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ABUSE OF CHURCHES.

71

Use of the Church," was too generally the place of rendezvous for such as loved greetings in the market-place, had tales to tell, or business to transact; and the devotions of the day were suffered to drag on like Pharaoh's chariots with the wheels off, whilst many of the congregation were more profitably employed (as they thought) in the discussion of farm or merchandize, as they paced to and fro along its aisles. It is to these and similar acts of irreverence that the canons have respect in the directions they give to churchwardens and questmen directions which a change in the manners of the times has rendered obsolete and almost unintelligible 1; and it may be reasonably supposed, that in the ordering of our church ceremonies, and in the composition of our church service itself, the principle of fully and fervently occupying all who were within the walls in their devotions was studiously kept in sight by the reformers; and that the sacrifice of prayer and praise should no longer be considered the exclusive office of the priest, as it had been too much in papal times, the people looking on, but that every member should be called upon at intervals, and those of short and frequent recurrence, the whole service through, to testify, by lifting up his voice in confession or response, that he, too, had a lively interest in the common work before them, "of besetting God, as it were, in a round (so the quaint old Fuller expresses it), and not suffering him to depart till he had blessed them hæc vis grata Deo." The saints'

1 See Canons, xviii. xix.

days and holidays, again, were numerous, even to the hinderance of a harvest, and to the certain and perpetual encouragement_of_riot and revelry throughout the country.1 Taverns and alehouses, little better than brothels, with their dishonest games of cards, dice, backgammon, tennis, foot-ball, quoits, drained the pockets of their votaries, and sent them to rob on the highway. So says Sir Thomas More, who might, perhaps, have excepted the more athletic sports here enumerated from his anathema, and thereby have rendered it more effective.2 The due punishment of the culprits was rendered difficult by the places of refuge afforded them in the precincts of religious houses, which were the thieves' paradise; and though felons of all kinds could here claim sanctuary, even for life, so that they would actually sally forth by night to rob or slay, and return before day-break to their asylum within the rules with impunity, yet to the poor persecuted Lollard was the gate of mercy closed, and he might be legally pursued even unto the horns of the altar.4 The friar, meanwhile, went on with his mumpsimus. His most constant hearers (so profitable was his teaching) were at a loss to distinguish between the deadly sins and the ten commandments 5; of which latter, indeed, as of the articles of the belief in English, the people were entirely ignorant, being wholly given to superstitions. They

'Strype's Cranmer, 56. and Latimer. 2 Utopia, ed. 24mo. 73.

3 Latimer's Serm. i. 176.

+ Wordsworth's Eccl. Biog. i. 271. 5 Latimer, ii. 189.

6 Eccl. Biog. i. 166.

NATIONAL MANNERS AND SUPERSTITIONS. 73

hastened to the churches for holy water, of which the devil was said to be afraid, before a thunder-storm 1; fled to St. Rooke in time of pestilence; in an ague, to St. Pernel, or master John Shorne; being Welshmen, and disposed to take a purse, they besought the help of Darvel Gathorne; if a wife were weary of her husband, she betook herself to St. Uncumber.2 They repaired to the wise woman to recover what they had lost, or to be recruited from a sickness; and addicted themselves with all their might to magic, sorcery, charms, and the black art. The grossest pretensions which indulgences could advance were swallowed, and not strained at. Relics, carrying imposture on their very face, ("lies," in the language of Scripture,) were kissed with pious credulity. Pilgrimages were undertaken in the spirit of the company in the Canterbury Tales, or of Ogygius in his journey to our lady of Walsingham 4; and yet were reckoned acts that would be accounted to the parties for righteousness: and, whilst no man brought his gift to the altar of his Saviour in Canterbury cathedral throughout a whole year, offerings were made at the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in the same place, and during the same period, to the amount of nearly a thousand pounds.

No wonder that in these ages of darkness doctrines not found in the word of God, but of

1 Latimer, ii. 165.

3 Latimer's Serm. ii. 24. 199.

2 Eccl. Biog. i. 166.

• Erasmus, Peregrinatio Religionis Ergo.

which we have seen that the germ existed even in the Saxon church, should have shot up with vigour like the gourd of Jonah in the night; or that, in the absence of Scripture to speak for itself, the religion of Rome (as Latimer observes) should have passed for it.1

1 Latimer, Serm. ii. 45.

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MEANWHILE a little leaven was at work, which served still to keep a better faith alive; a little salt of the earth, which prevented the great carcass of human nature from offending the nostrils of its Creator. The Almighty has been ever wont to make such provision for the continuance of sound doctrine. Whilst all flesh was corrupting its way, still a household or two were left to keep his name from perishing, and to rally the true religion again,-an Enos, an Enoch, or a Noah. When idolatry had once more spread itself over the world, almost to the extinction of the knowledge of the Most High, a few chosen vessels were left for the preservation of it still,

-an Abraham, a Lot, a Melchizedec, a Job. Generations rolled on, and God thought fit to act on a greater scale, but still on the same principle; and the Israelites were separated from mankind as a peculiar people, as the depositaries of the creed of man; and their fortunes were so shaped as to occasion their dispersion amongst the Gentiles, with the Bible in their hearts and hands, and thus were they made the channels through which the will and works of God were

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