priests would take occasion hereby to vex, persuading them that no honest mirth or recreation was lawful on those days; second, precluding the common people, occupied wholly in winning their bread on other days, from the exercises necessary to "make their bodies more able for war," and, in place thereof, setting up filthy tipplings and drunkenness, and breeding" idle discontented speeches in their ale-houses." 3. It directs that the clergy shall employ instruction and persuasion for the conversion of Papists, and shall "present them that will not conform themselves but obstinately stand out," to the civil authorities, who are required to put the laws in execution against them; and that the bishop of the diocese shall constrain" the Puritans and Precisians" to conform, or quit the country. 4. It provides that the people "be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation, nor from having of May-games, Whitsun-ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time, without impediment or let of Divine service; and that women shall have leave to carry rushes to church for the decoring of it, according to their old custom." This order is accompanied with the following explanations and restrictions: First, "We do here account still as prohibited, all unlawful games to be used on Sundays only, as bear and bull baitings, interludes, and, at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited, bowling." Second, That all known recusants abstaining from coming to Church and Divine service, and any that, though "conform in religion," are not present in the church at the service of God before their going to the said recreations, are barred from this benefit and liberty. Third, That the authorities shall sharply punish all who abuse this liberty before the end of all Divine services for the day. Fourth, That no offensive weapon be carried or used in the said times of recreations. 5. It "straightly commands, that every person shall resort to his own parish church to hear Divine service, and each parish by itself to use the said recreations after Divine service." 6. It concludes with the words, "And our pleasure is, That this our Declaration shall be published by order from the bishop of the diocese, through all the parish churches, and that both our Judges of our Circuits, and our Justices of our Peace, be informed thereof." It would not affect the principle involved in this extraordinary proclamation, even were it true, as Fuller and others relying on his authority have affirmed, that it was merely "local for Lancashire;" but the assertion is not true, for the document calls itself a publication to all his subjects of his Majesty's directions given in that county; and Charles I., when renewing the edict, states that his dear father of blessed memory did, in his princely wisdom, publish a declaration to all his loving subjects concerning lawful sports, from the want of which his people in all other parts of the kingdom suffered in the same kind, though perhaps not in the same degree, as the men and women of Lancashire. Nor is it a justification of the proceeding to say, that the Declaration contained no command to any to practise sports on the Lord's Day, being simply a prohibition of interference with persons who chose so to recreate themselves. To concede the absence of positive injunction in the matter would still leave enough to constitute the measure an atrocity against the sabbatic institution unparalleled at the time in history. Bidding defiance to the practice of good men in every age—to all that had been done by fathers, councils, and princes, for securing the weekly rest from the pollution of worldly pleasure, as for the most part also from the intrusion of secular work-to the doctrine of the Homilies and other formularies of the English Church,-above all, to the Law and Declaration of the King of kings, which respectively said, "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy;" "If thou shalt honour me by the abnegation of thine own ways, pleasure, and words, I will make thee to ride on the high places of the earth;" —and disregarding the claims of his people to a stated time for rest, for reading, for reflection, for domestic worship and instruction, and for expressing sympathy in the sorrows of fellow-creatures around,—the King of England proclaims it to be right, patriotic, and beneficial for his subjects to abandon themselves to thoughtdispelling, exhausting, and dissipating sports in the afternoon of the Lord's Day, and wrong for any man to do his duty to his God, his conscience, his Church, and his country, by attempting to hinder this wholesale desecration of sacred time. 1 4 It was not surprising that the Book of Sports should produce the greatest alarm and sorrow among the best of the clergy and people. Several of the bishops declared their opinion against it.2 Archbishop Abbot being at Croydon, forbade it to be read in the church there on the day appointed.3 Dr. Twisse not only refused to read, but condemned, the Declaration from his pulpit. His Majesty was prudent enough to wink at these offences "against his spiritual supremacy."5 And, though when the Lord Mayor of London commanded the royal carriages to be stopped as they were driving through the city on a Sunday during Divine service, James vowed that "he thought there had been no more kings in England but himself," and directed a warrant to his lordship, ordering him to let the carriages pass, yet when the civic officer yielded, with the answer, "While it was in my power I did my duty, but that being taken away by a higher power, it is my duty to obey," the King, it is said, was pleased, and returned him his thanks. It is generally agreed by writers that the Declaration proved a failure that the matter, as Collier says, was dropt. Fuller states, that the King of his goodness removed the cause of alarm, and that no minister was obliged to read the document from the pulpit. But according to another account, the book came forth with a command, enjoining all ministers to read it to their parishioners; and those that did not were brought into the High Commission, imprisoned, and suspended. Whatever might induce royalty to "drop" The Dancing Book, it certainly was not loving-kindness or tender mercy. 6 The people of Scotland were in the same year treated to what was not less abhorrent to their views than a Book of Sports, in the famous Five Articles which the Court and bishops contrived to force upon them, through a Convention held at Perth, August 1 Fuller (1845), vol. v. pp. 452, 453; Collier's Eccl. Hist. of Britain (1714), vol. ii. p. 712. 2 Bishop Kennet's Complete History of England, vol. ii. p. 709; Neale's Feasts and Fasts, p. 228. Life of Abbot (1777), p. 27. 4 Brook's Puritans, vol. iii. p. 14. 5 Ibid.; Neale's Feasts and Fasts, p. 228. • Kennet's Complete History of England, vol. ii. p. 709. 7 lbid., Rapin, vol. ix. p. 386. 25, 1618. These articles prescribed (along with kneeling at the Lord's Supper, the administration of the same ordinance to the sick in their houses, private baptism, and confirmation), the observance henceforth in the Kirk of Scotland of the following festivals Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and the Ascension of the Saviour. The King ordered these articles to be published at the Market Cross in each borough, and to be read by the ministers in their pulpits, the greater number of whom disobeyed the order. They were ratified by the Parliament in 1621. An incident of the latter year exhibits the practice of the monarch as consistent with his principles, if not with either religion or decorum. Technogamia, or the Marriage of Arts, a Comedy, was, after some alterations by the author, Barton Holyday, acted before the King at Woodstock, on a Sunday night, August 26, 1621. But it being too grave for the King, and too scholastic for the auditory (or as some have said, the actors having taken too much wine before they began), his Majesty, after two acts, offered several times to withdraw, but was induced to remain, which gave occasion to these lines by a certain scholar : At Christ Church Marriage done before the King, The suspension of hostilities consequent on the proceedings of 1618, although of brief duration, affords an opportunity of turning for a little to the sabbatic strife which had already commenced in Holland. 1 Wood's Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. p. 170. CHAPTER III. SKETCHES OF SABBATIC CONTROVERSIES AND LITERATURE FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REFORMATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.-Continued. BEFORE passing from England, and its Sabbath of 1618, we ought to mention another phase of the controversy which appeared there, in that unprecedented year of trespass against Sabbatic rights and sanctities. The opinion, that the seventh-day Sabbath is of unchanged and unchangeable obligation, was mooted, as we have seen, p. 68, so early as 1584, but it attracted little attention till 1618, when John Traske, a schoolmaster in his native county of Somerset, having obtained "orders," which had been at first refused him on the alleged ground of his unfitness, forthwith avowed himself a Sabbatarian, and began to "preach up the Levitical rites."1 For these errors, or, according to another account, for "making of conventicles and factions, by that means which may tend to sedition and commotion, and for scandalizing the king, the bishops, and the clergy," "2" he was censured in the Star-Chamber to be set upon the pillory at Westminster, and from thence to be whipt to the Fleet, there to remain prisoner." Mrs. Traske was, for maintaining the same opinions, also sent to prison, where she spent the remaining fifteen years of her life, resolutely holding by her creed to the last. Traske's views were opposed by Bishop Andrewes in a Star-Chamber speech which has frequently been referred to in the controversy. Lord Bacon, writing to Buckingham on December 1, 1619, says, "This day also, Traske in open Court made a retractation of his wicked opinions in writing. The form was as good as may be. I declared to him that this Court 3 1 Collenge's (Dr. Collinges) Modest Plea for the Lord's Day, p. 74. 2 Hobart's Reports, quoted in Bishop Andrewes' Minor Works (1854), p. 83. 3 Pagitt's Heresiog. (1662), p. 161. G |