"A Spectacle Pleasing to God and Man:" Sympathy and the Show of Charity in the Restoration Spittle Sermons

In the 1670s the long-standing Spittle sermons became almost exclusively charity sermons, many of which argued that almsdeeds are accompanied with a sensual pleasure and articulated principles of sympathetic response involving an affective theatricality. This paper considers the place of these sermons and their ancillary children's processions in the London public sphere, how they worked as spectacle to evoke pity from spectators, and how, despite the Latitudinarian tendency toward rationalism, they often contained elements of what was deemed an empirically nebulous "show" or "fiction."