not move to mourning. And for that, our labour and trade of occupation and merchandize worketh profit, and so pleasure and the use of it that day doth work impediment to our fast, therefore the day of God's fast we must so manage as a sabbath to the Lord, as to the Jews it was commanded: and as a Christian help to our humility before the Lord, is yet by authority to be embraced, as the Lord shall work them to think it convenient, the holy abstinence from meats is also in our godly fast required, not that thereby God is simply pleased, but that thereby our bodies should be less sturdy, and our spirits more humbled and apt to pray."*

Special fasts retained some acceptation when periodical abstinence had grown quite or nearly obsolete. Of direct persuasion to observe stated fast days, the Lent sermons at Paul's Cross contain almost nothing. The people were sufficiently reformed to make warnings against "carnal fastings" unnecessary; like Crabbe's fanatical rector, they did not

"Pass such time,

In life's good works as swelled them to a crime;"

and lest they should, they were often regaled with doctrines which might act as safeguards.

XIII. There is, indeed, something which would astonish their modern admirers in the zeal with which the first Puritans maintained their Christian liberty. Not the book of lawful sports, if republished by the Religious Tract Society, could create a greater sensation than such a passage as the following, from Deringe's second reading on the first of Hebrews, at St. Paul's, if uttered in a modern pulpit. Deringe, it should be remembered, was, what few preachers of his age were, a gentleman by birth, and if poor in the latter portion of his life, it was because his conscience kept him so. may, therefore, have been his experience that amuseA. Anderson, 1581.

It

ments do not necessarily undermine spirituality, and that nothing suitable to a man's station interferes with his religion unless used in excess or guilty in its own nature. Food, and sufficient of it, was evidently one of his innocent gratifications; he appreciated what philosophical divines might call "the acts of natural worship." "If I know myself by faith made a member of Christ, and his right is mine in the creatures of the world, and in his name and to his glory I use them, whatsoever God hath given me in the days of my pilgrimage, the profit of it is mine; I may use it to my necessity: and the pleasure of it is mine; I may use it to my delight. If my garments be silk, I may put them on; if my table be furnished with sorts of meat, I may eat what my stomach craveth; if I have fields pleasant and delectable, I may walk in them; if I have orchards of great delight, I may eat the fruit of them. Nay, I will say more, that their condemnation may be just which love not the Lord Jesus. If thy dogs will hunt the beasts of the field, or thy hawk will kill the birds of the air, thou mayest use the delight of God's creatures; I mean so far as the state of God's people in commonwealths which he hath ordained, doth permit to every one for his holy recreation and pleasure who walketh faithfully in his calling, to the glory of God and the profit of his people. I do not justify the shameful abuse of the world; I allow not them which will needs wear silk and are not able to buy cloth, or those which so give over themselves to vanity, that the day is too short to make them pastime, except they watch the night at cards and dice and riotous dancing........ I speak only of the goodness of God unto his saints, what recreation God hath given in their weary life. ......... We are Christ's, and he hath made all; in his holy appointments let us ever live; for other laws of meats, drinks, days, apparel, &c., as then they may

stand when they are profitable to any country, and made only for policy, so they are to be despised when they are thrust upon the church, and made matters of faith and religion."*

XIV. This, spoken thus early in Elizabeth's reign, stronger doctrine still was current about its close. A church was mentioned where Hooker might have heard one of his positions as to celibacy assailed. Had what he heard sufficiently excited his curiosity to bring him thither a second time, he might have learned that fasting and retirement gave advantage to Satan, set the mind off its balance, and so approached the nature of sin. That periodical fasting was as absurd as periodical bleeding, that it was not the purpose of Christ to commend unto us fasting, and his own fast of forty days was intended" to provoke Satan the more and to give him all the advantage that might be.-Where, notwithstanding, observe that though Christ, who was indeed the stronger, did lay himself thus open to his enemy, yet that this is no example for us to imagine that we can follow who are lighter than vanity; but that we must avoid solitariness as much as can be, except we will provoke the devil. For this is the humour that lieth fittest for his temptations, when we are destitute of comfort and company."+

xv. It is not, however, with the doctrines, but the manners of the age that we are engaged at present, and enough has been already recited to shew that abstinence (except, perhaps, on the greater fast days) had ceased to be a general practice before 1580. A few of the clergy disapproved, multitudes applauded the change, and urged in their defence that in the primitive church fasts were short and optional; they might have added, that as the times grew or were supposed to grow worse, and increasing numbers of converts * Second reading on Hebrews, p. 14. Philip's Sermon, xiii.

lowered the general standard of spirituality, as matter of course, although individuals more numerous than before might still maintain "the watch of their God;" the rulers, with very questionable policy, multiplied fast days, and made them compulsory, an experiment which seems to have been anything but successful. Thus Lent expanded itself by degrees from some shorter period (perhaps forty hours, the time of " the bridegroom's" absence in the grave) to three weeks, one and thirty, six and thirty, and forty days, and all the while the church kept sinking into deeper abysses of will worship, and voluntary humility. The church of England was certainly justified in trying a different course, and in times of persecution her sons do not appear to have shewn a diminished capability of enduring hardness like good soldiers. Taught by experience that little was ever gained by compulsory fast days, she practically reduced them beyond all precedent as soon as the secular reasons for their observation ceased to operate, and the evidence on this matter is not so clear as to enable her children dogmatically to determine that she has done wrong.

"Res hodie minor est, heri quam fuit, atque eadem cras Deteret exiguis aliquid."-Juvenal.

I.

F the many monastic establishments which once formed such striking features in the landscape of this country, there were doubtless some which the most cold hearted traveller who entered their cloisters would remember with delight. He had threaded the mazes of a forest, or encountered the dangers of a fen for many a tedious hour, and no human habitation relieved the desolateness of his prospect, when, as the sun declined, he heard the music of a vesper bell, and he hailed it as an omen that he was near the abodes of men that feared God, and had learned to love their brethren.

It was not, however, as serving the purposes of hospitality, nor as keeping the country in cultivation, which would otherwise have lapsed, as shortly afterwards it did, into sheep-walks and forests, that the best-ordered monasteries conferred the greatest benefits on society. Situated, as they commonly were, in places far distant from the haunts of men, they acted as dispersers of population-they checked the increase of great cities, and gathering round them settlements of their own