The first
Protestants had expelled so much from the service of the altar, that
little was left for the Puritan to destroy, without incurring the risk of
leaving it naked of its loveliness. By a strange substitution of subtlety
for humility, it was thought pharisaical to bend the knee in public, lest
the great essential of spiritual worship might be supplanted by the more
attainable merit of formula; and while rigid aspects, and prescribed
deportments of a new character, were observed with all the zeal of
converts, ancient and even natural practices were condemned, chiefly, we
believe, from that necessity of innovation which appears to be an
unavoidable attendant of all plans of improvement, whether they are
successful or the reverse. But though the Puritans refused to bow their
stubborn limbs when the eye of man was on them, even while asking boons
suited to their own sublimated opinions, it was permitted to assume in
private an attitude which was thought to admit of so gross an abuse,
inasmuch as it infers a claim to a religious vitality, while in truth the
soul might only be slumbering in the security of mere moral pretension.
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