Very similar remarks may be made in regard of the observance of Saints’ days.  In Queen Anne’s time they were still generally kept as holy days, and business was even in some measure suspended.[999] There were services on these festivals in all the London churches.[1000] We find, it is true, a High Church writer of this date, regretting that of late years the observance of these days had not been so strict as heretofore.  He attributed this backwardness mainly to superstitious scruples derived from Puritan times, and to the immoderate pursuit of business.[1001] The wonder rather was, that having been, for a considerable portion of the previous century, ’neglected almost everywhere throughout the kingdom,’[1002] Church festivals should have recovered as much respect as they did.  The extensive circulation of Robert Nelson’s ‘Festivals,’ and the number of editions through which it passed, is in itself a sufficient proof that a great number of English Churchmen cordially approved a devout observance of the appointed holy days.  But by the middle of the century the neglect of them was becoming general.

Burnet wished that Lent were not observed with ’so visible a slightness.’[1003] It was observed, certainly, and very generally, but also very superficially.  In London there were a considerable number of special sermons on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent, the place and preachers being notified beforehand in a printed list issued by the Bishop.[1004] Colston’s Bristol benefaction, of 1708, provided, amongst his other charities, for an annual series of fourteen Lent sermons.  The Low Churchmen of William’s and Queen Anne’s time instilled a devout observance of the season no less than the clergy of the High Church party.  Burnet has been mentioned.  Fleetwood’s words, in his sermon before the King, on the 1st Sunday in Lent, 1717, are worth quoting.  ‘Our Church,’ he said, ’hath erected this temporary house of mourning, wherein she would oblige us annually to enter....  And that we might attend more freely to these matters, she advises abstinence, and a prudent retrenchment of all those superfluities that minister to luxury more than necessity:  by which the busy spirits are composed and quieted; the loose and scattered thoughts are recollected and brought home, and such a serious, sober frame of mind put on that we can think with less distraction, remember more exactly, pray with more fervency, repent more earnestly, and resolve with more deliberation on amendment.  These are the beneficial fruits and effects of a reasonable, well governed abstinence, as every one may find by their experience.’[1005] John Wesley, as might naturally be expected from one who in many of his sympathies was so decidedly a High Churchman, was always in favour of a religious observance of Lent, especially of Holy Week.  Steele, in a paper of the ‘Guardian,’ specially addressed, in Lent 1713, to careless men of pleasure, begs them not to ridicule a season set apart for humiliation.  And passing mention may