"_Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen_,--Whereas his Majesty is informed, that the practice of reading sermons is generally taken up by the preachers before the University, and therefore continues even before himself; his Majesty hath commanded me to signify to you his pleasure, that the said practice, which took its beginning from the disorders of the late times, be wholly laid aside; and that the said preachers deliver their sermons, both in Latin and English, by memory without book; as being a way of preaching which his Majesty judgeth most agreeable to the use of foreign Churches, to the custom of the University heretofore, and to the nature of that holy exercise. And that his Majesty's command in these premises may be duly regarded and observed, his further pleasure is, that the names of all such ecclesiastical persons as shall continue the present supine and slothful way of preaching, be from time to time signified to me by the Vice-Chancellor for the time being, on pain of his Majesty's displeasure. October 8, 1674. "MONMOUTH." SOUTH ON THE COMMONWEALTH PREACHERS. Dr. South, in one of his sermons, thus reflected on the untrained and fanatical preachers of the time of the Commonwealth--many of whom but too well deserved the strictures:--"It may not be amiss to take occasion to utter a great truth, as both worthy to be now considered, and never to be forgot,--namely, that if we reflect upon the late times of confusion which passed upon the ministry, we shall find that the grand design of the fanatic crew was to persuade the world that a standing settled ministry was wholly useless. This, I say, was the main point which they then drove at. And the great engine to effect this was by engaging men of several callings (and those the meaner still the better) to hold forth and harangue the multitude, sometimes in the streets, sometimes in churches, sometimes in barns, and sometimes from pulpits, and sometimes from tubs, and, in a word, wheresoever and howsoever they could clock the senseless and unthinking babble about them. And with this practice well followed, they (and their friends the Jesuits) concluded, that in some time it would be no hard matter to persuade the people, that if men of other professions were able to teach and preach the word, then to what purpose should there be a company of men brought up to it and maintained in it at the charge of a public allowance? especially when at the same time the truly godly so greedily gaped and grasped at it for their self-denying selves. So that preaching, we see, was their prime engine. But now what was it, which encouraged those men to set up for a work, which (if duly managed) was so difficult in itself, and which they were never bred to? Why, no doubt it was, that low, cheap, illiterate way, then commonly used, and cried up for the only gospel soul-searching way (as the word then went), and which the craftier set of them saw well enough, that with a