Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.Phillimore, Lucy
History
Sir Christopher Wren: His Family and His Times: With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723.
Phillimore, Lucy
Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714 -- Biography; Wren family; Wren, Christopher, Sir, 1632-1723
'7. Concerning the placing of the pulpit, I shall observe a
moderate voice may be heard fifty feet distant before the preacher,
thirty feet on each side, and twenty behind the pulpit; and not
this unless the pronunciation be distinct and equal, without losing
the voice at the last word of the sentence, which is commonly
emphatical, and, if obscured, spoils the whole sense. A Frenchman
is heard further than an English preacher, because he raises his
voice, and sinks not his last words: I mention this as an
insufferable fault in the pronunciation of some of our otherwise
excellent preachers, which schoolmasters might correct in the young
as a vicious pronunciation, and not as the Roman orators spoke: for
the principal verb is, in Latin, usually the last word; and if that
be lost, what becomes of the sentence?
'8. By what I have said, it may be thought reasonable, that the new
church should be at least sixty feet broad, and ninety feet long,
besides a chancel at one end, and the belfry and portico at the
other.
[Sidenote: '_NO PEWS, BUT BENCHES._']
'These proportions may be varied; but to build more than that every
person may conveniently hear and see is to create noise and
confusion. A church should not be so filled with pews, but that the
poor may have room enough to stand and sit in the alleys; for to
them equally is the Gospel preached. It were to be wished there
were to be no pews, but benches; but there is no stemming the tide
of profit, and the advantage of pew-keepers; especially since by
pews, in the chapel of ease, the minister is chiefly supported. It
is evident these fifty churches are enough for the present
inhabitants, and the town will continually grow: but it is to be
hoped, that hereafter more may be added, as the wisdom of the
Government shall think fit; and, therefore, the parishes should be
so divided as to leave room for subdivisions, or at least for
chapels of ease.
[_CLEAR BUILDING GROUND._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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