This article evaluates the impact of a small cache of sermons, dating from the second half of the 1620s, which served as the prelude to the famous sermons preached to the Long Parliament. Few in number, concentrated in time, and disparate in location, these works have attracted little sustained attention from scholars of the parliamentary sermon. However, they represent a crucial turn in the discursive politics of that particular set of influential pulpits: before the 1640s, not one, but three, high-profile – and very distinct – sermon venues served as sites for the dissemination of opinions directly and intimately associated with the work of a sitting parliament. Considered together, these form one singular and note- worthy platform of political debate, allowing us to posit religious origins to civil war.