It was one part of the office of the deacons in the primitive Christian church, to be a sort of 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 ἐκκρίνειν, and by the Latins praedicare: which therefore do not ordinarily signify to preach, as some mistake it; but to perform the office of a crier (ἐκκρίνειν, or praeco) in the assembly: whence Synesius and others call the deacons ἐκκρίνεις, 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. Agreeable to this ancient practice is the form Let us pray, repeated before several of the prayers in the English liturgy.

BIDDING of the Beads, a charge or warning which the parish-priest gave to his parishioners at certain special times, to say so many pater-nosters, &c. on their beads.