it_ had been _all that day_; he took
notice what _incomes_ he had, what _profit_ he received in his spiritual
traffic: what _returns_ came from that far country; what _answers_ of
prayer, what deadness and flatness of spirit," &c. And so we find of Mr.
John Carter, that "He kept a _day-book_ and _cast up his accounts_ with
God every day."[277] To such worldly notions had they humiliated the
spirit of religion; and this style, and this mode of religion, has long
been continued among us even among men of superior acquisitions: as
witness the "Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies" of a learned physician
within our own times, Dr. Rutty, which is a great curiosity of the kind.

Such was the domestic state of many well-meaning families: they were
rejecting with the utmost abhorrence every resemblance to what they
called the idolatry of Rome, while, in fact, the gloom of the monastic
cell was settling over the houses of these melancholy puritans. Private
fasts were more than ever practised; and a lady, said to be eminent for
her genius and learning, who outlived this era, declared that she had
nearly lost her life through a prevalent notion that _no fat person
could get to heaven_; and thus spoiled and wasted her body through
excessive fastings. A quaker, to prove the text that "Man shall not live
_by bread alone_, but by the word of God," persisted in refusing his
meals. The literal text proved for him a dead letter, and this practical
commentator died by a metaphor. This quaker, however, was not the only
victim to the letter of the text; for the famous Origen, by interpreting
in too literal a way the 12th verse of the 19th of St. Matthew, which
alludes to those persons who become eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven,
with his own hands armed himself against himself, as is sufficiently
known. "_Retournons a nos moutons!_" The parliament afterwards had both
periodical and occasional fasts; and Charles the First opposed "the
hypocritical fast of every Wednesday in the month, by appointing one for
the second Friday;" the two unhappy parties, who were hungering and
thirsting for each other's blood, were fasting in spite one against the
other!

Without inquiring into the causes, even if we thought that we could
ascertain them, of that frightful dissolution of religion which so long
prevailed in our country, and of which the very corruption it has left
behind still breeds in monstrous shapes, it will be sufficient to
observe that the dest