SERMON II.

PREACHED AT THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PAUL'S, NOVEMBER THE 9TH, 1662.

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY OF LONDON.

RIGHT HONORABLE,

WHEN I consider how impossible it is for a person of my condition to produce, and consequently how imprudent to attempt, any thing in proportion either to the ampleness of the body you represent, or of the places you bear, I should be kept from venturing so poor a piece, designed to live but an hour, in so lasting a publication; did not what your civility calls a request, your greatness render a command. The truth is, in things not unlawful, great persons can not be properly said to request; because, all things considered, they must not be denied. To me it was honor enough to have your audience, enjoyment enough to behold your happy change, and to see the same city, the metropolis of loyalty and of the kingdom, to behold the glory of English churches reformed, that is, delivered from the reformers; and to find at least the service of the church repaired, though not the building; to see St. Paul's delivered from beasts here, as well as St. Paul at Ephesus; and to view the church thronged only with troops of auditors, not of horse. This I could fully have acquiesced in, and received a large personal reward in my particular share of the public joy; but since you are further pleased, I will not say by your judgment to approve, but by your acceptance to encourage the raw endeavors of a young divine, I shall take it for an opportunity, not as others in their sage prudence use to do, to quote three or four texts of scripture, and to tell you how you are to rule the city out of a concordance; no, I bring not instructions, but what much better befits both you and myself, your commendations. For I look upon your city as the great and magnificent stage of business, and by consequence the best place of improvement; for from the school we go to the university, but from the universities to

London. And therefore as in your city meetings you must be esteemed the most considerable body of the nation; so, met in the church, I look upon you as an auditory fit to be waited on, as you are, by both universities. And when I remember how instrumental you have been to recover this universal settlement, and to retrieve the old spirit of loyalty to kings, (as an ancient testimony of which you bear not the sword in vain ;) I seem in a manner deputed from Oxford, not so much a preacher to supply a course, as orator to present her thanks. As for the ensuing discourse, which (lest I chance to be traduced for a plagiary by him who has played the thief) I think fit to tell the world by the way, was one of those that by a worthy hand were stolen from me in the king's chapel, and are still detained; and to which now accidentally published by your honor's order, your patronage must give both value and protection. You will find me in it not to have pitched upon any subject, that men's guilt, and the consequent of guilt, their concernment might render liable to exception; nor to have rubbed up the memory of what some heretofore in the city did, which more and better now detest, and therefore expiate: but my subject is inoffensive, harmless, and innocent as the state of innocence itself, and (I hope) suitable to the present design and genius of this nation; which is, or should be, to return to that innocence, which it lost long since the fall. Briefly, my business is, by describing what man was in his first estate, to upbraid him with what he is in his present: between whom, innocent and fallen, (that in a word I may suit the subject to the place of my discourse,) there is as great an unlikeness, as between St. Paul's a cathedral, and St. Paul's a stable. But I must not forestall myself, nor transcribe the work into the dedication. I shall now only desire you to accept the issue of your own requests; the gratification of which I have here consulted so much before my own reputation; while like the poor widow I endeavor to show my officiousness by an offering, though I betray my poverty by the measure; not so much caring, though I appear neither preacher nor scholar, (which terms we have been taught upon good reason to distinguish,) so I may in this but show myself

Your honors'

very humble servant, ROBERT SOUTH.

WORCESTER-HOUSE.

Nov. 24, 1662.

GENESIS i. 27. — So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created

Η

he him.

HOW hard it is for natural reason to discover a creation before revealed, or being revealed to believe it, the strange opinions of the old philosophers, and the infidelity of modern atheists, is too sad a demonstration. To run the world back to its first original and infancy, and (as it were) to view nature in its cradle, to trace the outgoings of the Ancient of days in the first instance and specimen of his creative power, is a research too great for any mortal inquiry and we might continue our scrutiny to the end of the world, before natural reason would be able to find out when it begun.

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Epicurus's discourse concerning the original of the world is so fabulous and ridiculously merry, that we may well judge the design of his philosophy to have been pleasure, and not instruction.

Aristotle held, that it streamed by connatural result and emanation from God, the infinite and eternal mind, as the light issues from the sun; so that there was no instant of duration assignable of God's eternal existence, in which the world did not also coexist.

Others held a fortuitous concourse of atoms; but all seem jointly to explode a creation; still beating upon this ground, that to produce something out of nothing is impossible and incomprehensible: incomprehensible indeed I grant, but not therefore impossible. There is not the least transaction of sense and motion in the whole man, but philosophers are at a loss to comprehend, I am sure they are to explain it. Wherefore it is not always rational to measure the truth of an assertion by the standard of our apprehension.

But to bring things even to the bare perceptions of reason, I appeal to any one, who shall impartially reflect upon the ideas and conceptions of his own mind, whether he doth not find it as easy and suitable to his natural notions, to conceive that an infinite almighty power might produce a thing out of nothing, and make that to exist de novo, which did not exist before; as to conceive the world to have had no beginning,

but to have existed from eternity: which, were it so proper for this place and exercise, I could easily demonstrate to be attended with no small train of absurdities. But then, besides that the acknowledging of a creation is safe, and the denial of it dangerous and irreligious, and yet not more (perhaps much less) demonstrable than the affirmative; so, over and above, it gives me this advantage, that, let it seem never so strange, uncouth, and impossible, the nonplus of my reason will yield a fairer opportunity to my faith.

In this chapter, we have God surveying the works of the creation, and leaving this general impress or character upon them, that they were exceeding good. What an omnipotence wrought, we have an omniscience to approve. But as it is reasonable to imagine that there is more of design, and consequently more of perfection, in the last work, we have God here giving his last stroke, and summing up all into man, the whole into a part, the universe into an individual: so that, whereas in other creatures we have but the trace of his footsteps, in man we have the draught of his hand. In him were united all the scattered perfections of the creature; all the graces and ornaments, all the airs and features of being, were abridged into this small, yet full system of nature and divinity: as we might well imagine that the great artificer would be more than ordinarily exact in drawing his own picture.

The work that I shall undertake from these words, shall be to show what this image of God in man is, and wherein it doth consist. Which I shall do these two ways: 1. Negatively, by showing wherein it doth not consist. 2. Positively, by showing wherein it does.

For the first of these, we are to remove the erroneous opinion of the Socinians. They deny that the image of God consisted in any habitual perfections that adorned the soul of Adam: but as to his understanding bring him in void of all notion, a rude unwritten blank; making him to be created as much an infant as others are born; sent into the world only to read and spell out a God in the works of creation, to learn by degrees, till at length his understanding grew up to the stature of his body. Also without any inherent habits of virtue in his will; thus divesting him of all, and

stripping him to his bare essence; so that all the perfection they allowed his understanding was aptness and docility; and all that they attributed to his will was a possibility to be virtuous.

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But wherein then, according to their opinion, did this image of God consist? Why, in that power and dominion that God gave Adam over the creatures in that he was vouched his immediate deputy upon earth, the viceroy of the creation, and lord - lieutenant of the world. But that this power and dominion is not adequately and formally the image of God, but only a part of it, is clear from hence; because then he that had most of this, would have most of God's image and consequently Nimrod had more of it than Noah, Saul than Samuel, the persecutors than the martyrs, and Cæsar than Christ himself, which to assert is a blasphemous paradox. And if the image of God is only grandeur, power, and sovereignty, certainly we have been hitherto much mistaken in our duty: and hereafter are by all means to beware of making ourselves unlike God, by too much self-denial and humility. I am not ignorant that some may distinguish between ¿govσía and Súvaμis, between a lawful authority and an actual power: and affirm, that God's image consists only in the former; which wicked princes, such as Saul and Nimrod, have not, though they possess the latter. But to this I

answer,

1. That the scripture neither makes nor owns such a distinction: nor anywhere asserts, that when princes begin to be wicked, they cease of right to be governors. And to this, that when God renewed this charter of man's sovereignty over the creatures to Noah and his family, we find no exception at all, but that Cham stood as fully invested with this right as any of his brethren.

2. But secondly; this savors of something ranker than Socinianism, even the tenents of the fifth monarchy, and of sovereignty founded only upon saintship; and therefore fitter to be answered by the judge, than by the divine; and to receive its confutation at the bar of justice, than from the pulpit.

Having now made our way through this false opinion, we are in the next place to lay down positively what this image