THE SABBATH. 311 



had grown barbarous ; bull- and bear-baiting, interludes, and bowling 

 were reckoned among them, and the more earnest spirits longed not 

 only to promote edification but to curb excess. Sabbatarianism, there- 

 fore, though opposed, made rapid progress. Its opponents did what 

 religious parties, when in power, always do exercised that power 

 tyrannically. They invoked the arm of the flesh to suppress or change 

 conviction. In 1618 James I published a declaration, known after- 

 ward as " The Book of Sports," because it had reference to Sunday 

 recreations, Puritan magistrates had interfered with the innocent 

 amusements of the people, and the King wished to insure their being 

 permitted after divine service to those who desired them ; but not 

 enjoined upon those who did not. Coarser sjaorts, and sports tend- 

 ing to immorality, were prohibited. Charles I renewed the declara- 

 tion of his father. Not content, however, with expressing his royal 

 pleasure not content with restraining the ai'bitrary civil magistrate 

 the King decreed that the declaration should be published " through 

 all the parish churches," the bishops in their respective dioceses being 

 made the vehicles of the royal comma-nd. Defensible in itself, the 

 declaration thus became an instrument of oppression. The High 

 Church party, headed by Archbishop Laud, forced the reading of the 

 documents on men whose consciences recoiled from the act. " The 

 jDrecise clergy," as Hallam calls them, refused in general to comply, 

 and were suspended or deprived in consequence. " But," adds Hal- 

 lam, " mankind loves sjjort as little as prayer by comf)ulsion ; and the 

 immediate effect of the King's declaration was to produce a far more 

 scrupulous abstinence from diversions on Sundays than had been prac- 

 ticed before." 



The Puritans, when they came into jjower, followed the evil ex- 

 ample of their predecessors. They, the champions of religious free- 

 dom, showed that they could, in their turn, deprive their antagonists 

 of their benefices, fine them, burn their books by the common hang- 

 man, and compel them ta read from the ])ulpit things of which they 

 disapproved. On this point Bishop Heber makes some excellent re- 

 marks. " Much," he says, " as each religious party in its turn had suf- 

 fered from persecution, and loudly and bitterly as each had, in its own 

 particular instance, complained of the severities exercised against its 

 members, no party had yet been found to perceive the great wicked- 

 ness of persecution in the abstract, or the moral unfitness of temporal 

 punishment as an engine of religious controversy." In a very different 

 strain writes the Dr. Bownd who has been already referred to as a pre- 

 cursor of Puritanism. He is so sure of his " doxy " that he will un- 

 flinchingly make others bow to it. " It behooveth," he says, " all kings, 

 princes, and rulers that profess the true religion, to enact such laws, 

 and to see them diligently executed, whereby the honor of God in hal- 

 lowing these days might be maintained. And, indeed, this is the 

 chief est end of all government, that men might not profess what re- 



