He secured a position of influence in the town, and subsequently became chaplain to Charles I and Bachelor of Divinity (BD) Although his sermons advocated Puritan principles, he supported the king's cause in the English Civil War.
In July 1644 he was presented by William Brockman to the living of Cheriton, Kent, and in the same year Reading was appointed by the Westminster Assembly to be one of nine commissioned to write annotations on the New Testament.
These were published in ‘Annotations upon all the Books of the Old and New Testament, wherein the Text is explained, Doubts resolved, Scriptures paralleled, and various Readings observed,’ London, 1645, 1651, and 1657.
On 25 May 1660 he presented to Charles II, on his first landing, a large bible with gold clasps, in the name of the corporation of Dover, and made a short speech, which was published as a broadside.
His son Thomas, of Christ Church, Oxford, born in 1623, proceeded MA Oxon in July 1647 when ‘lately freed from prison.’ The works of Reading, who in doctrinal terms was a strict Calvinist, include: Reading also left in manuscript, ready for the press, among other works, ‘A large Comment, Paraphrase, and Explication on the whole New Testament,’ in Latin, dedicated to George Monck, and sent to be printed at London in 1666; but, because of the Great Fire of London, was delivered into the hands of Matthew Wren, bishop of Ely.