The
Person of the Preacher
Latimer bemoaned the deficiency of preaching and the negligence of preachers
in England. In his famous Sermon of the Plough, he rebuked his fellow ministers
for being more concerned with worldly affairs than with preaching. With sarcasm
and creative rhetoric, Latimer offered an excuse for the lording and loitering
prelates:
They are so troubled
with lordly living, they be so placed in palaces, couched in courts, ruffling
in their rents, dancing in their dominions, burdened with ambassages, pampering
of their paunches, like a monk that maketh his jubilee; munching in their
mangers, and moiling in their gay manors and mansions, and so troubled with
loitering in the lordships that they cannot attend it.2
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Later,
Latimer challenged that prelates should be so painfully engaged in their preaching
as in their lording and loitering.3 Christ said, “No one
who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”
(Lk. 9:62). Latimer added, “That is to say, let no preacher be negligent in
. . . his office.”4
It is evident that Latimer wanted preachers to preach, but who did Latimer feel
was qualified to preach? Latimer’s first requirement was that the preacher be
one called of God. He proclaimed, “To preach God’s word it is a good thing,
and God will have that there shall be some which do it: but for all that a man
may not take upon him to preach God’s word, except he be called unto it.”5
A second requirement was that preachers be hungry to do the will of God. In
an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, Latimer said:
Would God our
preachers would be so fervent to promote the honour and glory of God, to admonish
the great and the small to do the will of the Lord! I pray God they may be
as fervent as our Saviour was, when he said to his disciples . . . , “My meat
is to do the will of my Father which is in heaven.6
Latimer
believed preachers were God’s instruments for accomplishing His will.
Third, the preacher must possess certain properties. “These be the properties
of every good preacher: to be a true man; to teach, not dreams nor inventions
of men, but viam Dei in veritate, ‘the way of God truly;’ and not to
regard the personage of man.”7 Further, the preacher should
“beware of vain-glory and only seek to edify and to profit their audience” as
Christ did.8
Finally, if the preacher was to proclaim truth rightly, Latimer believed training
was needed. If education was improved, educated preachers would be produced.9
These educated preachers would then take to the pulpits, advancing reform through
effective preaching.