“Sanchia, from Sancta, that is, Holy.”—“Remaines,” p. 88.
The name became obsolete by the close of the seventeenth century, and, being a saintly title, was sufficiently odious to the Presbyterians to be carefully rejected by them in the sixteenth century. Men who refused the Apostles their saintly title were not likely to stamp the same for life on weak flesh.[35]
Nor can Emanuel, or Angel, be brought as charges against the Puritans. Both flatly contradicted Cartwright’s canon; yet both, and especially the former, have been attributed to the zealots. No names could have been more offensive to them than these. Even Adams, in his “Meditations upon the Creed,” while attacking his friends on their eccentricity in preferring “Safe-deliverance” to “Richard,” takes care to rebuke those on the other side, who would introduce Emanuel, or even Gabriel or Michael, into their nurseries:
“Some call their sons Emanuel: this is too bold. The name is proper to Christ, therefore not to be communicated to any creature.”
Emanuel was imported from the Continent about 1500:
“1545, March 19. Baptized Humphrey, son of Emanuell Roger.”—St. Columb Major.
The same conclusion must be drawn regarding Angel. Adams continues:
“Yea, it seems to me not fit for Christian humility to call a man Gabriel or Michael, giving the names of angels to the sons of mortality.”
If the Puritans objected, as they did to a man, to the use of Gabriel and Michael as angelic names, the generic term itself would be still more objectionable:
“1645, Nov. 13. Buried Miss Angela Boyce.”—Cant. Cath.