ANSWER.
It is well known that I do constantly, while I enjoy my health, read the
whole divine service myself. And if the Governor has at any time seen
it otherwise, it has been when I have been so weakened with sickness that
I was not able to go through the whole service and preach too. If it be
thought an irregularity that on such a case I made use of a laic, it is to
be considered that this is a country where there is not one clergyman to be
had on such an occasion,—they being all employed at the same time in their
own far-distant parishes,—and that the country is so used to this practice,
that long before I knew it, by the fifth law in the printed book, entitled
Ministers to Provide Readers, it is enacted. "That where there is not a
minister to officiate every Sunday, the parish shall make choice of a grave
and sober person of good life and conversation to read divine service every
intervening Sunday at the parish church, when the minister preacheth at
any other place." But I constantly read prayers myself, unless disabled
or weakened by sickness.
