rigorously denied, that they gladly welcomed back their old English games at the Restoration; and licentiousness grew up along with them, now that restraint was removed. At the restoration, says Mr. Green, [1]"all that was noblest and best in Puritanism was whirled away with its pettiness and its tyranny in the current of the nation's hate. Religion had been turned into a political and social tyranny, and it fell with their fall. Godliness became a byword of scorn, sobriety in dress, in speech, in manners, was flouted as a mark of the detested Puritanism." One of the evil results of Puritanism on England, as told us by Mr. Green, was the growth of the freethinking spirit and of indifference to religion. [2]"From the social and religious anarchy around them," he says, "from the endless controversies and discussions of the time, they drank in the spirit of scepticism, of doubt, of free inquiry. If religious enthusiasm had broken the spell of ecclesiastical tradition, its own extravagance broke the spell of religious enthusiasm."
It would be foolish and untrue to say that the Puritans had not good men in their ranks, or to say that they had not some right principles upon their side. We must give them praise and honour for this. But it is their assumption and intolerance and desecration of which we so bitterly complain. We complain that they could not enter into the spirit of the Church of England, and that by anarchy and unlawful measures they tried their very best to destroy the Church. But it was not allowed that they should succeed in this, although they tried so hard to get success. This is a reason for holding, I should say, that there is some
