THE SACRAMENTS.
The doctrine of the Sacraments in general, and Baptism, and the Lord's Supper in particular, in Chs. XXVII.-XXIX., is the Calvinistic theory which we have already discussed elsewhere. [1487] It is the same which is taught in all the Reformed Confessions--Continental, Anglican, and Scotch. This is admitted by candid scholars. 'On the doctrine of the sacraments,' says Marsden, an English Episcopalian, 'we do not perceive a shade of difference from the teaching of the Church of England.' [1488] And Dr. Mitchell, a Scotch Presbyterian, says: 'The teaching of the Confession on the Lord's Supper is the teaching of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, of Hooker, Ussher, and many others, . . . as well as of Knox, who from his long residence in England, and with English exiles on the Continent, had thoroughly caught up their warm and catholic utterances. This teaching is as far removed from the bare remembrance theory attributed to the early Swiss Reformers as from the consubstantiation of Luther and the local or supra-local presence contended for by Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. It is so spiritual, yet so really satisfying, that even some High-Churchmen have owned that it would be difficult to find a better directory in the study of questions relating to this sacrament than is supplied in the Confession of Faith.' [1489]
THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
Ch. XXI., ' Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,' must be mentioned as (next to the Irish Articles) the first symbolical indorsement of what may be called the Puritan theory of the Christian Sabbath which was not taught by the Reformers and the Continental Confessions, but which has taken deep root in England, Scotland, and the United States, and has become the basis of a far stricter observance of the Lord's day than exists in any other country. This observance is one of the most prominent national and social features of Anglo-American Christianity, and at once strikes the attention of every traveler. [1490]
The way was gradually prepared for it. Calvin's view of the authority of the fourth commandment was stricter than Luther's, Knox's view stricter than Calvin's, and the Puritan view stricter than Knox's. [1491] The Prayer-Book of the Church of England, by incorporating the responsive reading of the Decalogue in the regular service, kept alive in the minds of the people the perpetual obligation of the fourth commandment, and helped to create a public sentiment within the Church of England favorable to the Puritan theory, although practically great desecration prevailed during Elizabeth's reign. The 'judicious' Hooker, who was no Puritan, says: 'We are bound to account the sanctification of one day in seven a duty which God's immutable law doth exact forever.' [1492]
Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign the Sabbath question assumed the importance and dignity of a national movement, and of a practical reformation which traveled from England to Scotland and from both countries to North America. The chief impulse to this movement was given in 1595 by Dr. Nicolas Bownd (or Bound), [1493] a learned Puritan clergyman of Norton in Suffolk. He is not the originator, but the systematizer or first clear expounder of the Puritan theory of the Christian Sabbath, namely, that the Sabbath or weekly day of holy rest is a primitive institution of the benevolent Creator for the benefit of man, and that the fourth commandment as to its substance (that is, the keeping holy one day out of seven) is as perpetual in design and as binding upon the Christians as any other of the Ten Commandments, of which Christ said that not 'one jot or one tittle' shall pass away till all be fulfilled. [1494]
The work in which this theory was ably and earnestly vindicated proved to be a tract for the times. Heylin, a High-Church opponent, says 'that in a very little time it grew the most bewitching error, the most popular deceit that had ever been set on foot in the Church of England.' [1495] Fuller dates from it 'the more solemn and strict observance of the Lord's day,' and gives the following description of the effect produced by it:
'It is almost incredible how taking this doctrine was, partly because of its own purity, and partly for the eminent piety of such persons as maintained it, so that the Lord's day, especially in corporations, began to be precisely kept, people becoming a law to themselves, forbearing such sports as [were] yet by statute permitted; yea, many rejoicing at their own restraint therein. On this day the stoutest fencer laid down the buckler, the most skilful archer unbent his bow, counting all shooting besides the mark; May-games and Morris-dances grew out of request, and good reason that bells should be silenced from gingling about men's legs, if their very ringing in steeples were adjudged unlawful; some of them were ashamed of their former pleasures, like children which, grown bigger, blushing themselves out of their rattles and whistles. Others forbore them for fear of their superiors, and many left them off out of a politic compliance, lest otherwise they should be accounted licentious.
'Yet learned men were much divided in their judgments about these Sabbatarian doctrines. Some embraced them as ancient truths consonant to Scripture, long disused and neglected, now seasonably revived for the increase of piety. Others conceived them grounded on a wrong bottom, but because they tended to the manifest advance of religion it was pity to oppose them, seeing none have just reason to complain being deceived into their own good. But a third sort flatly fell out with these positions, as galling men's necks with a Jewish yoke, against the liberty of Christians: that Christ, as Lord of the Sabbath, had removed the rigor thereof, and allowed men lawful recreations; that this doctrine put an unequal lustre on the Sunday, on set purpose to eclipse all other holy days, to the derogation of the authority of the Church; that the strict observance was set up out of faction to be a character of difference, to brand all for libertines who did not entertain it.' [1496]
The Puritan Sabbath theory was denounced and assailed by the rising school of High-Churchism as a Sabbatarian heresy and a cunningly concealed attack on the authority of the Church of England, by substituting the Jewish Sabbath for the Christian Sunday and all the Church festivals. [1497] Attempts were made by Archbishop Whitgift in 1599, and by Chief Justice Popham in 1600, to suppress Bownd's book and to destroy all the copies, but 'the more it was called in the more it was called on;' its price was doubled, and 'though the book's wings were clipped from flying abroad in print, it ran the faster from friend to friend in transcribed copies, and the Lord's day, in most places, was most strictly observed. The more liberty people were offered the less they used it. . . . It was sport for them to refrain from sports. . . . Scarce any comment, catechism, or controversy was set forth by the stricter divines, wherein this doctrine (the diamond in this ring) was not largely pressed and proved; so that, as one saith, the Sabbath itself had no rest.' [1498]
At last King James I. brought his royal authority to bear against the Puritan Sabbatarianism so called, and issued the famous 'Book of Sports,' May 24, 1618, which was afterwards republished, with an additional order, by his son, Charles I., no doubt by advice of Archbishop Laud, Oct. 18, 1633. [1499] This curious production formally authorizes and commends the desecration of the evening of the Lord's day by dancing, leaping, fencing, and other 'lawful recreations,' on condition of observing the earlier part by strict outward conformity to the worship of the Church of England. [1500] The professed object of this indulgence to the common people was to check the progress of the Papists and Puritans (or 'Precisians'), and to make 'the bodies more able for war' when his majesty should have 'occasion to use them.' The court set the example of desecration by balls, masquerades, and plays on Sunday evening; and the rustics repaired from the house of worship to the ale-house or the village green to dance around the Maypole and to shoot at butts. To complete the folly, King James ordered the book to be read in every parish church, and threatened clergymen who refused to do so with severe punishment. King Charles repeated the order. But in both cases it became the source of great trouble and confusion. [1501] Several bishops disapproved of it. Archbishop Abbot (the Puritan predecessor of Laud) flatly forbade it to be read at Croydon. The Lord Mayor of London commanded the king's own carriages to be stopped as they were passing through the city on a Sunday. James raged and swore, and countermanded the prohibition. The Lord Mayor yielded, with this answer: 'While I was in my power I did my duty, but that being taken away, it is my duty to obey.' Some clergymen, after reading the book from the pulpit, followed it up by a sermon against it, or by reading the fourth commandment--'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy'--and added, 'This is the law of God, the other the injunction of man.' Those who refused to read the royal Book of Sports were suspended from office and benefice, or even excommunicated by Laud and his sympathizing fellow-bishops. [1502] Many left England, and joined
'The pilgrim bands, who crossed the sea to keep
Their Sabbaths in the eye of God alone,
In his wide temple of the wilderness."
This persecution of conscientious ministers for obeying God rather than men gave moral strength to the cause of Sabbath observance, and rooted it deeper in the affections of the people. It was one of the potent causes which overwhelmed Charles and Laud in common ruin. The sober and serious part of the nation were struck with a kind of horror that they should be invited by the highest authorities in Church and State to destroy the effect of public worship by a desecration of a portion of the day consecrated to religion.
On the Sunday question Puritanism achieved at last a permanent triumph, and left its trace upon the Church of England and Scotland, which reappeared after the licentious period of the Restoration. For, although the Church of England, as a body, never committed itself to the Puritan Sabbath theory, it adopted at least the practice of a much stricter observance than had previously obtained under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, and would never exchange it for the Continental laxity, with its disastrous effects upon the attendance at public worship and the morals of the people.
The Westminster Confession, without entering into details or sanctioning the incidental excesses of the Puritan practice, represents the Christian rest-day under its threefold aspect: (1) as a divine law of nature (jus divinum naturale), rooted in the constitution of man, and hence instituted (together with marriage) at the creation, in the state of innocence, for the perpetual benefit of body and soul; (2) as a positive moral law (jus divinum positivum), given through Moses, with reference to the primitive institution ('Remember') and to the typical redemption of Israel from bondage; (3) as the commemoration of the new creation and finished redemption by the resurrection of Christ; hence the change from the last to the first day of the week, and its designation 'the Lord's day' (dies Dominica). And it requires the day to be wholly devoted to the exercises of public and private worship and the duties of necessity and mercy.
To this doctrine and practice the Presbyterian, Congregational, and other Churches in Scotland, England, and America have faithfully adhered to this day. Yea, twenty-seven years before it was formulated by the learned divines of Westminster, the Pilgrim Fathers of America had transplanted both theory and practice first to Holland, and, finding them unsafe there, to the wild soil of New England. Two days after their landing from the Mayflower (Dec. 22, 1620), forgetting the pressing necessities of physical food and shelter, the dreary cold of winter, the danger threatening from wild beasts and roaming savages, they celebrated their first Sunday in America on a barren rock and under the stormy sky of heaven, and, in the exercise of the general priesthood of believers, they offered the sacrifices of contrite hearts and the praises of devout lips to their God and Saviour, on his own appointed day of holy rest; not dreaming that they were the bearers of the hopes and destinies of a mighty future and the founders of a republic stretching across a continent and embracing millions of intelligent Christian freemen. [1503]