# Being nourished by the preaching of our own ministers



## TheOldCourse (Dec 31, 2017)

I found this section in the dedicatory epistle of William Gurnall's _The Christian in Complete Armour_ an excellent illustration and encouragement to greatly prefer preaching heard over preaching read. It is altogether too easy for me to be distracted by intrusive, worldly thoughts, or discouraged by sub-Reformed practices that accompany the preaching in many churches, and let my diligence in attending to and applying the sermon wane. I may even think that I can make up for it by my study and private worship the rest of the Lord's Day. This, then, is an excellent admonition to me even as my commitment to the primacy of the means of grace is not always as strong in practice as it is in principle.

It is a testament to Gurnall's humility and character that, in introducing one of the greatest works ever authored on the Christian life, he advises his readers to prefer their own parish preachers.

Gurnall:



> Physicians say, the mother's milk, though not so weighty as another's, if no noxious humour be tasted in it because natural is more proper for the child than a stranger's. And, I think, it would not be an error if I should say it held in the milk which the minister gives to his flock. A people lying conscientiously at the breasts of their own minister, if the milk he gives be wholesome, may expect the blessing of God for their nourishment though it has not so much lusciousness to please the curious taster as some others. Well, whatever these sermons were, some of those few spirits which you found in hearing will be missing in the reading of them. It is as easy to paint fire with heat as with pen and ink to commit that to paper which occurs in preaching. There is as much difference between a sermon in the pulpit, and printed in a book, as between milk in the warm breast, and in a sucking bottle yet, what it loseth in the lively taste, is recompensed by the convenience of it. The book may be at hand when the preacher cannot; and truly, that is the chief end of printing, that as the bottle and spoon is used when the mother is sick or out of the way; so the book, to quiet the Christian and stay his stomach in the absence of the ordinance. He that readeth sermons and good books at home to save his pains of going to hear is a thief to his soul: in a religious habit he consults for his ease but not for his profit; he eats cold meat when he may have hot; he hazards the losing the benefit of both by contemning of one. If the spouse could have had her Beloved at home she needed not to have coursed the streets and waited on the public. O what need we offer sacrilege for sacrifice, rob God of one duty to pay him another? He hath laid our work in better order, one wheel would not interfere with another, if we did more regularly.

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