and obedient Servant,
WHITE KENNET.
But for Drollery, the Reverend Dr. South outdoes even Christ-Church, and fills all his Performances with it, and throws it out against the Enemies of the Church, and in particular against the late Dr. Sherlock, whom he thought fit to single out. I shall select some Passages from his Writings against the said Doctor, which cannot but entertain the High-Church Orthodox Reader, and reconcile him to a Drollery so well employ’d.
He stiles him a great good Man, as a certain poor Wretch, meaning Prior, calls him.
Again, he says[122], “There is hardly any one Subject which he (that is Dr. Sherlock) has wrote upon Popery excepted, that he has wrote both for it and against it. Could any thing be more sharp and bitter against the Dissenters than what this Man wrote in his Answer to the Protestant Reconciler; and yet how frankly, or rather fulsomly does he open both his Arms to embrace them in his Sermon preach’d before the Lord Mayor on November 4, 1688. Tho I dare say, that the Dissenters themselves are of that Constancy, as to own that they were of the same Principles in 88 that they were of in 85; but the Truth is, old Friendships cannot be so easily forgot: And it has been an Observation made by some, that hardly can any one be found, who was first tainted with a Conventicle, whom a Cathedral could ever after cure, but that still upon every cross turn of Affairs against the Church, the irresistible Magnetism of the Good Old Cause (as some still think it) would quickly draw him out of the Good Old Way. The Fable tells us of a Cat once turn’d into a Woman, but the next sight of a Mouse quickly dissolv’d the Metamorphosis, cashier’d the Woman, and restor’d the Brute. And some Virtuosi (skill’d in the useful Philosophy of Alterations) have thought her much a Gainer by the latter Change, there being so many unlucky Turns in the World, in which it is not half so safe and advantageous to walk upright, as to be able to fall always upon one’s Legs.”
Again, Dr. South says[123], “When I consider how wonderfully pleas’d the Man is with these two new started Terms (Self-consciousness and mutual Consciousness) so high in Sound and so empty of Sense, instead of one substantial word (Omniscience) which gives us all that can be pretended useful in them, with vast Overplus and Advantage, and even swallows them up, as Moses’s Rod did those pitiful Tools of the Magicians: This (I say) brings to my mind (whether I will or no) a certain Story of a grave Person, who riding in the Road with his Servant, and finding himself something uneasy in his Saddle, bespoke his Servant thus: John (says he) alight, and first take off the Saddle that is upon my Horse, and then take off the Saddle that is upon your Horse; and when you have done this, put the Saddle that was upon my Horse, upon your Horse; and put the Saddle that was upon your Horse, upon my Horse. Whereupon the Man, who had not studied the Philosophy of Saddles (whether Ambling or Trotting) so exactly as his Master, replies something short upon him; Lord, Master, what need all these words? Could you not as well have said, Let us change Saddles? Now I must confess, I think the Servant was much in the right; tho the Master having a rational Head of his own, and being withal willing to make the Notion of changing Saddles more plain, easy and intelligible, and to give a clearer Explication of that word (which his Forefathers, how good Horsemen soever they might have been, yet were not equally happy in explaining of) was pleas’d to set it forth by that more full and accurate Circumlocution.”
He says[124], The Author, Dr. Sherlock, is no doubt a Grecian in his Heart! And the tenth Chapter of the Animadversions is one continued Banter upon the Dean for his Ignorance in Greek and Latin, and even his Inability to spell: All which he closes with saying, “That St. Paul’s School is certainly an excellent School, and St. Paul’s Church a most noble Church; and therefore he thinks that he directs his Course very prudently, and happily too, who in his Passage to such a Cathedral, takes a School in his way.”
Again, he says[125], “He cannot see any new Advantage that the Dean has got over the Socinians, unless it be, that the Dean thinks his three Gods will be too hard for their one.”
After citing several Scurrilities of the Dean[126], (who it must be confess’d, appears therein a great Banterer also of Dr. South and his Performance) the Dr. says, “These, with several more of the like Gravel-Lane Elegancies, are all of them such peculiar Strictures of the Dean’s Genius, that he might very well spare his Name, where he had made himself so well known by his Mark; for all the foregoing Oyster-Wive-Kennel-Rhetorick seems so naturally to flow from him, who had been so long Rector of St. Botolph (with the well-spoken Billingsgate under his Care) that (as much a Teacher as he was) it may well be question’d, whether he has learn’d more from his Parish, than his Parish from him.—All favours of the Porter, the Carman, and the Waterman; and a pleasant Scene it must be to see the Master of the Temple laying about him in the Language of the Stairs.”
To the Dean’s Scoff, that this Argument, &c. was worth its weight in Gold, tho the Dean fears it will not much enrich the Buyer, the Doctor replies[127], “What is that to him? Let him mind his own Markets, who never writes to enrich the Buyer but the Seller; and that Seller is himself: and since he is so, well is it for his Books and his Bookseller too, that Men generally buy before they read.”