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Updated: June 28, 2025
They do not seem, I think, to understand the history of the thing. Some of them do not appear to understand the history of the English language. Why was the word "layman" ever introduced? Because there was a separate class of clergy men in the world, but there was not a class of clergywomen in the world. If there had been, there would have been a term for laywomen and for clergywomen.
And the word was invented to distinguish the laymen from the clergymen. Had there been clergywomen, there would have been laywomen. The "laity" means all the people, men, women, and children. A woman is one of the laity, and so is every child in the country or in the Church one of the laity. But when you speak of man acting as a unit he is a layman, but you never say a laywoman. You say: a woman.
They do not seem, I think, to understand the history of the thing. Some of them do not appear to understand the history of the English language. Why was the word "layman" ever introduced? Because there was a separate class of clergy men in the world, but there was not a class of clergywomen in the world. If there had been, there would have been a term for laywomen and for clergywomen.
And the word was invented to distinguish the laymen from the clergymen. Had there been clergywomen, there would have been laywomen. The "laity" means all the people, men, women, and children. A woman is one of the laity, and so is every child in the country or in the Church one of the laity. But when you speak of man acting as a unit he is a layman, but you never say a laywoman. You say: a woman.
The very carriage in question was no more than one of those pony-phaetons with regard to which Bishop Pattison appealed, in one of his letters from Melanesia to his brethren in peaceful, pleasant country rectories and vicarages at home, asking the astonished clergymen, with their clergywomen in the background, if they really considered the clerical equipage, with its modest expense, equivalent to a divine institution?
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