42 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 90. 



querist is going into the subject as a student into 

 a matter of history, I dare say 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 count- 

 ing 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 lavour of sucli a 

 practice having prevailed so early, presently.] 

 Certainly, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Chry- 

 sostom, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, were extempore 

 preachers by Bingham's showing. Gregory the 

 Great, much later, for all tliat appears to the con- 

 trary, never wrote his sermons at ;dl, 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 1 Cor. 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 ApoUiuaris ; 

 where, in speaking of Faustus, Bishop of Riez, 

 he says that he was " raucus plausor," while hear- 

 ing " tuas prjedicationes, nunc repentinas, nunc, 

 cum ratio poposcisset, eluctibratas." Until I had 

 turned up the passage itself, I thouglit 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 " prajdicationes 

 elucubratas" were not at all read sermons, though 

 prepared and studied beforehand, and that the 

 " pra;dicationes repentinas" were such as St. Au- 

 gustine 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. 



6. I have as yet dealt only with the negative 

 evidence ; but the positive testimony against the 

 reading, and in favour of the reciting or preach- 

 ing sermons, is far from small. I should look 

 upon a man as crazy who ventured to speak 

 slightingly of Bingham, and should as soon think 

 of setting up myself against that great man as of 

 challenging Goliah of Gath to fisty-cuflfs ; but I 

 can never get rid of the thought that Bingham 

 had a strong prejudice against extempore preach- 

 ing, and treated the liistory of sermons somewhat 

 unfairly : e.g., in his 22nd section of that 4th chap, 

 of the xivth book (with which chap. I take it for 

 granted my readers are acquainted), he somewhat 

 roguishly misrepresents !Mabillon and the Council 

 of Vaison ; and as to every other passage he 

 quotes or refers to, every one asserts that the 



sermons were to be preached or recited, not one 

 says a woi-d about reading. 



The Council of Vaison is, of course, that which 

 was held in a.d. 529, and at which Ca^sarius of 

 Aries presided : but the 2nd canon does not say a 

 word about reading ; so far from it, it commands 

 that the homilies which the deacons preached 

 should be recited {recitentur, Labbe, iv. p. 1G79.], 

 as though the practice of reading a sermon were 

 not known. So, with regard to the other passages 

 from St. Augustine, there is not a liint about read- 

 ing : if a man could not make his own sermons, 

 he was to take another's ; but to take care to com- 

 mit it to memory, and then deliver it. 



I should be glad to furnish you with a few 

 "more last words" on this subject, but I fear that 

 these remarks iiave already proceeded to too great 

 a length : still, if you give me any encouragement, 

 I should like to take iqi the matter again. 



I should be glad to be informed whetlier it be 

 true, as I have heard, that the practice of learning 

 their sermons by heart is universal and avowed by 

 the preachers in Germany ; and whether it be 

 really a common thing for a preacher there to 

 deny himself on a Saturday, on the plea that he is 

 getting his sermon by heart ? Ajax. 



Papworth St. Agnes, July 8. 1851. 



Written Sermons (Vol. iii., p. 478.). — Your 

 querist M. C. L. may be referred to Dr. Short's 

 History of the Chwch of England, § 223. ; or to 

 Burnet's Reformation, vol. i. p. 317., folio ; where 

 he will find that the practice commenced about 

 the year 1542. N. E. R. (a Subscriber.) 



TEST SITTINGS. 



0''ol. iii., pp. 328. 396.) 



Not questioning the meaning given to the word 

 Fest by R. Vincent, I take leave to refer you to 

 Dr. Willan's list of words in use in the moun- 

 tainous districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 

 in the seventeenth volume of the Ay-chceologia. 

 You will there find : " Fest, to board from home." 

 The word is used in that sense at the present time. 

 A gentleman resident in the West Riding writes 

 to me : 



"I have heard the term 'fest' used generally as 

 applying to sending out cattle to pasture ; and so says 

 C;ur ill his Dialect of Craven. I have also frequently 

 beard it used in this manner : ' I have fest my lad out 

 apprentice to so and so.' In my own neighbourhood, 

 ill the West Riding, it is a frequent practice for a poor 

 man who possesses a cow, but no pasture, to 'fest' lier 

 will) some occupier of land at a certain sum by the 

 week, or for some other term. So a gamekeeper is said 

 ' to fest' his master's pointer, when he agrees with a 

 farmer to keep it for a lime. In these cases the boy, 

 the cow, the pointer, 'are boarded from home.' " 



As to " statutes" or " sittings," the word 



