BIDDING Prayer. It was one part of the office of the deacons in the primitive Christian church to act as monitors and directors of the people in the exercise of their public devotions in the church; to which end they made use of certain known forms of words, to give notice when each part of the service began. This was called by the Greeks κηρύσσειν, and by the Latins predicare, which therefore does not ordinarily signify to "preach," as some mistake it, but to perform the office of crier (κηρύξ, or praco) in the assembly; and hence Synesius and others call the deacons προκηρύξαι, the "holy criers" of the church, appointed to bid or exhort the congregation to pray and join in the several parts of the service of the church. Agreeably to this ancient practice is the form "Let us pray," repeated before several of the prayers in the English liturgy, and used as a sort of proem in the simpler invocations of the Presbyterian church.