The affection felt by the Puritans for the Old Testament has been observed by all writers upon the period, and of the period. Cleveland's remark, quoted by Hume, is, of course, an exaggeration. "Cromwell," he says, "hath beat up his drums cleane through the Old Testament--you may learne the genealogy of our Saviour by the names in his regiment. The muster-master uses no other list than the first chapter of Matthew." Lord Macaulay puts it much more faithfully in his first chapter, speaking, too, of an earlier period than the Commonwealth: "In such a history (_i.e._ Old Testament) it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans, therefore, began to feel for the Old Testament a preference which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to themselves, but which showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the Epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors." The Presbyterian clergy had another objection to the New Testament names. The possessors were all saints, and in the saints' calendar. The apostolic title was as a red rag to his blood-shot eye. "Upon Saint Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and James, They will not put the 'saint' unto their names," says the Water-poet in execrable verse. Its _local_ use was still more trying, as no man could pass through a single quarter of London without seeing half a dozen churches, or lanes, or taverns dedicated to Saint somebody or other. "Others to make all things recant The christian and surname of saint, Would force all churches, streets, and towns The holy title to renounce." To avoid any saintly taint, the Puritan avoided the saints themselves. But the discontented party in the Church had, as Macaulay says, a decided hankering after the Old Testament on other grounds than this. They paid the Hebrew language an almost superstitious reverence.[16] Ananias, the deacon, in the "Alchemist," published in 1610, says-- "Heathen Greek, I take it. _Subtle._ How! heathen Greek? _Ananias._ All's heathen but the Hebrew."[17] Bishop Corbet, in his "Distracted Puritan," has a lance to point at the same weakness: "In the holy tongue of Canaan I placed my chiefest pleasure, Till I pricked my foot With an Hebrew root, That I bled beyond all measure." In the "City Match," written by Mayne in 1639, Bannsright says--