refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the
epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their
children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew
patriarchs and warriors. In defiance of the express and
reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the
weekly festival by which the Church had, from the primitive
times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish
Sabbath. They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the
Mosaic law, and for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in
the books of Judges and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran
much on acts which were assuredly not recorded as examples for
our imitation. The prophet who hewed in pieces a captive king,
the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the
matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and of the laws of
eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the
fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping
under the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to
Christians suffering under the tyranny of princes and prelates.
Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling that of
the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. The
dress, the deportment, the language, the studies, the amusements
of the rigid sect were regulated on principles not unlike those
of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and broad
phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a
winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink
a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at
chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch
the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these,
rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and
joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and