called in, and after a while the Bill was agreed to pass, and ordered to be engrossed."[151] [Sidenote: _Sabbath Observance._] This animated conversation in the old House of Commons--which we have thought it worth while to report, even at inconvenient length--reflects the various opinions, both strict and lax, which were then held relative to the question of Sunday observance. Yet, after all, perhaps, the report scarcely conveys to us exactly what the speakers meant. Some of them really might intend by their extravagant statements and ridiculous method of argument only to meet their opponents' reasoning with _a reductio ad absurdum_, although the steady, plodding diarist who took the notes from which we have drawn up our summary did not seem to see the matter in that light. [Sidenote: 1657, June.] The Act, as it appears in Scobell, prohibited travelling, entertainment at inns, every kind of trading, and all dancing and singing, and other amusement, inclusive even of walking during Divine service. Moreover, if people did not attend church or chapel where the true worship of God was celebrated, they were to pay for each instance of neglect two shillings and sixpence, which sum, after the payment of informers, was to be appropriated for the benefit of the poor.[152] [Sidenote: _Cromwell's Second Installation._] At the close of the first session of the second Parliament, there was enacted, on Friday, the 26th of June, 1657, a gorgeous ceremony, equivalent to the coronation of the Puritan king. Purple robes, sceptre, and sword, a chair of state--no other than the regal one of Scotland, brought out of Westminster Abbey--and a brilliant array of officers, judges, civic dignitaries, and the like, gave regal pomp to the occasion.[153] The scene was exhibited under a magnificent canopy of state in Westminster Hall, whose oaken rafters had so often echoed with the music and revelry of Plantagenet and Tudor feastings; and where, in 1653, Cromwell had first been installed Protector, with less state splendour than on this second occasion, and without the addition of any sacred rites.[154] Religious worship, however, became associated with the present solemnity, and there also appeared religious symbolism in a form which passed quite beyond the common circle of Puritan ideas. The Speaker of the House of Commons referred to Alexander, and Aristotle, to Moses, and Homer, to David, and Solomon, and to "the noble Lord Talbot, in Henry the Sixth's time," in order to shew what appropriate spiritual lessons were suggested by the robes, the sceptre, the sword, and the Bible. Richly-gilt and embossed, the Holy Book was--with the regalia--laid upon a table covered with pink-coloured Genoa velvet fringed with gold. "His Highness," dressed in a costly mantle lined with ermine, and girt with a sword of great value, stood--says a contemporary record--"looking up unto the throne of the Most High, who is Prince of princes, and in whom is all his confidence; Mr.