The Presbyterian clergy had another objection to the New Testament names. The possessors were all saints, and in the saints’ calendar. The apostolic title was as a red rag to his blood-shot eye.
“Upon Saint Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and James,
They will not put the ‘saint’ unto their names,”
says the Water-poet in execrable verse. Its local use was still more trying, as no man could pass through a single quarter of London without seeing half a dozen churches, or lanes, or taverns dedicated to Saint somebody or other.
“Others to make all things recant
The christian and surname of saint,
Would force all churches, streets, and towns
The holy title to renounce.”
To avoid any saintly taint, the Puritan avoided the saints themselves.
But the discontented party in the Church had, as Macaulay says, a decided hankering after the Old Testament on other grounds than this. They paid the Hebrew language an almost superstitious reverence.[16] Ananias, the deacon, in the “Alchemist,” published in 1610, says—
“Heathen Greek, I take it.
Subtle.How! heathen Greek?
Ananias. All’s heathen but the Hebrew.”[17]
Bishop Corbet, in his “Distracted Puritan,” has a lance to point at the same weakness:
“In the holy tongue of Canaan
I placed my chiefest pleasure,
Till I pricked my foot
With an Hebrew root,
That I bled beyond all measure.”
In the “City Match,” written by Mayne in 1639, Bannsright says—