A discourse concerning Gods judgements by Simon Ford, London 1678

FORD, Simon  A discourse concerning Gods judgements; resolving many weighty questions and cases relating to them. Preached (for the substance of it) at Old Swinford in Worcestershire. (And now published to accompany the annexed narrative concerning the man whose hands and legs lately rotted off, in the neighbouring parish of Kings Swinford in Staffordshire, penned by another authour. By Simon Ford, D.D. and Rector of Old Swinford.   London : printed for Hen. Brome, at the Gun at the west-end of s. Pauls, 1678.

Octavo. [Collation as issued.] Early (probably late 18th-century) quarter calf over marbled boards, gilt spine label “Ford on God’s Judgments”. Some browning and spotting, old ink annotations to title (including early note describing it as “uncommon” and “very curious”), small edge wear and occasional creasing, but a sound, attractive copy with good margins.

A vivid and highly evocative Restoration sermon by Simon Ford (1619–1699), preached at Old Swinford in Worcestershire and published with a sensational appended narrative of a local man “whose Hands and Legs lately Rotted off” in the neighbouring parish of Kings-Swinford in Staffordshire. The work belongs to the genre of seventeenth-century providential literature, in which physical calamities, disease, and deformity were interpreted as manifestations of divine judgement and moral warning.

Ford addresses a series of “weighty questions and cases” relating to God’s judgements, combining scriptural exegesis, casuistry, and pastoral admonition, and explicitly frames his discourse around a recent and notorious local घटना, the horrific disintegration of a man’s limbs, presented as a visible token of God’s displeasure. Such tracts, poised between theology, early medical curiosity, and popular belief, are among the most striking survivals of post-Civil War English religious culture.

The appended narrative of bodily decay places the work in close relationship with contemporary pamphlets on monstrous births, prodigies, plague, and other “remarkable providences”, making it of particular interest not only to theologians but also to collectors of early medicine, social history, and the history of attitudes to disease and disability.

Simon Ford, D.D. (1619–1699) was a prominent English divine, educated at Oxford, and later Rector of Old Swinford. He was a noted preacher and moral theologian, associated with the more rigorous and reforming wing of the Church, and was ejected from his living in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity. Ford was well known for his writings on conscience, providence, and moral judgement, and his works were widely read among both conformist and nonconformist audiences in the later seventeenth century.

Bibliographical Note

Henry Brome was an active London publisher specialising in theological, controversial, and topical works. Publications of this type were often cheaply produced and heavily used, and surviving copies are uncommon in good, presentable condition, many having perished or surviving only in institutional bindings. The present copy, in an attractive early binding with early manuscript annotation, is a notably pleasing survival.

This is a compelling example of Restoration religious psychology, revealing how bodily catastrophe was read as moral narrative and divine sign. The specificity of place (Old Swinford and Kings-Swinford), the sensational subject matter, and the union of sermon and narrative make this a particularly desirable and marketable instance of English providential literature.