who were determined not to give up a single word or form; to whom
it seemed that the prayers were no prayers without the surplice,
the babe no Christian if not marked with the cross, the bread and
wine no memorials of redemption or vehicles of grace if not
received on bended knee. Why, these persons asked, was the docile
and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted by seeing the
irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her
majestic choirs? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if
prejudices they were, be less considered than the whims of
schismatics? If, as Burnet and men like Burnet were never weary
of repeating, indulgence was due to a weak brother, was it less
due to the brother whose weakness consisted in the excess of his
love for an ancient, a decent, a beautiful ritual, associated in
his imagination from childhood with all that is most sublime and
endearing, than to him whose morose and litigious mind was always
devising frivolous objections to innocent and salutary usages?
But, in truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not that sort
of scrupulosity which the Apostle had commanded believers to
respect. It sprang, not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but
from censoriousness and spiritual pride; and none who had studied
the New Testament could have failed to observe that, while we are
charged carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the
feeble, we are taught by divine precept and example to make no
concession to the supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was
every thing which was not of the essence of religion to be given
up as soon as it became unpleasing to a knot of zealots whose
heads had been turned by conceit and the love of novelty? Painted
glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the essence of
religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to be broken
at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter to