Omitting, for very shame’s sake, to say anything of No. 38 of Governor Eaton’s code, the reader will perceive in the above quotations to what absurd results logical consistency drives the fanatic when he becomes so by cutting adrift from the safe moorings of God’s church and trusts his salvation to the puny cockboat of private judgment. These Puritans had disclaimed the title of the church which originated the Sunday; they would not, like Cranmer, accept it as “a mere appointment of the magistrates”; so there was nothing left for them but to slur over the utter vagueness of its mention in the New Testament, and refer the whole observance back to Moses and the Third Commandment. In doing this why were they not consistent throughout? Why did they not let their lands rest in the seventh year? Why not observe the year of Jubilee ordered by the sanction of the same Lawgiver?
As before stated, Protestant practice, like the doctrines from which it emanates, is Proteus-like in form and phase; nor is the method followed in the observance of Sunday any exception to the general rule. But, upon the whole, the offspring of Knox, the descendants of Bownde, and the adherents of the straiter sects stand up more strenuously and make a stouter fight (not in argument, but by sheer persistence) for the rigorous keeping of the “Sabbath” than they have found it convenient to do for many doctrines and usages which, logically speaking, were of far more importance to Protestantism as a system. Our outward and visible life in the United States, in Canada, and in the British Isles is to this day, in this one matter, largely tinctured and deeply
infected with the plague of stupid and superstitious keeping of the Sunday, begun in factious opposition to the English state establishment, propagated by the work of Bownde, eagerly appropriated by Andrew Melville and the Scottish politico-religious agitators of his day, and transmitted to us through the Rump Parliament and the Puritans of New England. The “able and godly” ministers of these latter, who, in the words of Mr. Oliver, “derided the sign of the cross, but saw magic in a broomstick,” though their descendants have recoiled from the teachings of their childhood into Unitarianism or infidelity; though not one-half the adult population of New England now belongs to any Christian sect; and though of all bodies of men that ever existed under a guise of religion in the face of day they were the most inconsistent, the most bigoted, the most superstitious, the most intolerant, and the most relentlessly persecuting, are yet often forced upon our admiration. It has somehow become the fashion to laud these bigots to the heavens in annual palavers of New England Societies, Plymouth Rock orators, Fourth of July and other spread-eagle speakers; and though their other doctrines and practices have vanished, leaving on their chosen ground scarce a trace behind, yet we are reminded of their spirit and quondam influence by the shackles of legal enactment in regard to Sunday observance; by the tumult that rises from certain classes of Protestants as silent custom or outspoken enactment from time to time sweeps out of existence some one or other of the trammels with which Puritanism, in its day of power, enthralled us.
With what persistent zeal do they not agitate in the newspapers and petition authorities, municipal, State, and federal, against the running of the horse-cars, the rail-cars, and the mail steamers on the Sabbath! How terrible, in their eyes, are the Sunday excursions of the laboring people of our large cities! How clearly do they not perceive that liberty is a good thing only so long as everybody thinks and acts exactly as they do! Did they not prove that we lost the day on a famous occasion during the civil war by delivering battle on Sunday? How insanely anxious are they not to have the Almighty (their Almighty, that is to say) in some way constitutionally harnessed to the already hard-racked instrument which consolidates the government of these States! It is true that these men are the têtes montées of fanaticism of this sort, and we are far from affirming that a majority of their co-religionists go with them. Indeed, we know, from daily observation, that in many of the sects there exists but little of the spirit indicated, and that what remains is fast disappearing. But there exists enough of the embers to render walking amid them very annoying, and, with the assistance of a good breeze from the preachers, these embers may easily, and on small provocation, be fanned into a flame! Has not fanaticism displayed an unexpected vigor in connection with the question of opening our great Centennial Exposition on the only day on which the industrious poor can have the chance of seeing it without manifest injury to their temporal interests?
Our Protestant friend of the stricter sort awakes on the Sunday morning, bethinks himself of the
day, dresses (having shaved himself provisorily on Saturday night), schools his countenance into the most malignantly orthodox cast, takes in hand the Bible, Baxter’s Call, or Boston’s Fourfold State, and descends to the parlor; that is, he would descend but that he hears one of his boys whistling in an adjoining room, who must at once be reproved therefor, to be more fully punished next day.
“To Banbury came I, O profane one!
There I saw a Puritane one
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a rat on Sunday.”