The indelicacy of the stage, being, in its earliest period, merely the coarse gross raillery of a barbarous age, was probably of no greater injury to the morals of the audience, than it is to those of the lower ranks of society, with whom similar language is everywhere admitted as wit and humour. During the reigns of James I. and Charles I. this licence was gradually disappearing. In the domination of the fanatics, which succeeded, matters were so much changed, that, far from permitting the use of indelicate or profane allusions, they wrapped up not only their most common temporal affairs, but even their very crimes and vices, in the language of their spiritual concerns. Luxury was _using the creature_; avarice was _seeking experiences_; insurrection was _putting the hand to the plough_; actual rebellion, _fighting the good fight_; and regicide, _doing the great work of the Lord._ This vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was at once swept away by the torrent of irreligion, blasphemy, and indecency, which were at that period deemed necessary to secure conversation against the imputation of disloyalty and fanaticism. The court of Cromwell, if lampoons can be believed, was not much less vicious than that of Charles II., but it was less scandalous; and, as Dryden himself expresses it, "The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true; The scandal of the sin was wholly new. Misses there were, but modestly concealed, Whitehall the naked Goddess first revealed; Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine, The strumpet was adored with rites divine."