ROBERT

See also:

• SOUTH
• ROBERT SOUTH (1634–1716)

SOUTH (1634–1716)  , English divine, was born at Hackney, Middlesex, in September 1634 . He was educated at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford . Before taking orders in 1658 he was in the habit of preaching as the champion of Calvinism against Socinianism and Arminianism . He also at this time showed a leaning to Presbyterianism, but on the approach of the Restoration his views on church government underwent a change; indeed, he was always regarded as a time-server, though by no means a self-seeker . On the loth of August 166o he was chosen public orator of the university, and in 1661 domestic chaplain to Lord Clarendon . In March 1663 he was made prebendary of Westminster, and shortly afterwards he received from his university the degree of D.D . In 1667 he became chaplain to the duke of York . He was a zealous advocate of the doctrine of passive obedience, and strongly opposed the Toleration Act, declaiming in unmeasured terms against the various Nonconformist sects . In 1676 he was appointed chaplain to Lawrence Hyde (afterwards earl of Rochester), ambassador-extraordinary to the king of Poland, and of his visit he sent an interesting account to Edward Pocockein a letter, dated Dantzic, 16th December, 1677, which was printed along with South's Posthumous Works in 1717 . In 1678 he was presented to the rectory of Islip, Oxfordshire . Owing, it is said, to a personal grudge, South in 1693 published with transparent anonymity Animadversions on Dr Sherlock's' Book, entitled a Vindication of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity, in which the views of William Sherlock (q.v.) were attacked with much sarcastic bitterness . Sherlock, in answer, published a Defence in 1694, to which South replied in Tritheism Charged upon Dr Sherlock's New Notion of the Trinity, and the Charge Made Good .

The controversy was carried by the

rival parties into the pulpit, and occasioned such keen feeling that the king interposed to stop it . During the greater part of the reign of Anne South remained comparatively quiet, but in 1710 he ranked himself among the partisans of Sacheverell . He declined the see of Rochester and the deanery of Westminster in 1713 . He died on the 8th of July 1716, and was buried in Westminster Abbey . South had a vigorous style and his sermons were marked by homely and humorous appeal . His wit generally inclines towards sarcasm, and it was probably the knowledge of his quarrelsome temperament that prevented his promotion to a bishopric . He was noted for the extent of his charities . He published a large number of single sermons, and they appeared in a collected form In 1692 in six volumes, reaching a second edition in his lifetime in 1715 . There have been several later issues; one in two volumes, with a memoir (Bohn, 1845) . His Opera posthuma latina, including his will, his Latin poems, and his orations while public orator, with memoirs of his life, appeared in 1717 . An edition of his works in 7 vols. was published at Oxford in 1823, another in 5 vols. in 1842 . See also W .

C .

Lake, Classic Preachers of the English Church (1st series, 1877) . The contemporary notice of South by Anthony Wood in his Athenae is strongly hostile, said to be due to a jest made by South at Wood's expense .