"[W]hen the company heard all delivered by [the minister] without book, and with free readiness, and profound gravity, and unaffected composure of voice, looks, and gestures, and a very powerful emphasis in every part (as indeed his talent was excellent in this way), they were strangely surprised and affected, professing that they had never heard a more suitable exhortation, or a more edifying exercise even from the very best and most precious men of their own persuasion! …they were afterward much more surprised and confounded, when the same person who had officiated assured the principal men among them, that not one period of all he had spoken was his own; and convinced them by ocular demonstration how all was taken word for word out of the very office ordained for that purpose in the poor contemptible Book of Common Prayer."
Read MoreReflections on the debate in the 1570s between two Cambridge scholars, Thomas Cartwright (deprived of his professorship and fellowship for his views) and John Whitgift (Master of Cartwright's college, later elevated to the See of Canterbury).
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