We have intimated that the severity of the puritanical character could not endure in all its vigor, without the continued action of its producing causes. In correspondence with this theory, we observe, that the growth of this portion of American society has given birth to a gradual and uninterrupted modification. Not to speak of others, there are two attributes very essential to give permanency and controlling influence to any specific form of human society: antiquity and a proof commending itself to the good sense of the community. Puritanism, in the form now under consideration, could not claim antiquity. True there had been things like to it; but this particular type was well understood to have been of recent origin. It grew out of resistance to oppression, in part, within the memory of living witnesses. It was the product of an accident, and the resort of a temporary expediency. Circumstances being changed, and so far as it differed from the doom of necessity, that same discretion which adopted the expedient in one case might and would naturally accommodate itself to another. So far as necessity was the cause, it was equally impossible to oppose necessity in a change of circumstances. The force of antiquity was utterly nugatory. As to the arbitrations of good sense, it hardly need be said, at this time, that there were many things in puritanism which could not long be tolerated under such an appeal. Hence almost the entire code of its more severe customs has long since become obsolete, even in the land of the pilgrim fathers. So far as they have not passed from memory, they are handed down, not as authority, but simply as an amusing, and in regard to some things, an incredible, tale. They who had rebelled against the established usages of society once, might do it again. They who had made a code, might amend it. Peculiar circumstances had formed the puritanical character in the mother country; and there was no good reason why peculiar circumstances should not modify, or re-model it in this. The authority of precedent in change was established. Here, if we mistake not, is developed a practical secret of stupendous influence over the religious destinies of our country. That there were good reasons for rebellion against the prelacy of England, and adequate causes for the production of a distaste for Episcopal usages on an extended scale, can hardly be denied.