Our author in the following paragraph under the forementioned query tells us, “That the bishops indeed and also our two universities have power to grant _licenses to preach_, of a larger extent, to such clergymen as they judge proper; who, in virtue thereof may, if they chuse, travel from place to place as itinerants. But then the church has provided in that case (_Can._ 50), that neither the minister, church-wardens, nor any other officers of the church shall suffer any man to preach within the churches and chapels, but such as by showing their licence to preach, shall appear unto them to be sufficiently authorized thereunto.” What these licences for itinerant preaching are to which the author here refers, is not certain. Does he not seem to mean the common licences which your Lordships give the clergy, when they take upon them holy orders? Are not these the licences which the church-wardens examine? And what is the end of these licences? Was it ever heard before that they were to qualify persons to be itinerant preachers? Is not the plain end of them, to satisfy the church-wardens that the persons who offer their service have had a regular ordination, and are sufficiently authorised to preach? And does not the author know that these licences now are little regarded? Do not our letters of orders answer the same end to all intents and purpose? Were they not judged sufficient at our first setting out into the ministry? And after all, what is it that the ministers and church-wardens can do to persons that have not these licences? Why they are not to suffer them to preach _within_ their churches and chapels? but have they any power, my Lords, to hinder them from preaching _without_ their churches or chapels? No, blessed be GOD, their power is limited within: hitherto can they go, and no further. And therefore supposing these itinerant preachers, though they have no licenses, do not preach within any churches or chapels, unless with the ministers or church-wardens consent, how are they justly charged with violating a law of the church, though they should preach without doors to as great multitudes as shall be inclined to hear them?
He proceeds in the 3d paragraph under this 8th query to write thus: “The practice of licensing itinerant preachers was occasioned by the low talents of many incumbents in the more early days of the reformation, whose abilities carried them no farther than to the reading of homilies; a defect which has long been remedied by a liberal education of sufficient numbers of persons for the ministry, who regularly perform the office of preaching, as well as other duties, in the parishes committed to their care. And if the forementioned defect did still continue, as GOD be thanked it does not, it would be ill supplied by our modern itinerants, who make it their principal employ, wherever they go, to instil into the people a few favourite tenets of their own; and this, with such diligence and zeal as if the whole of christianity depended upon them, and all efforts towards the true christian life, without a belief of those tenets, were vain and ineffectual.”