Opposition to Bownd. But a violent opposition quickly arose. Some opposed the book as "galling men's necks with a Jewish yoke against the liberty of Christians," and many of the clergy of the new high-church type resented the doctrine of a Christian Sabbath, asserting that it put "an unequal lustre on the Sunday on set purpose to eclipse all other holy days to the derogation of the authority of the church." Fuller's Church History, book ix, sect. viii, 21. There were those who asserted that the "brethren," as they styled them, had brought forth Bownd's book, intending by this "attack from an odd corner" to retrieve lost ground. [Note 11.] The manifest advantage to Puritanism from the shifting of the ground of debate, aroused Archbishop Whitgift. In 1599 he made the tactical mistake of ordering the book called in, and in 1600 Chief-Justice Popham forbade the reprinting of it. The price of the work was doubled at once, and it was everywhere sought for, books being "more called on when called in," as Fuller says. When it could not be had in print, it was transcribed by enthusiastic admirers and circulated "from friend to friend" in manuscript. As soon as Whitgift's "head was laid," a new and enlarged edition was published.
[Note 12.] The theory of a Sunday-Sabbath, which from the first was not confined to the Puritans, permeated English and American thought and life. But from that time forward the Puritans made rigid Sabbath-keeping the very mark and password of the faithful. From England the theory spread northward to Scotland, where it found a congenial soil. 1611. The strict observance of Sunday was embodied in those Laws, Divine, Moral, and Martial, under which Sir Thomas Dale oppressed Virginia, years before the earliest Puritan migration carried it to the coast of New England. On that coast Bownd's Sabbath took on its deepest hue, becoming at last as grievous an evil, perhaps, as the frivolity it had supplanted. [Note 13.]
XXI.
Effect on Puritanism. The Puritans protesting against Hebraism in vestments, in priesthood, in liturgy, and in festivals, fell headlong into the Pharisaism of the rigid Sabbath. History records many similar phenomena. To escape from the spirit of one's age is difficult for an individual, impossible perhaps for a sect or party. Nevertheless, the Sabbath agitation had given a new impulse to the Puritan movement—had, indeed, given it a positive party cry, and had furnished it with a visible badge of superior sanctity.
The new Puritanism. The Calvinistic controversy which broke out almost simultaneously with that about the Sabbath and prevailed throughout the reign of James I, added yet one more issue, by making Puritanism the party of a stern and conservative orthodoxy, as opposed to the newer Arminianism which spread so quickly among the High-Church clergy. From all these fresh developments Puritanism gained in power and compactness, if it lost something of simplicity and spirituality. Standing for ultra-Protestantism, for good morals, for an ascetic Sabbath, for a high dogmatic orthodoxy, Puritanism could not but win the allegiance of the mass of the English people, and especially of the middle class. It was this new, compact, austere, dogmatic, self-confident Puritanism, when it had become a political as well as a religious movement, that obliterated Laud and Charles and set up the Commonwealth. And in studying the evolution of this later Puritanism we have been present at the shaping of New England in Old England.
Elucidations.
[Note 1, page 99.] Evelyn's Diary, pp. 4, 5; date, 1634: "My father was appointed Sheriff for Surrey and Sussex before they were disjoyned. He had 116 servants in liverys, every one livery'd in greene sattin doublets. Divers gentlemen and persons of quality waited on him in the same garbe and habit, which at that time (when 30 or 40 was the usual retinue of a High Sheriff) was esteem'd a great matter.... He could not refuse the civility of his friends and relations who voluntarily came themselves, or sent in their servants." Compare Chamberlain's remarks about Sir George Yeardley, whom he styles "a mean fellow," and says that the king had knighted him when he was appointed Governor of Virginia, "which hath set him up so high that he flaunts it up and down the streets in extraordinary bravery with fourteen or fifteen fair liveries after him." Domestic Correspondence, James I, No. 110, Calendar, p. 598. The propriety of keeping so many idle serving men is sharply called in question in a tract entitled Cyuile and Vncyuile Life, 1579, and an effort is made to prove the dignity of a serving man's position, while its decline is confessed in A Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen, 1598. Both of these tracts are reprinted in Inedited Tracts, etc., Roxburghe Library, 1868. The serving man was not a menial. He rendered personal services to his master or to guests, he could carve on occasion, and as a successor to the military retainers of an earlier time he was ready to fight in any of his master's quarrels; but his principal use was to lend dignity to the mansion and to amuse the master or his guests with conversation during lonely hours in the country house. Among the first Jamestown emigrants were some of these retainers, as we have seen.
[Note 2, page 100.] The Anatomie of Abuses, by Philip Stubbes, 1583, Pickering's reprint, pages 16, 17: "It is lawfull for the nobilitie, the gentrie and magisterie to weare riche attire, euery one in their callyng. The nobility and gentrie to innoble, garnish, and set forth birthes, dignities, and estates. The magisterie to dignifie their callynges.... But now there is suche a confuse mingle mangle of apparell, and suche preposterous excesse thereof, as euery one is permitted to flaunt it out in what apparell he lusteth himself, or can get by any kinde of meanes. So that it is very hard to know who is noble, who is worshipfull, who is a gentleman, who is not; for you shal haue those which are neither of the nobilitie, gentilitie nor yeomanrie ... go daiely in silkes, veluettes, satens, damaskes, taffaties and suche like; notwithstanding that they be bothe base by birthe, meane by estate, and seruile by callyng. And this I compte a greate confusion, and a generall disorder in a Christian common wealth."
[Note 3, page 106.] A Brieff Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankfort, 1564, is the primary authority. It is almost beyond doubt that Whittingham, Dean of Durham, a participant in the troubles, wrote the book. The Frankfort struggles have been discussed recently in Mr. Hinds's The Making of the England of Elizabeth, but, like all writers on the subject, Hinds is obliged to depend almost solely on Whittingham's account. The several volumes of letters from the archives of Zurich, published by the Parker Society, give a good insight into the forces at work in the English Reformation. See, for example, in the volume entitled Original Letters, 1537-1558, that of Thomas Sampson to Calvin, dated Strasburgh, February 23, 1555, which shows the Puritan movement half fledged at this early date when Calvin's authoritative advice is invoked. "The flame is lighted up with increased vehemence amongst us English. For a strong controversy has arisen, while some desire the book of reformation of the Church of England to be set aside altogether, others only deem some things in it objectionable, such as kneeling at the Lord's Supper, the linen surplice, and other matters of this kind; but the rest of it, namely, the prayers, scripture lessons and the form of the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper they wish to be retained."
[Note 4, page 106.] There are many and conflicting accounts of the origin of the name. In the Narragansett Club Publications, ii, 197-199, there is an interesting statement of some of these by the editor of Cotton's Answer to Roger Williams, in a note.