f private
affection and of public duty was unloosened. Even nature was strangely
violated! From the first opposition to the decorous ceremonies of the
national church, by the simple puritans, the next stage was that of
ridicule, and the last of obloquy. They began by calling the surplice a
linen rag on the back; baptism a Christ's cross on a baby's face; and
the organ was likened to the bellow, the grunt, and the barking of the
respective animals. They actually baptized horses in churches at the
fonts; and the jest of that day was, that the Reformation was now a
thorough one in England, since our horses went to church.[280] St.
Paul's cathedral was turned into a market, and the aisles, the
communion-table, and the altar, served for the foulest purposes.[281]
The liberty which every one now assumed of delivering his own opinions,
led to acts so execrable, that I can find no parallel for them except in
the mad times of the French Revolution. Some maintained that there
existed no distinction between moral good and moral evil; and that every
man's actions were prompted by the Creator. Prostitution was professed
as a religious act; a glazier was declared to be a prophet, and the
woman he cohabited with was said to be ready to lie in of the Messiah.
A man married his father's wife. Murders of the most extraordinary
nature were occurring; one woman crucified her mother; another, in
imitation of Abraham, sacrificed her child; we hear, too, of parricides.
Amidst the slaughters of civil wars, spoil and blood had accustomed the
people to contemplate the most horrible scenes. One madman of the many,
we find drinking a health on his knees, in the midst of a town, "to the
devil! that it might be said that his family should not be extinct
without doing some infamous act." A Scotchman, one Alexander Agnew,
commonly called "Jock of broad Scotland," whom one cannot call an
atheist, for he does not seem to deny the existence of the Creator, nor
a future state, had a shrewdness of local humour in his strange notions.
Omitting some offensive things, others as strange may exhibit the state
to which the reaction of an hypocritical system of religion had driven
the common people. "Jock of broad Scotland" said he was nothing in God's
common, for God had given him nothing; he was no more obliged to God
than to the devil; for God was very greedy. Neither God nor the devil
gave the fruits of the ground; the wives of the country gave him his
meat. W