A Sermon: Thou shalt not commit Adultery — Key Ideas to Explore

The Domestic Origin of Transgression

Phillimore locates the root of adultery not in innate depravity but in the gradual erosion of marital affection. He traces a chain of causation beginning with 'very trifling circumstances' that lead to 'inattention first begins, succeeded with dislike, and then successive faults on both sides.' The sermon presents marriage as a fragile ecosystem where small neglects compound into 'a thorough dislike' and, ultimately, 'for revenge, this unhappy sin takes its origin.' Notably, Phillimore assigns agency to both sexes: the wife suffers 'all the disgrace and dishonour the female has to boast of,' while the husband experiences 'dissatisfaction and inquietude at home,' which drives him to seek peace elsewhere—'in vain will he hunt for peace in the whole world besides.' This domestic etiology is grounded in the preacher's observation that 'frequently from very trifling circumstances' the entire structure of fidelity collapses.

A Rhetoric of Immediacy and Alarm

The sermon's persuasive strategy relies on a sense of urgent crisis. Phillimore repeatedly invokes the present moment: 'In the present æra,' 'at a very critical time just entering into life,' and 'the world in general wants a thorough reformation.' His syntax mirrors this urgency, with long, cumulative sentences that pile clause upon clause, as if the preacher cannot pause for breath. For instance, he urges his hearers to 'enquire into the causes of it, pointing out the fatal and dreadful consequences attendant on this course of living, and if haply, we can find them, eradicate the same.' The repetition of 'and' creates a relentless forward motion, while the shift from third-person ('the crime') to first-person plural ('we can find them') draws the congregation into complicity. This rhetorical construction suggests that the evil is not abstract but present and actionable.

The Incomplete Argument: Gaps in the Excerpt

The surviving text breaks off mid-sentence, leaving Phillimore's full argument incomplete. What remains shows a preacher who moves from cause to consequence to remedy, but the final sections—likely containing his 'method' for prevention—are truncated. The existing conclusion exhorts wives to 'submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord' and calls on 'every man' to act accordingly, but the symmetry of this advice is disrupted by the missing passages. Readers must infer that Phillimore intended a reciprocal duty, given his earlier insistence that 'each sex as valuable in its respective situation, in the sight of God, the one as the other.' The fragmentary state of the text underscores the historical distance between the sermon's original delivery and its modern reception, reminding us that this is a recovered document, not a finished treatise.

Phillimore's sermon resists easy categorization: it is at once a homily, a moral treatise, and a social commentary. Readers attentive to the interplay between its theological framework and its domestic psychology will find a work that, despite its incomplete state, offers a vivid window into late 18th-century anxieties about marriage, gender, and communal virtue. The preacher's insistence on the 'mutual advantages' of spouses and his warning against 'trifling' neglects suggest a surprisingly modern concern with the everyday mechanics of fidelity.

I found myself thinking of Phillimore’s sermon on the seventh commandment the other evening, its quiet insistence that domestic neglect breeds ruin. That led me, as old books often do, to another volume on my shelf, The Pentateuch, in Its Progressive Revelations of God to Men — Text and Context, where the same divine law seems to soften into something more patient with our frailty.