“He began the Sabbath at evening, therefore then performed family duty after supper, being longer than ordinary in exposition.  After which he catechized his children and servants, and then returned to his study.  The morning following, family worship being ended, he retired into his study until the bell called him away.  Upon his return from meeting (where he had preached and prayed some hours), he returned again into his study (the place of his labor and prayer), unto his favorite devotion; where having a small repast carried him up for his dinner, he continued until the tolling of the bell.  The public service of the afternoon being over, he withdrew for a space to his pre-mentioned oratory for his sacred addresses to God, as in the forenoon, then came down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed, after supper sang a Psalm, and toward bedtime betaking himself again to his study he closed the day with prayer.”

To many a modern reader such a method of spending Sunday for either preacher or laymen would seem not only irksome but positively detrimental to physical and mental health; but we should bear in mind that the opportunity to sit still and listen after six days of strenuous muscular toil was probably welcomed by the colonist, and, further, that in the absence of newspapers and magazines and other intellectual stimuli the oratory of the clergy, stern as it may have been, was possibly an equal relief.  Especially were such “recreations” welcomed by the women; for their toil was as arduous as that of the men; while their round of life and their means of receiving the stimulus of public movements were even more restricted.

V.  Religion and Woman’s Foibles

The repressive characteristics of the creed of the hour were felt more keenly by those women than probably any man of the period ever dreamed.  For woman seems to possess an innate love of the dainty and the beautiful, and beauty was the work of Satan.  Nothing was too small or insignificant for this religion to examine and control.  It even regulated that most difficult of all matters to govern—­feminine dress.  As Fisher says in his Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times: 

“At every opportunity they raised some question of religion and discussed it threadbare, and the more fine-spun and subtle it was the more it delighted them.  Governor Winthrop’s Journal is full of such questions as whether there could be an indwelling of the Holy Ghost in a believer without a personal union; whether it was lawful even to associate or have dealings with idolaters like the French; whether women should wear veils.  On the question of veils, Roger Williams was in favor of them; but John Cotton one morning argued so powerfully on the other side that in the afternoon the women all came to church without them.”

“There were orders of the General Court forbidding ’short sleeves whereby the nakedness of the arms may be discovered.’