The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Writers on this subject have generally agreed in dating the rise of
the Puritan Sabbath from the appearance, in 1595, of Dr. Bownd's book
on The Sabbath of the Old and of the New Testament. But the doctrine
of the strict keeping of Sunday may be traced farther back. In truth,
the difference between the English and the Continental Sunday dates
from the Reformation. The protests of Luther and Calvin go to show
that Sunday had in the church before the Reformation, theoretically if
not in practice, the sanctity of a church feast. The English
Reformation was conservative, like all other English revolutions.
English reformers retained the Catholic Sunday, as they did the
vestments and national hierarchy of the old church. Thomas Hancock has
been styled "the Luther of the southwest of England." He was the great
preacher of Poole in the days of Edward VI. That he, like other
English reformers, did not agree with Luther in rejecting the
obligation to rest on Sunday is shown by the record, for the voice of
Poole was the voice of Hancock. About 1550 the juries in the Admiralty
Court of Poole were charged to inquire into Sunday fishing; and so
advanced was the premature Puritanism of Edward's time that even the
leaving of nets in the sea over Sunday was to be investigated. Here
was a strictness unknown in Catholic times.
XVI.
[Sidenote: _Supra_, page 16.]
[Sidenote: Early English Text Society Reprint, 106, 107, 108.]
The word Sabbath does not occur in these early entries. But in the
troubles among the Marian exiles at Frankfort, where so many other
traits of Puritanism first came above the horizon, it is significant
that one finds Sunday called the Sabbath. Sabbath as applied to Sunday
occurs first in literature, perhaps, in 1573, and then it is
considered necessary to explain it. Bullein's Dialogue against the
Fever Pestilence, a work of considerable popularity, first appeared as
early as 1564. In the edition of 1573 there was inserted a new passage
not found in the earlier issue. Mendax is relating incredible tales of
travel in lands unknown, after the manner of David Ingram and other
returned adventurers. Up to this point all is pure lying merely for
the fun of the thing, or perhaps to ridicule the exaggerations of
travelers. But the interpolated passage is not of a piece with the old
garment into which it is patched. It is less grotesque and humorous,
and it smacks of incipient Puritanism in several flavors. It treats
first of all of the "Kepyng of the Saboth Daie," "whiche is the
seventh daie, that is sondaie," in the imaginary city of "Nodnol," an
anagram of London. The gates are shut, and nobody is allowed to "goe,
neither ride forth of the Citie duryng that daie, except it be after
the euenyng praier; then to walke honestlie into the sweete fieldes,
and at every gate in the time of service there are warders." "What so
ever hee be he muste kepe hollie the Sabboth daie, and come to the
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