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The Beginners of a Nation

Note Note 11, page 131 — BOOK II. THE PURITAN MIGRATION.

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Opposition to Bownd. But a violent opposition quickly arose. Some opposed the book as "galling men's necks with a Jewish yoke against the liberty of Christians," and many of the clergy of the new high-church type resented the doctrine of a Christian Sabbath, asserting that it put "an unequal lustre on the Sunday on set purpose to eclipse all other holy days to the derogation of the authority of the church." Fuller's Church History, book ix, sect. viii, 21. There were those who asserted that the "brethren," as they styled them, had brought forth Bownd's book, intending by this "attack from an odd corner" to retrieve lost ground. Note 11. The manifest advantage to Puritanism from the shifting of the ground of debate, aroused Archbishop Whitgift. In 1599 he made the tactical mistake of ordering the book called in, and in 1600 Chief-Justice Popham forbade the reprinting of it. The price of the work was doubled at once, and it was everywhere sought for, books being "more called on when called in," as Fuller says. When it could not be had in print, it was transcribed by enthusiastic admirers and circulated "from friend to friend" in manuscript. As soon as Whitgift's "head was laid," a new and enlarged edition was published.

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