busily insinuating among the lower orders that the reformed religion was a sullen deprivation of all mirth and social amusements, and thus “turning the people’s hearts.”  But while they were denied what the king terms “lawful recreations,"[A] they had substituted more vicious ones:  alehouses were more frequented—­drunkenness more general—­tale-mongery and sedition, the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed—­while a fanatical gloom was spreading over the country.

[Footnote A:  These are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other manly sports.]

The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the multitude, and perhaps alarmed at this new shape which puritanism was assuming, published what is called “The Book of Sports,” and which soon obtained the contemptuous term of “The Dancing Book.”

On this subject our recent principles have governed our decisions:  with our habits formed, and our notions finally adjusted, this singular state-paper has been reprobated by piety; whose zeal, however, is not sufficiently historical.  It was one of the state maxims of this philosophic monarch, in his advice to his son,

“To allure the common people to a common amitie among themselves; and that certain daies in the yeere should be appointed for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms; making playes and lawful games in Maie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for convening of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, by honest feasting and merriness; so that the sabbothes be kept holie, and no unlawful pastime be used.  This form of contenting the people’s minds hath been used in all well-governed republics.”

James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy among the people.  In Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch, could discover no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and self-denial:  but when once this unlucky “Book of Sports” was thrown among the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that everything concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain.

* * * * *

THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY.

And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much.  The controversy was carried to an extremity in the succeeding reign.  The proper hour of the Sabbath was not agreed on:  Was it to commence on the Saturday-eve?  Others thought that time, having a circular motion, the point we begin at was not important, provided the due portion be completed.  Another declared, in his “Sunday no Sabbath,” that it was merely an ecclesiastical day which may be changed at pleasure; as they were about doing it, in the Church of Geneva, to Thursday,—­probably from their antipathy to the Catholic Sunday, as the early Christians