Note Note 8, page 125 — BOOK II. THE PURITAN MIGRATION.

Rise of the strict Sabbath. Writers on this subject have generally agreed in dating the rise of the Puritan Sabbath from the appearance, in 1595, of Dr. Bownd's book on The Sabbath of the Old and of the New Testament. But the doctrine of the strict keeping of Sunday may be traced farther back. In truth, the difference between the English and the Continental Sunday dates from the Reformation. Note 8. The protests of Luther and Calvin go to show that Sunday had in the church before the Reformation, theoretically if not in practice, the sanctity of a church feast. Compare Marsden's Early Puritans (1850) page 242, where Becon's Catechism and Coverdale are quoted. The English Reformation was conservative, like all other English revolutions. English reformers retained the Catholic Sunday, as they did the vestments and national hierarchy of the old church. Thomas Hancock has been styled "the Luther of the southwest of England." He was the great preacher of Poole in the days of Edward VI. That he, like other English reformers, did not agree with Luther in rejecting the obligation to rest on Sunday is shown by the record, for the voice of Poole was the voice of Hancock. Robert's Social Hist. of the Southern Counties, p. 239. About 1550 the juries in the Admiralty Court of Poole were charged to inquire into Sunday fishing; and so advanced was the premature Puritanism of Edward's time that even the leaving of nets in the sea over Sunday was to be investigated. Here was a strictness unknown in Catholic times. Note 9.