QUERIES ON SOUTH'S SERMONS.
I should be glad to know the authority for the following statement in South's sermon, Against long Extempore Prayers, vol. i. p. 251., Tegg's edition, 1843:
"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 friar, 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 design to bring the people first to a contempt, and from thence to an utter hatred 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. 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 negociation, 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."
Also, who was W. W., the author of "a virulent and insulting pamphlet, entitled, A Letter to a Member of Parliament, printed in the year 1697, and as like the author himself, W. W., as malice can make it," referred to in a note by South at the end of his sermon on The Recompence of the Reward, vol. ii. p. 152. Is this pamphlet still in existence?
W. H. Gunner.
Winchester.