WILLIAM AND MAEY.

93

to make no concession to the supercilious and uncharitablePharisee. Was every thing which was not of the essence of-religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing to aknot of zealots whose beads had been turned Ivy conceit and thelove of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days,were not of the essence of religion. Were the windows ofKing’s College chapel to be broken at the demand of one set offanatics? Was the organ of Exeter to be silenced to pleaseanother? Were all the village bells to be mute because Tribu-lation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them profane?Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was Pas-sion week no longer to be a season of humiliation? Thesechanges, it is true, were not yet proposed. But if, — so theHigh Churchmen reasoned, — we once admit that what isharmless and edifying is to be given up because it offends somenarrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where arewe to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting toheal one schism, we may cause another? All those thingswhich the Puritans regard as the blemishes of the Church areby a large part of the population reckoned among her attrac-tions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal to a few sourprecisians, cease also to influence the hearts of many who nowdelight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that,for every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house,ten of her old disciples may turn away from her maimed ritesand dismantled temples, and that these new separatists mayeither form themselves into a sect far more formidable than thesect which we are now seeking to conciliate, or may, in theviolence of their disgust at a cold and ignoble worship, betempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry of Rome?

It is remarkable that those who held this language were byno means disposed to contend for the doctrinal Articles of theChurch. The truth is that, from the time of James the First,

CHAP.

XI.

I6S9.