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629 John Cosin Sermons preached at Brancepath,1632–331 Among Cosin’s twenty-three surviving sermons are five dealing with the First and Fourth Commandments, all preached at his Brancepath parish outside Durham in 1632 and 1633. The second of these (Sermon X) censures the Roman Catholic veneration of saints along wholly conventional lines and then mounts a considerably more interesting attack on witchcraft, which Cosin clearly regards as mere superstition—providing those who have suffered misfortune with a scapegoat on whom to vent their rage—but also as a sin: not the sin of falsely accusing old women, however, but of “a whoring after strange gods.” A skeptical modernity regarding the reality of witchcraft dovetails with a classically Protestant stress on God’s sole and absolute sovereignty. Neither figures in most pictures of Laudianism. Yet Cosin’s unquestionably Laudian sermons often strike a classically Protestant note; numerous passages sound very much like such godly Calvinist authors as Dod and Bayly. Then again, the French Catholics quoted in Jean Delumeau’s Guilt and fear in the West not infrequently sound like puritan caricatures. In its basic principles, Cosin’s view of the Fourth Commandment seems indistinguishable from Bayly’s Sabbatarianism.2 They diverge only over some details: for example, Bayly understands the Commandment as pertaining to the Lord’s Day alone; Cosin, to all days set apart for the worship of God, including Sundays, but also including the feasts and fasts of the liturgical year. In practice, of course, this disagreement over the scope of the Commandment underwrote sharply contrasting styles of worship.3 The devil is in the details. Yet on the more fundamental 1 For the synopsis of Cosin’s life and labors, see the introduction prefacing his 1621 Epiphany sermon . 2 Cosin’s sermons on the Fourth Commandment date from 1633, shortly before or after the October 1633 proclamation reissuing the Book of Sports. Although Cosin does not explicitly contest its allowing of secular pastimes following the afternoon service, his insistence on a “whole day” spent in God’s service suggests that he shared Bayly’s reservations. 3 On the puritan Sabbath with its Psalm-singing, fasting, and sermon-gadding, see Patrick Collinson , “Elizabethan and Jacobean puritanism as forms of popular religious culture,” The culture of English Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603–1638 630 issues of whether the Fourth Commandment remains binding on Christians, whether it is a precept of natural law, whether it has anything like the moral weight of the other Commandments, whether it forbids both ordinary labor and secular recreations, Cosin and Bayly stand together. The similarities between Cosin’s ninth sermon and Dod’s Exposition of the Ten Commandments point to a deeper congruence. For both, true religion hinges on submission to God’s will and hence on abjuring both one’s own sense of good and bad and one’s own natural desires for freedom and pleasure. Religion is, in Cosin’s words, a “yoke,” “subjection ,” “law.” If nothing else, these texts help us grasp why Paradise Lost makes obedience , which is now primarily valued in dogs, the central virtue for men and angels alike. Cosin’s sermon also sheds considerable light on Laudian rule—on the now-profoundlyalien assumptions that motivated it and made it intelligible: the moral recoil from a polity where men are not “forced nor bound to anything but what they are willing to do of themselves,” coupled with the recognition that this is precisely the sort of government “the world labors for”; the understanding of authority—of its proper use—as resisting the will of the people; as compelling often resentful subjects to act for the common good, for their souls’ eternal welfare, and for the greater glory of God.4 puritanism, 1560–1700, ed. Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales (Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), 32–57, esp. 46–57. See also Dow’s account of godly fast days . 4 See, in this volume, Laud , Buckeridge , and Adams . ...

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