"Some call their sons _Emanuel_: this is too bold. The name is proper to Christ, therefore not to be communicated to any creature. It is no less than presumption to give a subject's son the style of his prince. Yea, it seems to me not fit for Christian humility to call a man _Gabriel_ or _Michael_, giving the names of angels to the sons of mortality. "On the other side, it is a petulant absurdity to give them ridiculous names, the very rehearsing whereof causeth laughter. There be certain affectate names which mistaken zeal chooseth for honour, but the event discovers a proud singularity. It was the speech of a famous prophet, _Non sum melior patribus meis_--'I am no better than my fathers;' but such a man will be _sapientior patribus suis_--'Wiser than his fathers.' As if they would tie the goodness of the person to the signification of the name. But still a man is what he is, not what he is called; he were the same, with or without that title or that name. And we have known _Williams_ and _Richards_, names not found in sacred story, but familiar to our country, prove as gracious saints as any _Safe-deliverance_, _Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith_, or such like, which have been rather descriptions than names." I have quoted portions of this before. I have now given it in full, for it is trenchant, and full of common sense. Coming from the quarter it did, we cannot doubt it had its effect in throwing the practice into disfavour among the better orders. But there had been a continued battery going on from a foe by whose side Adams would have rather faced death than fight. Years before he wrote his own sentiments, the Puritan nomenclature had been roughly handled on the stage, and by such ruthless pens as Ben Jonson, Cowley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. A year before little Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes was laid to rest, the sharp and unsparing sarcasm of "The Alchemist" and "Bartholomew Fair" had been levelled at these doings. The first of these two dramas Ben Jonson saw acted in 1610. By that time the custom was a generation old, and men who bore the godly but uncouth sobriquets were walking the streets, keeping shops, driving bargains, known, if not avoided, of all men. In 1610 Increase Brown, your apprentice, might be demanding an advance upon his wages, Help-on-high Jones might be imploring your patronage, while Search-the-Scriptures Robinson might be diligently studying his ledger to see how he could swell his total against you for tobacco and groceries. In 1610 society would be really awake to the fact that such things existed, and proceed to discuss this serio-comic matter in a comico-serious manner. The time was exactly ripe for the playwright, and it was the fate of the Presbyterians that the playwright was "rare Ben." In "The Alchemist" appears _Ananias_, a deacon, who is thus questioned by Subtle: