The primary part of the public worship of God is the preaching of the Word

[NaphtaliPress]

Then it must needs be the custom of the Church to come to the public ministry of the Word upon those days, and it must be a common manner with them. Which is spoken to this end, that we might not be of that brutish mind that some are of, that know no other thing to do upon the Sabbath but to rest and take their ease; and therefore lie many times at home sleeping most profanely; and so their ox and their ass in ceasing from work, keep as good a Sabbath as they—neither to be so ignorant as others are, who content themselves with their own private readings at home, or with the bare reading of the Word in the church, neglecting the preaching of it; not laboring to procure it to themselves, nor repairing to those places in the mean season where it is, though it be the chiefest part of God’s service, and therefore the most especial means whereby the Sabbath is sanctified, and without the which all other things in the service of God are less accepted of God, and more unprofitable to our own selves.

Nicholas Bownd, “Sabbathum Veteris Et Novi Testamenti: or, The True Doctrine of the Sabbath” (1606; Naphtali Press forthcoming, 2015) 318.