23. “In _England_, however, there is nothing of this kind; no _layman_ permitted to speak in public.” No! Can you be ignorant, that in an hundred _churches_ they do it continually? In how many (particularly in the _West_ of _England_) does the _parish-clerk_ read one of the lessons? (In some he reads the whole service of the church, perhaps, every Lord’s day) and do not other _laymen_ constantly do the same thing, yea, in our very _cathedrals_? Which being under the more immediate inspection of the _bishops_, should be patterns to all other churches. Perhaps it will be said, “But this is not _preaching_.” Yes, but it is, essentially such. For what is it to _preach_, but _præedicare verbum Dei_? To publish the word of God? And this _laymen_ do all over _England_; particularly under the eye of every bishop in the nation. Nay, is it not done in the universities themselves? Who _ordained_ that singing-man at _Christchurch_? Who is likewise utterly unqualified for the work, murdering every lesson he reads? Not even endeavouring to read it as the word of God but rather as an old song? _Such_ a _layman_ as this, meddling at all with the word of God, I grant is a scandal to the _English_ nation. * To go a step farther.――――Do not the fundamental constitutions of the _university_ of _Oxford_, the _statutes_, even as revised by archbishop _Laud_, require every _batchelor of arts_, nine in ten of whom are _laymen_, to read three _public lectures_ in moral philosophy, on whatever subject he chuses? My subject, I well remember, was, The LOVE of God. Now, what was this but _preaching_? * Nay, may not a man be a _doctor of divinity_ even in _Oxford_, tho’ he never was _ordained_ at all? The instance of Dr. _Atwell_, (late) rector of _Exeter college_, is fresh in every one’s memory. These are a few of the considerations that may readily occur to any thinking man on this head. But I do not rest the cause on these. I believe it may be defended a shorter way. 14. * It pleased God by two or three ministers of the church of _England_, to call many sinners to repentance: who, in several parts, were undeniably turned from a course of sin, to a course holiness. The ministers of the places where this was done, ought to have received those ministers with open arms: and to have taken them who had just begun to serve God, into their peculiar care; watching over them in tender love, lest they should fall back into the snare of the devil. Instead of this, the greater part spoke of those ministers, as if the devil, not God had sent them. Some repelled them from the Lord’s table: others stirred up the people against them, representing them even in their public discourses, as _fellows not fit to live; papists, hereticks, traitors; conspirators_ against their king and _country_.