to us by the most credible testimony in the world, the uniform consent of the pillar and ground of Truth, the Catholick Church of God, which the Apostle S. Paul prefers before that of an Angel from Heaven; that divine Record, which hath been confirmed to us by so many miracles, sealed by the faith and confession, the repen∣tance and conversion, the doctrine and example, the gracious lives and glorious deaths of so many holy Confessors and Martyrs in all ages, besides an innumerable company of other humble professors, who have been perfected, sanctified and saved by that word of life, dwel∣ling richly in them in all wisdome.
Yet, even in this grand concernment of Religion, the holy Scriptures, (whose two Testaments are as the two poles on which all morality and Christianity turn, the two hinges on which all our piety and felicity depend) much negligence, indifferency and coldness, is of late used by many, not onely people, but their heaps of Preachers, under the notion and imagination of their Christian liberty, that is, seldome or never seriously to read, either privately or publickly, any part of the holy Scripture, unless it be a short Text or Theame, for fashion sake, which (like a broken morsell) they list to chew a while in their mouths: but the solemn, attentive, grave, devout, and distinct reading of Psalms or Chapters, or any other set portion of the holy Scriptures, old or new (to which S. Chrysostome, S. Jerome, S. Austin, and the other ancient Fathers, both Greek and Latin, so oft and so earnestly exhorted all Christians) this they esteem as a poor and puerile business, onely fit for children at school, not for Chri∣stians at Church; unless it be attended with some exposition or gloss upon it, though never so superficiall, simple and extempora∣ry; which is like painting over well-polished marble; being more prone to wrest, darken and pervert, than rightly to explain, clear or interpret the Scriptures, which of themselves are in most places easie to be understood: obscure places are rather more perplexed than expounded, when they are undertaken by per∣sons not very learned, or not well prepared for that work; which was the employment anciently (as Justin Martyr tells us) chiefly of the (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) the Bishop or President then present, whose of∣fice was far above the (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or) Readers, who having done his duty, the other, as Pastor of the flock, either opened or ap∣plyed such parts of the Scripture as he thought best to insist upon.
Yet there are (now) many such supercilious and nauseous Christians, who utterly despise the bare reading or reciting of the Word of God to the Congregation, as if no beauty were on it, no life or power in it, no good or vertue to be gotten by it, unlesse the breath of a poore man further inspire it, unlesse a poore worm, like a snaile, flightly passing over it, set a slimy varnish upon it: as if the saving truth, and self-shining light of Gods Word, in the precepts, examples, promises, prophecies and histories, were not most cleare and easie of it self, as to all things neces∣sary