Preaching
the act of preaching; a public religious discourse. The modern system of preaching was unknown in the early Church. The general mode then was for the priest to read portions of PREBLE the Old or New Testament, and explain or enforce the precepts which they contained. Generally, sermons were delivered whenever the Scriptures were read, and sometimes several, by different persons at the same meeting. About the 13th century, the scholastic divines directed their chief attention to the study of the sacred Scriptures, and were hence called Bible divines. They introduced a new and artificial mode of preaching, called declaring. Before this time, the clergy generally adopted postulating, or expounding a large portion of Scripture, sentence by sentence. By the new method, the preacher read a text out of some book and chapter of the Old or New Testament, dividing it into several parts and expounding them. The opposition to this textual mode of preaching continue continued for upward of a century, but at length it came generally to prevail. The divisions or parts of a modern sermon are usually the introduction, the proposition, the illustration, and the application.