God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress.

South rebukes a familiar kind of seasonal piety: the tendency to treat major feasts—here, Easter—as occasions for outward display rather than inward reform. By contrasting “Easter devotions” with “Easter dress,” he satirizes the mismatch between conspicuous respectability and the spiritual seriousness Christianity demands. The line implies that such performative religion harms both public witness (“the credit of their religion”) and private integrity (“the satisfaction of their conscience”). In South’s moral rhetoric, true devotion should be proportionate to the solemnity of the occasion and should manifest in sincere repentance, disciplined worship, and ethical conduct, not merely in fashionable observance.