248

HISTORY OR ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XIII.

1G89.

enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy form.

• Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy ofthe Established Church were, to use the phrase then common,rabbled. The morning of Christmas day was fixed for thecommencement of these outrages. For nothing disgusted therigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by the prelatistto the ancient holidays of the Church. That such reverencemay he carried to an absurd extreme is true. But a philosophermay perhaps he inclined to think the opposite extreme not lessabsurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid ofassociations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilised tohave a calendar, and which are found by experience to have apowerful and often a salutary effect. The Puritan, who was,in general, hut too ready to follow precedents and analogiesdrawn from the history and jurisprudence of the Jew's, mighthave found in the Old Testament quite as clear warrant forkeeping festivals in honour of great events as for assassinatingbishops and refusing quarter to captives. He certainly did notlearn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in ab-horrence; for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertionsof Calvin that Christmas was, after an interval of some years,again observed by the citizens of Geneva.* But there hadarisen in Scotland Calvinists who were to Calvin what Calvinwas to Laud. To these austere fanatics a holiday was an objectof positive disgust and hatred. They long continued in theirsolemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins which wouldone day bring down some fearful judgment on the land thatthe Court of Session took a vacation in the last week of De-cember.**

* See Calvin’s letter to Haller, iv. Non. Jan. 1551: “Priusquaraurbem unquara ingrederer, null® prorsus ernnt feri® printer diem Domini-cum. Ex quo sum rcvocatus hoc tcmperamcntum qu®sivi, ut Christi na-talis celebrarctur."

** In the Act, Declaration, and Testimony of the Scceders, dated in