d.[1117] In both these cases there was plain neglect of the rubric.
Where the Prayer-book was silent, uncertainty and variation of usage
were more reasonable. Thus some stood at the Epistle, as well as at the
Gospel,[1118] and some whenever the second lesson was from one of the
Evangelists.[1119] What Cowper calls the 'divorce of knees from
hassocks,' was perhaps not so frequent then as now.[1120] In pictures of
church interiors of that date, the congregation is generally represented
as really kneeling. Still, it was much too frequent, and quite fell in
with the careless, self-indulgent habits of the time. Before the middle
of the century it had become very general. In one of the papers of the
'Tatler,' we find there were some who neither stood nor knelt, but
remained lazily sitting throughout the service like 'an audience at a
playhouse.'[1121] Sitting while the Psalms were being sung was,
notwithstanding many remonstrances, the rule rather than the exception
during the earlier part of the century. The Puritan commission of 1641
had spoken of standing at the hymns as an innovation.[1122] Even
Sherlock, in 1681, speaks of 'that universal practice of sitting while
we sing the Psalms.'[1123] In 1717, Fleetwood speaks of standing at such
times as if it were a singularity rather than otherwise.[1124] Hickes,
on the other hand, writes in 1701, as if those who refused to stand at
the singing of psalms and anthems were for the most part 'stiff, morose,
and saturnine votists.'[1125] In fact, High Churchmen insisted on the
one posture, while Low Churchmen generally preferred the other; and so
the custom remained very variable, until the High Church reaction of
Queen Anne's time succeeded in establishing, in this particular, a rule
which was henceforth generally recognised. In 1741, Secker speaks of
sitting during the singing as if, though common enough, it were still a
mere careless habit.[1126]

At the beginning of the century many who had been brought up in Puritan
traditions thoroughly disliked the custom of congregational responses.
They called it 'a tossing of tennis balls,'[1127] and set it down as one
of the points of formalism.[1128] Partly, perhaps, from a little of this
sort of feeling, but far more often for no other reason than a lack of
devotional spirit, that cold and most unattractive custom, which
prevailed throughout the Georgian age, of making the clerk the
mouthpiece of the congregation, fast gained ground. Thi