p and heartliness, by
honest feasting and merriness; so that the sabbothes be kept holie, and no
unlawful pastime be used. This form of contenting the people's minds hath
been used in all well-governed republics."

James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy among the people.
In Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after
church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch, could discover
no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and
self-denial: but when once this unlucky "Book of Sports" was thrown among
the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that everything
concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain.

* * * * *

THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY.

And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much. The controversy was
carried to an extremity in the succeeding reign. The proper hour of the
Sabbath was not agreed on: Was it to commence on the Saturday-eve? Others
thought that time, having a circular motion, the point we begin at was not
important, provided the due portion be completed. Another declared, in his
"Sunday no Sabbath," that it was merely an ecclesiastical day which may be
changed at pleasure; as they were about doing it, in the Church of Geneva,
to Thursday,--probably from their antipathy to the Catholic Sunday, as the
early Christians had anciently changed it from the Jewish Saturday. This
had taken place, had the Thursday voters not formed the minority. Another
asserted, that Sunday was a working day, and that Saturday was the
perpetual Sabbath.[A] Some deemed the very name of Sunday profaned the
Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon idolatry of that day being
dedicated to the Sun; and hence they sanctified it with the "Lord's-day."
Others were strenuous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the
Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; forbidding meat to
be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, &c.,--the day of rest was to be a
day of mortification. But this spread an alarm, that "the old rotten
ceremonial law of the Jews, which had been buried in the grave of Jesus,"
was about to be revived. And so prone is man to the reaction of opinion,
that, from observing the Sabbath with a Judaic austerity, some were for
rejecting "Lord's-days" altogether; asserting, they needed not any;
because, in their elevated holiness, all days to them were Lord's-days.[B]
A popular preacher a