3. In the Apologies of Justin and Tertullian [Justin, ed. Otto, i. 270.; Tertullian, _Ap._ ch. xxxix.] there is a description of the addresses delivered in the congregations of their times, which appears to me to prove that they knew of no such practice as reading a sermon and the passage from Origen contra Cels., which De la Cerda gives in his note on Tertullian, though it is only quoted in the Latin, surely shows the same (vol. i. p. 190.). I came across something of the sort in Cyprian about two years ago and, if I may dare trust my memory, it appeared to me at the time to be more satisfactory than the passages above referred to; but I made no note of it,--and I was hunting for other game when I met with it. Still, if your querist is going into the subject as a student into a matter of history, I dare stay I could find the paragraph. 4. I have really no acquaintance with the post-Nicene fathers, the mere desultory reading out of some few of the works of the Arian period counting for something less than nothing; but, as far as secondary sources are to be trusted, I certainly never met with anything that would lead me to conclude that sermons were ever read in the fourth or fifth centuries. [I shall come to the only shadow of an argument in favour of such a practice having prevailed so early, presently.] Certainly, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, were extempore preachers by Bingham's showing. Gregory the Great, much later, for all that appears to the contrary, never wrote his sermons at all, and even preached his homilies on Ezekiel almost without any preparation. Indeed the prevalence of that most abominable system of applauding the preacher, which St. Chrysostom protests against in the magnificent sermon on 1Cor.xiv.38., could scarcely have been universal where sermons were read. 5. I come now to the argument which Bingham deduces from a passage in Sidonius Apollinaris; where, in speaking of Faustus, Bishop of Riez, he says that he was "raucus plausor," while hearing "tuas prædicationes, nunc repentinas, nunc, cum ratio poposcisset, elucubratas." Until I had turned up the passage itself, I thought there was no doubt that Bingham was right in explaining it as referring partly to extempore, partly to written-and-read sermons; but taking the passage as it stands, I would submit that the "prædicationes elucubratas" were not at all _read_ sermons, though prepared and studied beforehand, and that the "prædicationes repentinas" were such as St. Augustine sometimes delivered, viz., on a text which suggested itself to him during the time of service, or in consequence of some unforeseen event having happened just before his ascending the pulpit.