Another Class of Preachers
At Cambridge, and eke at Oxford, have taken an opposite course, and from their being to be had at all times, have at the former place, obtained the soubriquet “Hack Preachers.” In the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, they are described as “the common exhibitioners at St. Mary’s, employed in the service of defaulters and absentees. It must be confessed, however,” adds this writer, “that these HACKS are good fast trotters, as they commonly go over the course in twenty minutes, and sometimes less.” Gilbert Wakefield, whom nobody will suspect of forbearance, calls them, in his Memoirs, “a piteous, unedifying tribe.” This, however, can scarcely be applied to the ordinary preachers of the present day, and especial care is taken by the heads of the university that the select preachers (one of whom is named for each month during term-time) do not name substitutes themselves. The following poetic jeu d’esprit, entitled “Lines on three of the appointed Preachers of St. Mary’s, Cambridge, attacking Calvin” were no others than the three eminent living divines, Dr. Butler, Dr. Maltby, Bishop of Chichester, and Dr. Herbert Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough:—
“Three Preachers, in three distant counties born,
The Church of England’s doctrines do adorn:
Harsh Calvin’s mystic tenets were their mark,
Founded in texts perverted, gloomy, dark.
Butler in clearness and in force surpassed,
Maltby with sweetness spoke of ages past;
Whilst Marsh himself, who scarce could further go,
With Criticism’s fetters bound the foe.”
This punning morsel, of some standing in the university, is scarce surpassed by Hood himself:—