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 little exercise and much confidence, they might in a short time come to equal, if not exceed; as it cannot be denied, but that some few of them (with the help of a few friends in masquerade) accordingly did. But, on the contrary, had preaching been made and reckoned a matter of solid and true learning, of theological knowledge and long and severe study (as the nature of it required it to be), assuredly no preaching cobbler amongst them all would ever have ventured so far beyond his last, as to undertake it. And consequently this their most powerful engine for supplanting the church and clergy had never been attempted, nor perhaps so much as thought on; and therefore of most singular benefit, no question, would it be to the public, if those who have authority to second their advice, would counsel the ignorant and the forward to consider what divinity is, and what they themselves are, and so to put up their preaching tools, their Medulla's note-books, their melleficiums, concordances, and all, and betake themselves to some useful trade, which nature had most particularly fitted them for."