[271] “Scintilla, or a light broken into darke Warehouses; of some Printers, sleeping Stationers, and combining Booksellers; in which is only a touch of their forestalling and ingrossing of Books in Pattents, and raysing them to excessive prises. Left to the consideration of the high and honourable House of Parliament, now assembled. London: Nowhere to be sold, but somewhere to be given.” 1641.
[272] A technical printing-term for a sheet containing twenty-four pages.
[273] The passage is as follows, and is addressed by the apostles to “the multitude of the disciples,” who desired an improved clerical rule:—“Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.”
[274] G. Garrard’s Letter to the Earl of Strafford, vol. i. p. 208.
[275] Harl. MS. 7580.
[276] See the London Printers’ Lamentation on the Press Oppressed. Harl. Coll. iii. 280.
VIEW OF A PARTICULAR PERIOD OF THE STATE OF
RELIGION IN OUR CIVIL WARS.
Looking over the manuscript diary of Sir Symonds D’Ewes, I was struck by a picture of the domestic religious life which at that period was prevalent among families. Sir Symonds was a sober antiquary, heated with no fanaticism, yet I discovered in his diary that he was a visionary in his constitution, macerating his body by private fasts, and spiritualising in search of secret signs. These ascetic penances were afterwards succeeded in the nation by an era of hypocritical sanctity; and we may trace this last stage of insanity and of immorality closing with impiety. This would be a dreadful picture of religion, if for a moment we supposed that it were religion; that consolatory power which has its source in our feelings, and according to the derivation of its expressive term, binds men together. With us it was sectarism, whose origin and causes we shall not now touch on, which broke out into so many monstrous shapes, when every pretended reformer was guided by his own peculiar fancies: we have lived to prove that folly and wickedness are rarely obsolete.