To them, religion and music were as one, and happy were those who drew their last breath before the new and fantastic doctrines that were destined to change the whole life and spirit of the people came into actual effect.
The transition from the old life to the new was a slow one, notwithstanding the authorities, but once brought about and accepted by the people, with that tenacity so characteristic of the English race, they not only absorbed but put into practice tenets that, a century before, would have been abhorrent to them. That this is, unhappily, true, the horrible excesses tolerated during the Commonwealth period are more than sufficient proof.
The hideous teaching that music and every other form of art was devil-worship became accepted by those who, but not long before, were the very incarnation of joyous, righteous life, as a revelation that had only come in the nick of time for their salvation. To suppress every longing for it, any memory of it, even, was considered a duty and the indulgence in it a sin, though clothed in ecclesiastical garb. The strength to resist the yearning for that which for so many ages had been, to say the least, one of the greatest sources of consolation and happiness to them, they counted a righteousness, and the more these poor people suffered, the greater was their assurance of ultimate safety. The loss
of music to the English in those early Calvinistic times must have been one of the most bitter of the many miseries they had to endure.
It is impossible to think without pity of the transition from the gay, exuberant and, possibly, irresponsible life that had been theirs for centuries, to the fearful search after the salvation that their days and nights were mostly spent in dread of losing.
Should this appear exaggerated, let us turn to the writings of the poet, William Cowper: we shall find ample confirmation.
It may be said, "Why cite a man who is known to have had fits of temporary insanity?" The answer is simple. The melancholia from which he suffered and which led him, on more than one occasion, to attempt to commit suicide, was the outcome of his belief in the terrible doctrine of Pre-destination, and the ever-present fear that he was among those destined to eternal doom.
This is how he writes:
"Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion,
Scarce can endure delay of execution—
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my
Soul in a moment.
Damn'd below Judas; more abhorr'd than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice betray'd, Jesus me, the last delinquent
Deems the profanest.