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THE FRIARS AS PREACHERS. 155
the parish priests should give instruction to their
people on the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer,
the Creed, the seven works of mercy, and the seven
deadly sins. In many cases the result, in all likelihood,
was a very dry and unfervid exposition of faith
and duty. The style of the friars' preaching had all
the charm of novelty. It was dramatic, it was familiar
homely in diction, fertile in illustration. They related
anecdotes, and brouglit a story or a fable to bear upon
the Scripture lesson which they sought to teach.
Crowds came to listen, and their rude and homely
eloquence contributed not a little to advance civilisation
by teaching those who occupied the lower strata
of the body politic to think and to reason. The
popular mind was further elevated by the representation
of the miracle plays, which were due to the
friars, and which, with all their coarseness, and what
appears to us their irreverent dealing with sacred subjects,
are entitled to no small amount of respect as
the precursors of those great dramas which are the
richest heritage of the literature of England. The
monastic bodies and the secular clergy viewed the
friars with Ill-concealed aversion. The latter, on their
side, were not slow to expose the weak places in the
parochial and monastic systems, and to inflame
popular prejudice against them by fervid denunciations
against the dissoluteness, the sloth, and the
pride of the priests and the monks.
At the outset of the order, learning was discredited
by their founder. The use of books was, in fact, forbidden.
But it was soon found that human learning
was a necessity, and within a very few years after their