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Literaria Rediviva; or, The Book Worm.

Sermons preached upon several Occasions. By Robert South. Six vols. 8vo. 1715-1717. Five additional Volumes of Sermons preached upon several Occasions. By Robert South. 8vo. 1744. THERE are few works to which we more frequently recur than those of South, though we know of none which excite more painful emotions. With talents of the very highest order, he neutralized them all by a disposition at once savage, sarcastic, and time-serving; he disfigured compositions of the noblest strain of language and sentiment, by the base mixtures of servile flattery and fierce vituperation; and he destroyed the effect of urgent evangelical appeal by the outbreakings of a violent and uncharitable temper. If he had restrained these disgusting ebullitions; and if to his other admirable faculties had been added the spirit of meekness and selfdenial, he would have taken his station in the very foremost rank of English preachers. He was, confessedly, inferior to his brilliant contemporary, Jeremy Taylor, in poetical fancy and in various knowledge, but he far excelled him, both as a writer and as a divine. His taste was too sound and vigorous to permit him to tolerate the fantastic license in which Taylor indulged himself, and he has inserted in his sermon on Luke xxi. 15, preached at Christ-church, Oxford, April 30, 1668, a severe sarcasm on the affectation of that justly celebrated prelate.

"I speak the words of soberness, said St. Paul, Acts xxvi. 25. And I preach the

Gospel not with the enticing words of man's wisdom. 1 Cor. ii. 4. This was

the way of the Apostle's discoursing of things sacred. Nothing here of the Fringes of the North-star; nothing of Nature's becoming unnatural; nothing of the Down of angels' wings; or the Beautiful locks of cherubims: no starched similitudes, introduced with a thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion, and the like. No, these were sublimities above the rise of the apostolick spirit. For the Apostles, poor mortals, were con

tent to take lower steps, and to tell the

world in plain terms, that he who believed should be saved, and that he who believed dialect which pierced the conscience, and made the hearers cry out, Men and It tickled brethren, what shall we do? not the ear, but sunk into the heart;

not should be damned. And this was the

and when men came from such sermons, they never commended the preacher for his taking voice or gesture; for the fineness of such a simile, or the quaintness of such a sentence, but they spoke like men coaquered with the overpowering force and evidence of the most concerning truths; much in the words of the two disciples going to Emmaus; Did not our hearts burn within us, while he opened to us the Scriptures ?”

There was probably some envy and ill-humour in the spirit which prompted these remarks, but they are essentially correct, and their criticism is justly applicable to the faults of the great man at whom they were levelled. There was nothing of this tendency in South ; his faults, indeed, were great, but they were not of a kind which led him to affectation; they were more closely connected with moral infirmity than with error of judgment, they were the result of injurious habits and tempers rather than of any defect in his modes of thinking or writing. Had it not been for the bitter and restless disposition of this strong-minded and clearheaded man, he might have exhibited an almost matchless union of strength and refinement; as it is, the fierceness of his spirit is continually marring the beauty of

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his composition and interrupting the continuity of his reasoning, by coarse and sometimes brutal sallies of reproach, or by severe and malignant sarcasm. In the second of his strange discourses on Isaiah v. 20, he breaks out into the following unseemly attack on Hugh Peters, who had been executed, with circumstances of extreme barbarity, on a scaffold.

"To give you a remarkable instance of what kind of sense of religion these reformers of it have had from first to last. When that reproach and scandal to Christianity, Hugh Peters, held a discourse with the arch-rebel his master, upon the mutinying of the army about St. Albans, and things then seemed to be in a scurvy, doubtful posture,; this wretch encouraged him not to be dismayed with the discontents of the soldiery, but accosting them resolutely to go on as he had done all along, and to Fox them a little more with religion, and no doubt he should be able to carry his point at last. A blessed expression this, For them with religion and fit to come from the mouth of a noted preacher of religion, and a prime reformer of it also; but, however, very suitable to the person that uttered it, who died as he lived, with a stupified seared conscience, and went out of the world foxed with something else beside religion."

This last burst of ferocious exultation at the dying agonies of Peters, gives the full measure of South's Christian meekness. We shall extract a little more from the same sermon, as a specimen of the sort of reasoning, which the eloquent Prebendary of Westminster could, on occasion, condescend to employ.

"Setting aside noise and partiality, I would gladly know why such as suffer eapitally by the hand of justice at Tyburn, should not be as high and loud in their clamours against persecution as these men" (the nonconformists.) "If you say that those persons suffer for felony, but these for their conscience, I answer, that there is as much reason for a man to plead conscience for the breach of one law, as for the breach of another, where the matter of the law is either good or indifferent, and both the one and the other stand enforced by sufficient authority. And possibly the Highwayman will tell you, that he cannot in conscience suffer himself to starve, and

that without taking a purse now and and to beg he is ashamed. But now if you then he must starve, since dig he cannot, will look upon this as a very unsatisfacto plea to the judge, the jury, and the law, as no doubt it is a very insolent and a very senseless one, I am sure, upon the same grounds, all the pleas and apologies for the nonconformists, (though made by some conformists themselves,) are every whit as senseless and irrational."

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A little farther on he again exhibits his " manner of spirit" by a set attack on Moderation," and at the close of the fifth volume, besides a sort of ruming fire of the same kind through his other discourses, he has a sermon on Galatians ii. 5, expressly against concession in any form. We shall, however, only cite two additional samples of his liberal sentiments on this point. The first will be found in the fourth sermon of his first volume.

"Because the apostles and primitive Christians preached in houses, and had only private meetings, in regard they were under persecution, and had no churches; this cannot warrant the practice of those nowadays, nor a toleration of them, that prefer houses before churches, and a conventicle before the congrega tion."

The next is a pithy hint, which stands among many others, which fraternize with it very cordially, in his sermon preached at the consecration of Dr. Seth Ward, Bishop of Oxford.

"Does it become a man with a sword

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by his side to beseech? or a governor armed with authority to entreat? that thinks to win obstinate schismatics those evil spirits with the softer lays and by condescension, and to conjure away music of persuasion, may, as David in the like case, have a javelin flung at his head for his pains, and perhaps escape it as narrowly.'

His "Discourses against long extemporary Prayers," in the second volume, are exceedingly chaResolute racteristic of the man.

on carrying his point, he presses into his service all the weapons of controversy, fair or unfair. Argument, sophism, abuse, sarcasm, are mingled together most amusingly,

but most ineffectually as to any legitimate end. His diatribe is not very coherent, nor would it yield any profitable result to an analytical process; but we shall be able to extract from it a few pithy specimens of South's modes of expression. From Eccles. v. 2, he assumes, somewhat peremptorily, that" premeditation of thought, and brevity of expression, are the great ingredients of that reverence, that is required to a pious, acceptable, and devout prayer." It is not worth while to quarrel with his application of the text; but we feel the most decided objection to the limitation and the qualification which he endeavours to fasten on the act of prayer. We are quite willing to admit, that the devotional exercises of God's house demand the utmost reverence in their performance; that if we were to examine all the mental and exterior engagements which precede and accompany them, the holiest minister would find himself lamentably remiss in the close and continued maintenance of that attention and interested frame which is inseparably connected with the reverential performance of public devotion. We trust, indeed, that we do thus examine ourselves, and that, while the result of our self-investigation compels us to much contrition and humiliation, it has the salutary effect of leading us habitually to a throne of grace in earnest petition for those aids of the Holy Spirit, of which South, when declaiming against what he is pleased to call the hypocrisy of the Puritans, too often permits himself to speak lightly. We are, however, quite unable to understand how all this bears on the question of the length or the extemporaneousness of prayer. Brevity may be as irreverent as length, and we need not go far to prove, that a set and printed form may be read CONG. MAG. No. 71.

with extreme and obvious negligence. In illustration of the principle thus vaguely and summarily laid down, South proceeds to enquire how it is that prayer prevails with God, and he gives it as a general rule, that the way in which it "works upon" the Divine Being, "is wholly different from that by which it prevails with men.' It does not prevail, he observes, by information, by persuasion, nor by importunity.

formed, so neither is Omnipotence to be wearied. We may much more easily think to clamour the sun and stars out of their courses, than to word the great Creator of them out of the steady purposes of his own will, by all the vehemence and loudness of our petitions. Men may tire themselves with their own prayers, but God is not to be tired. The rapid motion and whirl of things here below, interrupts not the inviolable rest and calmness of the nobler beings above. While the winds roar and bluster here in the first and second regions of the air, there is perfect serenity in the third. Men's desires cannot control God's decrees."-Vol. ii. p. 86.

"As Omniscience is not to be in

This is splendid composition, but rich imaginations and fine cadences are poor substitutes for solid argument or competent authority. Without inquiring whether importunity prevails or not with God precisely as it does with men, it is quite sufficient to destroy any inference which South would have drawn from his principle, that we find our Lord expressly enjoining his disciples to importunity in prayer. He commanded them to pray always and not to faint; he offered to them, as an example, the continual coming of the widow; and he put it as an impossible case, that God should disregard the importunity of his elect, who cry day and night unto him. South's answer to this objection is so curious, that we shall give it in his own words.

"To this I answer two things. 1st. That wheresoever God is said to answer 4 H

prayers, either for their frequency or fervency, it is spoken of him only avowo Taws, according to the manner of men; and, consequently, ought to be understood only of the effect or issue of such prayers, in the success certainly attending them, and not of the manner of their efficiency, that it is by persuading, or working upon the passions. As if we should say, frequent, fervent, and importunate prayers, are as certainly followed with God's grant of the thing prayed for, as men use to grant that which, being overcome by excessive importunity and persuasion, they cannot find in their hearts to deny.--2. I answer farther, that frequency and fervency of prayer prove effectual to procure of God the things prayed for, upon no other account but as they are acts of dependence upon God; which dependence we have already proved to be that thing essentially included in prayer, for which God has been pleased to make prayer the condition upon which he determines to grant men such things as they need, and duly apply to him for.--Vol. ii. pp. 93, 94.

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All this may be granted, and yet the expediency of importunate and extemporary prayer remain untouched. South is dextrous in this kind of evasion; he can meet a question fairly and manfully when he feels himself on ground; but when he is conscious of infirmity, he shows himself a master in the science of escape. It was not in question, whether frequent and fervent petitions have any inherent efficacy in procuring blessings from above; and South knew that he was playing with his hearers when he thus stated it; he had started with condemning the practice itself, and it was his business to prove that it was unlawful, injurious, or inexpedient. Luke xviii. 1-7; xi. 8, 9; xxi. 36; James v. 16; and other passages of Scripture, met him in full career, with express commands, injunctions, exhortations, and encouragements, and instead of showing that these have a different bearing or acceptation, he amuses himself with answering an objection which has not the slightest application to the real ques

tion. He well knew, and, notwithstanding his failings, we trust felt, the true nature of Gospel service, and he was well aware that he was merely throwing dust in the eyes of his congregation. He was not to learn that prayer is a commanded duty, that it is essentially the expression of our wants and utter helplessness, and an acknowledgment of the Divine all-sufficiency. It is in its highest acceptation, communion with God, and no man who has been enabled to experience this, will consent to stint and limit the period of his purest and most elevated enjoy

ment.

The exercise of this act of worship may, very possibly, have been abused by some in the days of South, as it is by others in our own, but when he described extempore prayer as an " intoxicating bewitching cheat," and as "the devil's master-piece and prime engine to overthrow the church by," he might appeal to his " conscience," but he did not give an honest report of its answer.

There is another passage-a strange compound of rancour and credulity-that we cannot persuade ourselves to pass over.

"These two things are certain, and I do particularly recommend them to your observation. One, that this way of praying by the Spirit (as they call it,) was begun, and first brought into use here in England, in Queen Elizabeth's days, by a popish priest and Dominican Fryar, one faithful Commin by name; who counterfeiting himself a Protestant, and a zealot of the highest form, set up this new spiritual way of praying, with a tempt, and from thence to an utter design to bring the people first to a conhatred and disuse of our common-prayer; which he still reviled as only a translation of the Mass; thereby to distract men's minds, and to divide our church. men's minds, and And this he did with such success, that we have lived to see the effects of his

labours in the utter subversion of church and state. Which hellish negotiation, when this malicious hypocrite came to Rome to give the Pope an account of, he received of him (as so notable a service well deserved) besides a thousand

thanks, two thousand ducats for his pains. So that now you see here the original of this extempore-way of praying by the Spirit. The other thing that I would observe to you, is, that in the neighbour nation of Scotland, one of the greatest* monsters of men, that (I believe) ever lived, and actually in league with the devil; was yet, by the confession of all that heard him, the most excellent at this extempore-way of praying by the Spirit, of any man in his time; none was able to come near him, or to compare with him. But surely now, he who shall venture to ascribe the prayers of such a wretch, made up of adulteries, incest, witchcraft, and other villainies, not to be named, to the Spirit of God, may as well strike in with the pharisees, and ascribe the miracles of Christ to the devil."—Vol. ii. pp. 110, 111.

South, with all his virulence, could be a gross flatterer. There is a passage in his sermon preached on the 29th of May, 1670, that not only borders but trespasses on impiety in its nauseous sycophancy; we had marked it for quotation, but we shall forbear, and substitute for it the whim

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sical description of Cromwell, which excited the laughter of Charles II.

"Who, that should view the small, despicable beginnings of some things and persons at first, could imagine or prognosticate those vast and stupendous encreases of fortune, that have afterwards followed them?

"Who, that had look't upon Agathocles first handling the clay, and making pots under his Father, and afterwards turning robber, could have thought that from such a condition, he should come to be king of Sicily?

Who, that had seen Masianello, a poor fisherman with his red cap, and his angle, could have reckoned it possible to see such a pitiful thing within a week after, shining in his cloth of gold, and with a word, or a nod, absolutely commanding the whole City of Naples?

"And who, that had beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as Cromwell, first entering the Parliament-house with a threadbare torne cloak, and a greasy hat, (and perhaps neither of them paid for,) could have suspected that in the space of so few years, he should, by the murder of one king, and the banish

* Major John Weyer: see Ravillac Rediviv.

ment of another, ascend the throne, be invested in the royal robes, and want nothing of the state of a king, but the changing of his hat into a crown?pp. 311, 312.

It is, however, time that we should bring forward passages of a "higher mood," to justify the admiration which we have avowed for this singular divine. South's most finished sermons are those from Genesis i. 27, and from John xv. 15, and we are acquainted with few compositions which will bear comparison with them. The subject of the first is the creation of man in the image of God; of the second, the friendship of Jesus for his disciples. We shall extract from the noble description of man, when fresh and unsullied from the hands of his Maker, the sections which relate to the intel

lect, and to the passions of love, anger, and joy.

"He came into the world a phihis writing the nature of things upon losopher, which sufficiently appeared by their names; he could view essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective properties; he could see consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn, and in the womb of their causes; his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents, his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction; till his fall he was ignorant of nothing but of sin, or at least it rested in the notion without the smart of the experiment. Could any difficulty have been proposed, the resclution would have been as early as the proposal; it could not have had time to settle into doubt. Like a better Archimedes, the issue of all his enquiries was an ευρηκα, an ευρηκα, the offspring of his brain without the sweat of his

brow. Study was not then a duty, night-watchings were needless, the light of reason wanted not the assistance of a candle. This is the doom of fallen man, to labour in the fire, to seek truth in profundo, to exhaust his time and impair his health, and, perhaps, to spin out his days and himself into one pitiful, controverted conclusion. There

was then no poring, no struggling with memory, no straining for invention. His faculties were quick and expedite; they answered without knocking, they were

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