d in a printed list issued by the
Bishop.[1004] Colston's Bristol benefaction, of 1708, provided, amongst
his other charities, for an annual series of fourteen Lent sermons. The
Low Churchmen of William's and Queen Anne's time instilled a devout
observance of the season no less than the clergy of the High Church
party. Burnet has been mentioned. Fleetwood's words, in his sermon
before the King, on the 1st Sunday in Lent, 1717, are worth quoting.
'Our Church,' he said, 'hath erected this temporary house of mourning,
wherein she would oblige us annually to enter.... And that we might
attend more freely to these matters, she advises abstinence, and a
prudent retrenchment of all those superfluities that minister to luxury
more than necessity: by which the busy spirits are composed and quieted;
the loose and scattered thoughts are recollected and brought home, and
such a serious, sober frame of mind put on that we can think with less
distraction, remember more exactly, pray with more fervency, repent more
earnestly, and resolve with more deliberation on amendment. These are
the beneficial fruits and effects of a reasonable, well governed
abstinence, as every one may find by their experience.'[1005] John
Wesley, as might naturally be expected from one who in many of his
sympathies was so decidedly a High Churchman, was always in favour of a
religious observance of Lent, especially of Holy Week. Steele, in a
paper of the 'Guardian,' specially addressed, in Lent 1713, to careless
men of pleasure, begs them not to ridicule a season set apart for
humiliation. And passing mention may be made of indications, more or
less trivial in themselves, of a tolerably general feeling throughout
society that Lent was not quite what other seasons are, and ought not to
be wholly disregarded. There were few marriages in Lent,[1006]
comparatively few entertainments, public or private;[1007] in some
cathedral towns the music of the choir was silent.[1008] And just as
Sunday is sometimes honoured only by the putting on of a better dress,
so the fashionable world would often pay that easiest show of homage to
the sacredness of the Lenten season, not by curtailing in any way their
ordinary pleasures, but by going to the theatre in mourning.[1009]
Masquerades, too, were considered out of place, at all events unless
they were disguised under another name--

In Lent, if masquerades displease the town,
Call them ridottos, and they still go down.[