Book of Collections on the Art of Preaching

composed with excessively ornate words; not too long. But so that all these things can be guarded to a nicety, it will be safer for the composition of the introduction to be reserved until the end.

ON THE READING

THE READING of the Canonical Scripture ought to be recited to the people, which is to be taken from nowhere else but the Old or New Testament, according to the precept of Christ, who, like a good father of a family, brought forth new things and old from his treasury. Matt 13 "What I say to you in the darkness," he says, "speak in the light, and what you hear in the ear, preach upon the housetops." Matt 10

Profane, vain, and foolish questionings without discipline, genealogies, contentions, and fights of the law, and Jewish fables, and the commandments of men who turn away from the truth, are to be avoided, as Paul says. Tit 1 Lest, according to Jerome, the priests of God, having omitted the Gospels and the prophets, be seen to read comedies, to sing the amorous words of pastoral verses, to hold Virgil, and other things of that kind.

THE READING of the Gospel or Canonical Epistle or any other thing in the church should be done briefly, clearly, and verisimilarly. This, when proposed with the Old Testament in the other parts of the homily, is to be observed most of all in this.

IT WILL BE BRIEF if we use no detours, no ambiguities, but words necessary for the matter itself. We preach the Gospel, Epistle, or prophecy in such a way that the listener remembers it easily. In this, it must be guarded against saying the same thing twice, or what we said above again. Reiteration

IT WILL BE CLEAR if the qualities of the thing are signified by words that explain them properly, with due pronunciation accommodated to this, so that the listener accepts and understands most easily.