Robert South
1634-1716. Anglican clergyman. Born at Hackney, he was educated at Oxford, where in 1660 he became public orator. He accepted a royal chaplaincy, but declined further preferment. South's sermons are among the classics of English divinity. He himself prescribed clarity, simplicity, and fervor as the necessary ingredients of a good sermon. He was extremely conscious of his preaching mode and reacted against the differing extravagances both of the Puritans and of a man like Jeremy Taylor. His prose is fluent and skillfully modulated, and he has a penchant for memorable statement-a quality aided by his very ready, epigrammatic wit and his occasional acerbity.