooth, we must be told often of; but the things between man and man are many; those I hear not of above twice a year, at the assizes, or once a quarter at a sessions; but few come then, nor does the minister ever exhort the people to go at these times to learn their duty towards their neighbour. Often

preaching is, sure, to keep the minister in countenance, that he may have something to do.

II. In preaching, they say more to raise men to love virtue than men can possibly perform, to make them do their best as if you would teach a man to throw the bar; to make him put out his strength, you bid him throw further than 'tis possible for him, or any man else: throw over yonder house.

12. In preaching, they do by men as writers of romances do by their chief knights, bring them into many dangers, 10 but still fetch them off: so they put men in fear of hell, but at last they bring them to heaven.

13. Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do. But if the physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing, and himself do quite another, could I believe him?

14. Preaching the same sermon to all sorts of people, is as if a school-master should read the same lesson to his several forms: if he read amo, amas, amavi, the highest form laugh at him; the younger admire him. So it is in 20 preaching to a mixed auditory.

Question. But it cannot be otherwise; the parish cannot be divided into several forms: what must the preacher then do in discretion?

Answer. Why then let him use some expressions by which this or that condition of people may know such doctrine does more especially concern them; it being so delivered that the wisest may be content to hear it. For if he delivers it all together, and leaves it to them to single out what belongs to themselves (which is the usual way) 30 'tis as if a man would bestow gifts upon children of several ages, two years old, four years old, ten years old, &c., and there he brings tops, pins, points, ribbands, and casts them all in a heap together upon a table before them: though the boy of ten years old can tell how to choose his top, yet