or Rost to be made readie for their dinners on the Sabbath-day, lest by so doing they should eate and drinke their owne damnation;' of some that on a Sunday will not sell a pint of wine, or the like commoditie; though wine was made by God, not only for man's often infirmities, but to make glad his heart, and refresh his spirits; and therefore no less requisite on the Lord's Day than any other;' and of some two or three maid-servants, 'who, though they were content to dresse their meat upon the Sabbath, yet by no meanes could be perswaded either to wash their dishes or make cleane their kitchen.' A wilder case of fanatical darkness yet remains to be told. narrator, with equal astonishment and grief, of all affects me, is, That a gentlewoman, at whose house I lay in Leicester, the last Northerne Progresse, anno 1634, expressed a great desire to see the King and Queene, who were then both there. And when I proffered her my service, to satisfy that loyall longing, she thanked me, but refused the favour, because it was a Sabbath day. Unto so strange a bondage are the people brought, that, as I before said, a greater never was imposed on the Jewes themselves, what time the consciences of that people were pinned most closely on the sleeves of the Scribes and Pharisees.'

But,' says the that which most

The triumph of Puritanism terminated the long and disastrous controversy concerning the manner in which Christians should keep the Lord's Day. The parliament put an end to the Sunday sports, and its divines instructed their flocks to withdraw themselves as completely as possible from scenes of worldly pleasure on the day which it was their duty to spend in prayer, charitable works, religious study, and common worship. And when the regime of the saints came to an end, the cavaliers, who restored episcopacy and consigned the nonconforming ministers to miserable poverty, did not venture on another republication of the Book of Sports.' The Prayerbook and its ceremonies were revived; but there was no attempt on the part of the chief restorers to bring about an universal re-institution of the profane practices of the medieval Sunday. Maypoles were replanted on Charles's return from exile; and long after his death-even down to times within the memory of living men—many of our rural parishes retained vestiges of

their old Sunday sports, in social gatherings at churchyard corners and games upon the turf of commons; but in spite of local demonstrations against new ways and corresponding endeavours to re-introduce discarded fashions, the English Sunday of the eighteenth century was in most of its social characteristics identical with the Sunday of the Commonwealth Period. In fact the modern Sunday, with its quietude and peacefulness, with its general abstinence from open pleasure and almost universal forbearance from needless labour, with its orderliness in places of worship and its precise decorum in the public ways, is one of the valuable legacies that have come to us from the Puritanism of old time.

It is not enough,' Robert Nelson observes in his Companion to the Festivals and Feasts of the Church of England,' 'that we rest from the works of our calling, but our time must be employed in all such religious exercises as tend to the glory of God, and the salvation of our souls. We must regularly frequent the worship of God in the public assemblies, join in the prayers of the church, hear his holy word, receive the blessed sacrament when administered, and contribute to the relief of the poor, if there be any collection for their support. In private, we ought to enlarge our ordinary devotions, and to make the subject of them chiefly to consist in thanksgivings for works of Creation and Redemption; withal, recollecting all those particular mercies we have received from the bounty of heaven through the whole course of our lives; to improve our knowledge by reading and meditating upon divine subjects; to instruct our children and families; to visit the sick and the poor, comforting them by seasonable assistance; and if we converse with our friends and neighbours, to season our discourse with prudent and profitable hints for the advancement of piety; and to take care that no sourness or moroseness mingle with our serious frame of mind.' Robert Nelson makes no reflections upon the nice and excessive scrupulosity of devout persons who refrain superstitiously on the Lord's Day from needful labour,-i. e. such labour as worldly men might think convenient to the Sabbath. Nor does he urge on his readers the propriety of closing the Sunday with a game of quoits or pitch-bar. On the contrary, this high-church layman of the

Restoration period insists that the Sunday should be spent just as the Elizabethan Puritans spent it,-just as Richard Baxter's Puritanical father spent it at Eaton Constantine; and the terms in which he states this view are such as would have been derided as sheer Puritanical cant in the times when prelates were eloquent about the beneficial influence of Sunday wakes, and so conscientious a parish priest as George Herbert was of opinion that a model country parson could not close the Lord's Day better than by giving or being present at a supper-party.*

But, though the Restoration adopted the Commonwealth Sunday, so far as its purely social characteristics are concerned, it would be a mistake to suppose that the restorers cordially approved the tone of the restful day, which they forbore, on political grounds, to deprive of the peacefulness which the saints had imparted to it. On the contrary, the society' of the period-the world of fashion and wealth in town and in the country-adhered as far as possible to the Sunday usages of Charles the First's ascendancy. Well pleased to see his tenants and peasantry gather round the restored Maypole, and dance to the music of a fiddle on the Lord's Day, and cautiously encouraging his people to keep up their old Sunday customs,' the typical Church-and-State squire of Charles the Second's reign continued to regard the Sabbath afternoon and evening as a time specially provided for social hilarity—for dancing and suppers, for cards and wine. In the chief reception-room of his manorhouse the honest gentleman on Sunday evening was usually surrounded by his boon companions who, drinking confusion to hypocrites and success to the present company, alternately cursed Noll's memory, and swore that the nonconformists would sooner or later bring the country to ruin.

And what the squire did in his hall, the king did in his palace, where Sunday evening, beyond every other time of the week, was the occasion when courtiers of both sexes crowded its

At night,' says Herbert, of his model pastor, he thinks it a very fit time, both suitable to the joy of the day, and without hinderance to publicke duties, either to entertaine some of his friends, or to be entertained of them; where he takes occasion to discourse of such things as are profitable and pleasant, and to raise up their minds to apprehend God's good blessing to our Church and State; that order is kept in the one and peace in the other without disturbance or interruption of publick divine offices.'

galleries and flocked to the royal presence. Every reading Englishman knows Evelyn's description of Charles the Second's court on the last Sunday evening of the monarch's life,— a piece of history which Mr. E. M. Ward has adequately illustrated in a noble picture. 'I can never forget,' says the diarist in a journal which represents the feelings of his old age, when it was actually penned from old memoranda, rather than the sentiments which the recorded events occasioned at the time of their occurrence, the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day se'ennight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine, &c., &c., a French boy singing lovesongs, in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank of at least 2000 gold before them: upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflections with astonishment. Six days after was all in the dust.'

I suspect that Evelyn was far less shocked at this scene than he imagined himself to have been, when he reflected on it, after the king's death had changed the gay spectacle into a solemn and appalling lesson. I doubt not that, writing in his old age and the following century, when Robert Nelson's notions respecting Sunday had been generally accepted by persons of quality, the diarist was much more sensible of the profanity of the revel than he was when taking part in it. Very likely his friends may have expressed disapprobation at the dissoluteness of the company and the magnitude of the gamblers' stake, but it is not credible that they were shocked at finding their sovereign the centre of a glittering throng on a Sunday evening. Charles was merely spending the time in his customary way,-the way in which he was well known to spend it, and in which every world-loving nobleman, every opulent and world-loving Londoner, was wont to pass the Sabbath evening according to his means. Had Evelyn really disapproved of such practices in 1685, he would not have voluntarily presented himself before his sovereign when the court was in full enjoyment of the Sunday evening's festival.

PART V.-RELIGION UNDER THE
COMMONWEALTH.

So

CHAPTER I.

RESULTS OF PURITANISM ON THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE

PRESENT GENERATION.

O far as their political principles and theological views are concerned, the Friends maintain that they are to-day exactly what they were two centuries since; and though the strictest members of their society may perhaps have departed in certain subtleties farther than they are aware from the doctrines of their famous founder, it cannot be questioned that the Quakers, with no written code of articles of faith, have adhered more closely to their original tenets than any other body of religious separatists who proceeded from the spiritual agitations immediately consequent on our severance from the Church of Rome. In polity they are as much the enemies of war and priestly domination as they were when the Leicestershire enthusiast proclaimed the uselessness and unscriptural nature of a clergy set apart for the spiritual guidance of their fellow-creatures, and would not permit his disciples to speak of our parish churches by any more respectful appellation than 'steeplehouses.' In theology they have shown themselves tenaciously conservative of their predecessors' opinions concerning the perceptible presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the obedient,' although many of their present orthodox leaders, pointing to the unscriptural error and secession