132. Robert South, 1633-1716. (Handbook, pars. 392, 393.)

The following specimen is from a sermon which was written when South was about thirty years of age, and for style was never surpassed by any composition of its author.

Man created in God's Image.

God's image is in short-that universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul, by which they stand apt and disposed to their respective offices and operations.

And first for its noblest faculty, the understanding was then sublime, clear, and aspiring, and as it were the soul's upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections. It was the leading, controlling faculty; all the passions wore the colours of reason; it did not so much persuade as command; it was not consul, but dictator. Discourse was then almost as quick as intuition; it was nimble in proposing, firm in concluding; it could sooner determine than now it can dispute. Like the sun, it had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion; no quiet but in activity. It did not so properly apprehend as irradiate the object; not so much find as make things intelligible. It arbitrated upon the several reports of sense, and all the varieties of imagination; not, like a drowsy judge, only hearing, but also directing their verdict. In short, it was vegete, quick, and lively; open as the day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and sprightliness of youth; it gave the soul a bright and full view into all things; and was not only a window, but itself a prospect. Now as there are two great functions of the soul, contemplation and practice, so the understanding with relation to these, is divided into speculative and practick, in both of which the image of God was then apparent.

For the understanding speculative. There are some general maxims and notions in the mind of man, which are the rules of discourse, and the basis of all philosophy. Now it was Adam's happiness in the state of innocence to have these clear and unsullied. He came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon 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 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 sin; or at least it rested in the notion, without the smart of the experiment. Could any difficulty have been proposed, the resolution 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 inquiries was an 'I have found it, I have found it!'—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 the deep, to exhaust his time, and to 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 ready upon the first summons; there was freedom and firmness in all their operations. I confess it is as difficult for us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and were still bred up with the same infirmities about us with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and imaginations to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature in the time of innocence, as it is for a peasant bred up in the obscurities of a cottage to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court. But by rating positives by their privatives, and other acts of reason, by which discourse supplies the want of the reports of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding then by the glorious remainders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts, rarities and inventions which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but reliques of an intellect defaced with sin and time. We admire it now only as antiquarians do a piece of old coin for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments and disappearing draughts that remain upon it at present. And certainly that must needs have been glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepit, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

The image of God was no less resplendent in that which we call man's practical understanding; namely, that storehouse of the soul in which are treasured up the rules of action and the seeds of morality.

It was the privilege of Adam innocent to have these notions firm and untainted, to carry his monitor in his bosom, his law in his heart, and to have such a conscience as might be its own casuist. And certainly those actions must needs be regular, where there was an identity between the rule and the faculty. Reason was his tutor and first principles his magna

moralia. Justice then was neither blind to discern nor lame to execute. It was not subject to be imposed upon by a deluded fancy, nor yet to be bribed by a glozing appetite. It was not then as it is now where the conscience has only power to disapprove, and to protest against the exorbitances of passions; and rather to wish than make them otherwise. The voice of conscience now is low and weak, chastising the passions as old Eli did his lustful domineering sons: Not so, my sons, not so.' But the voice of conscience then, was not-This should or this ought to be done; but this must, this shall be done. It spoke like a legislator; the thing spoke was a law: and the manner of speaking it a new obligation.

Pass we downward from man's intellect and will

To the Passions-Anger, as unruly as it now is, yet then it veiled itself by the measures of reason. There was no such thing as the transports of malice or the violences of revenge: no rendering evil for evil, when evil was truly a nonentity, and nowhere to be found. Anger then was like the sword of justice, keen but innocent and righteous. It did not act like fury and then call itself zeal. It always espoused God's honour, and never kindled upon anything but in order to a sacrifice. It sparkled like the coal upon the altar, with the fervour of piety, the heats of devotion, the sallies and vibrations of a harmless activity.

And next, for the lightsome passion of Joy. It was not that which now often usurps this name; that trivial vanishing superficial thing, that only gilds the apprehension and plays upon the surface of the soul. It was not the mere crackling of thorns, a sudden blaze of the spirits, the exultation of a tickled fancy, or a pleased appetite. Joy was then a masculine and a severe thing; the recreation of the judgement, the jubilee of the reason. It was

the result of a real good suitably applied. It commenced upon the solidities of truth and the substance of fruition. It did not run out in voice, or undecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe silently and without noise. It was refreshing but composed; like the pleasantness of youth tempered with the gravity of age; or the mirth of a festival, managed with the silence of contemplation.

A Sermon preached at St. Paul's, 1662. Works, i. 44, etc.

133. Thomas Burnet, 1635-1715. (Handbook, par. 332.) Author of the Telluris Theoria Sacra (1680), which he published in England in 1684. It was intended as a contribution to geology, but it has no scientific value. The style, however, is highly imaginative and harmonious.

All burnt up.

Imagine all Nature now standing in a silent expectation to receive its last doom; the tutelary and destroying angels to have their instructions; everything to be ready for the fatal hour; and then, after a little silence, all the host of heaven to raise their voice, and sing aloud: Let God arise; let his enemies be scattered; as smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. And upon this, as upon a signal given, all the sublunary world breaks into flames, and all the treasures of fire are opene in heaven and in earth.

Thus the conflagration begins. If one should now go about to represent the world on fire, with all the confusions that necessarily must be in nature and in mankind upon that occasion, it would seem to most men a romantic scene. Yet we are sure there must be such a scene. The heavens will pass away with a noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat, and all the works of the earth will be burnt up; and these things cannot come to pass without the greatest disorders imaginable, both in the minds of men and in external nature, and the saddest spectacles that eye can behold. We think it a great matter to see a single person burnt alive; here are millions shrieking in the flames at once. It is frightful to us to look upon a great city in flames, and to see the distractions and misery of the people; here is an universal fire through all the cities of the earth, and an universal

massacre of their inhabitants. Whatsoever the prophets foretold of the desolations of Judea, Jerusalem, or Babylon, in the highest strains, is more than literally accomplished in this last and general calamity; and those only that are spectators of it car make its history.

The disorders in nature and the inanimate world will be no less, nor less strange and unaccountable, than those in mankind. Every element, and every region, so far as the bounds of this fire extend, will be in a tumult and a fury, and the whole habitable world running into confusion. A world is sooner destroyed than made; and nature relapses hastily into that chaos state out of which she came by slow and leisurely motions: as an army advances into the field by just and regular marches; but, when it is broken and routed, it flies with precipitation, and one cannot describe its posture. Fire is a barbarous enemy; it gives no mercy; there is nothing but fury, and rage, and ruin, and destruction wheresoever it prevails, as storm, or hurricane, though it be but the force of air, makes a strange havoc where it comes; but devouring flames, or exhalations set on fire, have still a far greater violence, and carry more terror along with them. Thunder and earthquakes are the sons of fire; and we know nothing in nature more impetuous or more irresistibly destructive than these two. And, accordingly, in this last war of the elements, we may be sure they will bear their parts, and do great execution in the several regions of the world. Earthquakes and subterraneous eruptions will tear the body and bowels of the earth; and thunders and convulsive motions of the air rend the skies. The waters of the sea will boil and struggle with streams of sulphur that run into them; which will make them fume, and smoke, and roar, beyond all storms and tempests; and these noises of the sea will be answered again from the land by falling rocks and mountains. This is a small part of the disorders of the day. . .

But if we suppose the storm over, and that the fire hath got an entire victory over all other bodies, and hath subdued every thing to itself, the conflagration will end in a deluge of fire, or in a sea of fire, covering the whole globe of the earth; for when the exterior region of the earth is melted into a fluor, like molten glass or running metal, it will, according to the nature of other fluids, fill all vacuities and depressions, and fall into a regular