courts, but in the High Commission Ecclesiastical." This procedure caused great commotion among the bishops and the doctors of the civil law, and drew forth many "motions, discourses, and arguments from year to year." But the movers of these Prohibitions were successful, supported as they were by the clear and constitutional pre-eminence of the common to the canon law; and many causes were thus wrested from the courts of the bishops, and even from the queen's Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The number of Prohibitions increased from year to year during the remainder of this reign; the civilians sunk in business and in repute; the common law was once more instated in its own proper supremacy; and the people were relieved from numberless oppressions which had issued from the bottomless pit of laws having authority perilously uncertain and properties wondrously Protean. This was indeed a Puritan triumph.1 Thus if our data be correct - Puritanism had lost nothing in numbers, in popular regard, or in courage. Prelacy had lost nothing of its spirit or of its power to persecute for ecclesiastical offences. Puritan and prelate - touching matters of conformity alike rested and were at truce. They rested, for they were tired. They tacitly assented to truce, for to each it was politic. The dawn of the approaching century found them awake again, each girded for a new contest, and rejoicing, like a strong man refreshed, to run the race again. 1 Strype's Whitgift, 521, 537 - 541. Neal, I. 212. CHAPTER XVII. THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. — WILLIAM, LORD BURLEIGH. OPINIONS OF CRANMER, COVERDALE, BULLINGER, CALVIN, AND QUEEN ELIZABETH RESPECTING THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. THE QUEEN'S EXAMPLE. THE HABITS OF THE PEOPLE ON SUNDAYS. THE CATASTROPHE AT SOUTHWARK. ITS MORAL EFFECT UPON THE PEOPLE. ACTION IN PARLIAMENT FOR THE BETTER OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH DAY. THE EFFORTS OF SMITH AND OF GREENHAM FOR THE SAME OBJECT. DR. BOUND'S BOOK Book UPON THE SABBATH. THE NEW DOCTRINE GENERALLY RECEIVED BY THE PEOPLE. OPPOSITION OF THE PRELATES. LORD BURLEIGH'S BODILY INFIRMITIES. HIS LAST SICKNESS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER. 1559-1599. THE fathers of the English Reformation held to an entire sanctification of the Christian Sabbath. Becon, chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, published a catechism, which must have had his Grace's approval, in which he stated: "To keep holy the Sabbath day is not to cease from bodily labor that thou shouldst . give thy mind to gallant apparel, to banqueting, to idle talk, to vain pastimes,. but that thou, setting aside all worldly businesses, shouldst the more freely apply thyself to read, hear, and learn the word of God, to pray in the temple with the congregation, and, casting away the works of the flesh, wholly exercise thyself in fruits of the spirit."1 Miles Coverdale, while Bishop of Exeter, distin 1 Marsden, 242, note. guished between the Decalogue and the Jewish ordinances added to it as by-laws. He declared that each of the Ten Commandments had existence and binding force before their proclamation from Sinai; and said particularly of the fourth, "The Sabbath did not the Lord here ordain first, but on the seventh day of the creation." "1 So Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, - whose writings were adopted into the religious literature of Elizabeth's day, held that the Sabbath was no Jewish institution, but one "that was of old ordained, and given first of all to the ancient fathers, and then again renewed by the Lord and beaten into the memory of the people of Israel." He says further: "The Sabbath is ceremonial so far forth as it is joined to sacrifices and other Jewish ceremonies, and so far forth as it is tied to a certain time. But in respect that on the Sabbath day religion and true godliness are exercised and published, that a just and seemly order is kept in the Church, it is perpetual, and not ceremonial. Now, as there ought to be an appointed place, so likewise must there be a prescribed time for the outward exercise of religion. . . . . . They of the primitive Church, therefore, did change the Sabbath day, lest they should have seemed to have imitated the Jews and still to have retained their orders and ceremonies. They transgress this commandment that cease not from evil works, but abuse the Sabbath's rest to the provoking of fleshly pleasFor they keep the Sabbath to God, but work to the Devil, in dicing, in drinking, in dancing, ures. . . . and feeding their humors with the vanities of this world.. They sin against this precept which either exercise any handy occupation on the Sabbath day, or else lie wrapt in bed and fast asleep till the day be almost spent. They offend in this precept that awe their servants to work, and by appointing them to other business do draw them from the worship of God."1 Calvin took low ground upon this subject, speaking of the Sabbath as "abrogated," to be used by Christians only as a remedy necessary for the preservation of order in the Church, for hearing the Word, for breaking the mystic bread, for public prayers, and to let servants and laborers rest. The pernicious influence of his views still infects the Continental churches." 3 2 Queen Elizabeth and her ductile prelates took like ground. In the first year of her reign, she ordered that "all parsons, vicars, and curates, shall teach and declare unto their parishioners, that they may with a safe and quiet conscience, after their Common Prayer in time of harvest, labor upon the holy and festival days, and save that thing which God hath sent and if, for any scrupulosity or grudge of conscience, men should superstitiously abstain from working upon those days, that then they should grievously offend and displease God."4 So far as her example had influence, she encouraged her people not only to labor, but to merry-making, on the Lord's day; as during her visit to Kenilworth Castle, where she devoutly attended church on Sunday mornings to hear prayers and sermons, but indulged in "sports and pastimes as on other days in the afternoons." 1 The effect of the royal example was but natural. The queen gave an inch, the people took an ell, doing precisely what Bullinger describes as "working to the Devil." We cannot wonder, therefore, that so early as the year 1562 "the bishops were moved to observe what little regard was now-a-days had to the Lord's day, and how sparingly people resorted to church." We think it no marvel, that "the people commonly kept fairs and markets on this day, and other great festivals"; that "those that kept victualling houses, and artificers, admitted guests and opened their shops in time of divine service"; that "handicraftsmen would follow their works, and others go abroad about their worldly employments, on these as well as on other days."2 Except during divine service, such occupations on Sundays were as much authorized by the queen's injunction as was the labor of the husbandman. "It was the custom" with the Protestant churches on the Continent thanks in part to Calvin- for the people after divine service "to refresh themselves lawful on the Sabbath-day to gather in, and keep from spoiling, the hay or corn which by reason of unseasonable weather hath lain too long abroad, and likely to be worse if it stay any longer?" (Ibid., 265.) But this is a "liberty" far more 1 Ante, Vol. II. p. 136, note. |