Today is a fateful day in British history: the day on which King Charles I was executed in 1649. To some he became a martyr figure. To others, it was a fitting end to the "man of blood." Most of my Baptist forebears alive at the time would have supported the decision to execute their monarch. For me, it is vital to understand why men and women in that day felt the need to kill their king and how they read Scripture so as to justify their decision.
Celebrating Baptist roots like a rock concert!
Am working right now on a talk for tomorrow at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto on “Celebrating our roots; Anticipating the harvest”—a 400th anniversary celebration of Baptist origins with John Smyth and Thomas Helwys and the like. It is historic in some ways since it will bring together Baptists from the FEBC and BCOQ to celebrate together our forebears and God’s goodness over the years.
In some ways gathering to recall the beginnings of those Christians called Baptists is a little like one of those rock concerts for boomers, who come together to hear a sixties band belt out some of their favourite rock n’ roll hits from that era. It would be easy to think that those aging rockers are merely indulging in nostalgia. Sure, there is some of that. But to a real extent their roots lie back in the sixties. That was the era that defined their social, sexual, and spiritual views and reliving the vibrant music of that era that stirred their souls so deeply then helps them reaffirm their identity now. In a somewhat similar way, what we are doing when we celebrate our roots is not mere antiquarianism: oh, wouldn’t it have been lovely to live in that era! No, we gather together to re-affirm who we are by recalling where we have come from.
The Second London Confession 3
It is extemely important that The Second London Confession (SLC), when it came to the section "Of Gods Decree," did not reproduce The Westminster Confession (WCF) holus-bolus. Chap. 3 of the WCF has eight paragraphs. Chap. 3 of the SLC has only seven. One, that on reprobation, has been entirely omitted. The WCF essentially reproduced the doctrine of double predestination that was part of the strong Augustinian tradition that ran from Augustine through the Venerable Bede (c.673-735) and Gottschalk (c.804-c.869) to the Reformers. The authors of the SLC, however, embraced a milder Augustinianism.
This needs exploring by someone in more detail!
Reviewing Chris Hedges and citing Cotton Mather
I picked up a copy of the National Post this past Saturday. I used to get it regularly a few years ago, but had stopped that regular subscription out of frustration with certain things, in particular the book review section. A friend encouraged me to pick it up again. I did so on Saturday and loved what I found. Among other things I read with interest were the insightful columns reflecting on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, Conrad Black's response to critics of his becoming a Roman Catholic (my friend John Clubine was mentioned by name and a particular book on Cromwell, dear to me, referred to), and a number of fascinating book reviews.
One of the latter that caught my attention was Jessica Warner's review of Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and Triumph of Spectacle (Knopf, 2009), of which I have read the first few chapters and skimmed other parts of it ["Rage against the obscene", National Post (Saturday, October 10, 2009), WP14]. She is critical of Hedges' style, namely, his jeremiad against popular American culture, and suggests that this is not "really the best way to pull us back from the brink." She then comments:
"Most people, I suspect, prefer their finger-wagging decently cloaked in wit and irony. There is a reason Voltaire and Swift continue to be read--and why Cotton Mather is not."
Poor Cotton Mather! But another reason could be that Mather's jeremiad prose is laced with theological perspectives at odds with many today, whereas Voltaire definitely and to some degree Swift would be very much at home in certain aspects of this post-Enlightenment world that is grounded in the modernity project.
A good review, though, of Hedges' book.
Sola scriptura and following the Puritans
Why do I love the Puritans? Well, it is because of their robust soteriology that is faithful to the Word of God, their awesome biblical piety, and their keen ecclesiology. And after all, my seventeenth-century Baptist forebears were Puritans. But, and this is why we study history, they and their age are not the standard by which we measure biblical fidelity. That belongs to one source: the very one that they loved and sought to uphold—Holy Scripture. It alone is the canon and rule of faith. So, there are some things in which I do not hesitate not to follow the Puritans. In the big picture, they are small things, but they illustrate that for me Scripture alone can bind my conscience. I wear a wedding ring on my left hand’s ring finger—the Puritans rejected the use of such because of the pagan origins of wedding rings. I do not dispute the historicity of those origins. But it is more important for me to bear witness to the permanence and desirability of marriage in our neo-pagan environment than protest against Norse paganism!
Or with regard to the keeping of days, I find it odd that in a world that is increasingly out of sync with the Gospel story and is utterly ignorant of some of the key events of that story that some of our churches, who would regard themselves as modelling Puritanism for the twenty-first century, fail to take advantage of the traditional church year that recalls Advent, Palm Sunday, Pentecost or Trinity Sunday. Would I re-introduce these days of remembrance into Baptist life? Yes, I would, for they help to remind us of critical aspects of the Gospel. Trinity Sunday, for example, would be an excellent antidote to Baptist churches in which the Trinity is never the subject of a sermon, year in, year out. And Pentecost would help some Baptists overcome their fear of the Holy Spirit!
The Wirkungsgeschichte of the Patristic literature
What we also need is a study or better yet studies of the reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the Patristic literature on the Puritans and Evangelicals of the 18th century. There have been a number of studies of the influence of Macarius-Symeon (that Augustinian-like shadowy figure) on John Wesley. But we need a lot more of this. The translation of the Letter to Diognetus into English, for example, sparked deep interest among the 18th century Calvinistic Baptists and I know of two translations by that community, one of them by John Sutcliff (1752-1814), the friend of Andrew Fuller.
William Gurnall
If anyone has any leads as to where to find substantial biographical information about the Puritan William Gurnall (beyond the standard biographical dictionaries), would you be so kind as to e-mail me at mhaykin@sbts.edu ? Many thanks in advance for any information.
Did the Puritans dislike Christmas pudding?
Last fall while speaking at Hespeler Baptist Church on the Puritans a friend gave me a page she had found in the catalogue of a British firm that shipped various British foods overseas. This particular page advertised Christmas pudding.
Part of the ad ran thus: “Christmas pudding should be so wickedly good it makes you feel like repenting. That’s the effect it had on the Puritans, who, back in Britain in 1664, banned the rich dessert as a lewd tradition. Thankfully, King George gave in to temptation and removed the ban in 1714.”
Pasing by the incredible statement of the first line, it seems as if this ad derived its historical data from this webpage of BBC2: “Traditional Christmas Pudding” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A660836), where we are further informed that the Puritans' argument against the pudding was that “mainly due to its rich ingredients” they deemed it “unfit for God-fearing people.” When George reintroduced it, according to this web page, the Quakers objected, calling it “the invention of the scarlet whore of Babylon.” Doing a quick check, it appears that a number of places on the Web have similar information and the same dates.
There are some obvious problems here. First, the Puritans, if we mean the English Puritans, had no power to be banning anything in 1664 since the Restoration in 1660 had led to their complete removal from the halls of power. Then, the Quakers are not to be confused with the Puritans. King George of the ad is presumably George I (r.1714-1727). George, who spoke virtually not a word of English—he was a Hanoverian from Germany—became king in August of 1714. And it was that December he reinstated the Christmas pudding.
Well, someone who loves the Puritans needs to research this and find out the truth. This would make a very good term paper!
Fabulous discovery about Thomas Wilcox (1622-1687), author of a minor spiritual classic
“Praying will make thee leave sinning or sinning will make leave praying.” [1] This well-known saying may well have originated with Thomas Wilcox (1622-1687), the author of the minor spiritual classic A Choice Drop of Honey from the Rock Christ, which was published before the Great Fire of London in 1666. When I first wrote my Kiffin, Knollys, and Keach in the early 1990s, I included this spiritual classic as an appendix. It was excluded by the publisher, which was providential, for although I knew Wilcox wrote a number of tracts, I thought the above book was the only one extant. Today, my assistant Steve Weaver kindly got for me a PDF of a 1699 edition of Wilcox’s classic work (published then under the title of A Guide to Eternal Glory). It was attached to nine other tracts (the whole being published by Nathanael Crouch, who was a printer near Cheapside, London) and in the preface “To the Christian Reader” that preceded all of the tracts, Wilcox noted that he had “subjoined some other brief tracts” (p.6), which definitely seems to indicate he is the author, especially since no other names appear with the various tracts. [2] This is a fabulous discovery because it gives us some other material by the author of a remarkable tract that by the 1840s had gone through at least sixty printings and had been translated into numerous languages, including Welsh, Irish Gaelic, French, German, and Finnish. In light of such a printing record, it is no exaggeration to describe it as a minor classic from the late Puritan era. [3] It is currently available from Chapel Library. The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies hopes to include a fresh edition and textual commentary on it by Dr Stephen Yuille in its Occasional Monographs series, which is to be launched in the near future.
Of the numerous Calvinistic Baptist authors of the seventeenth century, there were really only three who were being read extensively a century or two later. John Bunyan was, of course, one. Another was Benjamin Keach. And the third was Thomas Wilcox, about whom we really know very little. [4] We know that he was born in 1622 at Lyndon, then in Rutland. His early career, though, is shrouded in obscurity. By the 1660s he was living in London on Cannon Street, where a congregation of believers that he pastored met regularly in his home to worship the Lord. During the following decade Wilcox preached to this congregation at the Three Cranes, a wooden building on Tooley Street in Southwark.
Though a convinced Baptist, Wilcox was catholic enough in his sentiments to be invited frequently to preach among the Presbyterians and Congregationalists. He also courageously endured imprisonment a number of times rather than sacrifice his convictions as a Dissenter. He hoped, we are told, that his death might be a sudden one, a hope that was apparently realized when he died in May, 1687. The epitaph on his tomb in Bunhill Fields, the Nonconformist burial ground in London, was a remark that he often made in this regard, “Sudden death sudden glory.” After his death the members of his congregation appear to have joined other Calvinistic Baptist causes in the city.
Do look for Stephen Yuille’s edition of A Choice Drop of Honey from the Rock Christ in our monograph series. The work is based on a phrase from Psalm 81:16 [“He should have fed them also with the finest of wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee” (KJV)], and it well captures the Christ-centred piety of the early Calvinistic Baptists and the way in which their piety was nourished by those central themes of the Reformation, solus Christus and sola fide.
[1] The Serephick [sic] Soul’s Triumph in the Love of God in Thomas Wilcox, A Guide to Eternal Glory. Or, Brief Directions to all Christians how to attain Everlasting Salvation. To which are added, Several other excellent Divine Tracts (London: Nath. Crouch, 1699), 124.
[2] In a 1676 edition of this classic, there is an appended work, Spiritual Hymns Used by Some Christians at the Receiving the Sacrament of the Lords Supper, with some others (London: Nath. Crouch, 1676). The use of the term “sacrament” by this Calvinistic Baptist is noteworthy, it being a term commonly used by Baptist at this time.
[3] In this regard, see Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, “The Spirit of the Old Writers: The Great Awakening and the Persistence of Puritan Piety” in Francis J. Bremer, ed., Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), 281.
[4] Our principal source of information about Wilcox is Thomas Crosby, The History of the English Baptists (London: 1740), III, 101. See also Joseph Ivimey, A History of the English Baptists (London: 1814), II, 465; W. T. Whitley, The Baptists of London 1612-1928 (London: The Kingsgate Press, 1928), 120.
Oliver Cromwell & the current elections
I must confess to having enormous admiration for that most controversial of figures, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), about whom two or three new books have appeared this year. The reason for my admiration will become plain in part from the following extract from A Declaration of the Army of England upon their March into Scotland To all that are Saints, and partakers of the faith of God’s Elect, in Scotland, which was issued July 19, 1650. In it Cromwell made this excellent statement: "Is all religion wrapped up in that or any one form? Doth that name, or thing, give the difference between those that are the members of Christ and those that are not? We think not so. We say, faith working by love is the true character of a Christian; and, God is our witness, in whomsoever we see any thing of Christ to be, there we reckon our duty to love, waiting for a more plentiful effusion of the Spirit of God to make all those Christians, who, by the malice of the world, are diversified, and by their own carnal-mindedness, do diversify themselves by several names of reproach, to be of one heart and one mind, worshipping God with one consent."
With elections facing both Canada and the United States, some bitter words are being uttered by adherents of the different political persuasions. And even Christians have allowed what Cromwell here calls “the malice of the world” to influence them in harsh remarks about political opponents. I suppose this is a danger to which young men are prone and some of the comments I have read that have deeply disturbed me by their attitude have been written by younger brothers. But folly and malice are no respecters of age!
There are Christians today who make the heart of the gospel a political position or an economic perspective. Surely Christians may differ on such issues. As Cromwell rightly says: “Is all religion wrapped up in that or any one form?” He was talking about making ecclesial issues the heart of the gospel. In our day, some, and some who should know better, are making this political policy or that economic strategy essential to gospel truth.
The gospel touches on political and economic realities for sure—not one square inch of this universe is not owned by King Jesus, and we look forward to a glorious theocracy one day in the new heavens and the new earth in which there will be true liberty—but till then, we must learn as Christians to disagree in love on such secondary issues. Yes, have convictions; but love all who love the Lord Jesus.
If we cannot love our brothers and sisters who disagree with us in this and must hit them verbally with invective and name-calling, how on earth will we ever love those that reject the gospel and take very contrary positions to ours on matters far more weighty?
Jim Davison on Jeremiah Burroughes
The following post is from a close friend, Jim Davison of Northern Ireland, who did his PhD thesis at Queens Belfast on Jeremiah Burroughes. A comment on Jeremiah Burroughes’ Gospel Worship:
Jeremiah Burroughes (c.1600-1646) has been a constant companion of mine for the past seven or eight years, through the study of his printed sermons and other works. He more than any other puritan preacher has warmed my soul and encouraged me to seek what he sought to preach a life lived to the glory of God. In Gospel Worship the emphasis is on the privilege and awesome responsibility of drawing near to God, for He has said: ‘I will be sanctified in them that draw nigh Me’ (Exodus 10:3).
How this is to be done is set out by Burroughes by way of three topics, each of which have many headings and sub-headings. The subjects are Hearing the Word, Receiving the Lord’s Supper, and Sanctifying the Name of God in Prayer. Each of these duties is unfolded for us with the aim of better equipping us to worship God in a proper manner, e.g., with reverence and awe.
In regard to hearing the Word as part of worship we are reminded by Burroughes that while it is good to hear the Word it is more important how we hear it, by which he means, not only as ‘an ordinance appointed by God,’ but in such a way that at the last day we will be able to say: ‘This is the Word that I reverenced, that I obeyed, that I loved, that I made the joy of my heart.’ Here we find Burroughes at his best as he unfolds the importance of preparation of heart to hear the Word preached.
In regard to the Lord’s Supper, Burroughes makes it clear that in keeping this ordinance ‘you will find a greater beauty … than you ever found in all your lives.’ Surely this is a message we need to get across to the many in each congregation who ignore the ordinance time after time. Burroughes follows his exposition of the importance of this ordinance with ten mediations ‘by which we should labour to sanctify our hearts,’ as we ‘come to sanctify the name of God when we are drawing nigh to Him’ in this holy ordinance.
The third subject handled by Burroughes is prayer as a means of worshiping God. Here Burroughes shows that prayer is ‘that which sanctifies all things to us’ - ‘Everything is sanctified by the word of God and prayer’ (1 Timothy 4:5). Prayer is also that which ‘would help us against many temptations to evil.’ This leads Burroughes to exhort believers to ‘the preparation of heart unto prayer.’ This preparation is to be done in the course of one’s life,’ by which Burroughes means the way we live: ‘keep all things even and clean between God and your souls’ and ‘keep our hearts sensible of our continual dependence upon God.’
In many ways these fourteen sermons, now printed in a modern format by Soli Deo Gloria Publications, seek to emphasis the need for preparation of heart and soul as a prelude to participating in these three great ordinances of worship. It is a masterful treatise on a subject that is foreign to many today; but one that is surely needed. Burroughes is right when he says, ‘The reason why we worship God in a slight way is because we do not see God in His glory.’ But, one cannot read these sermons without appreciating that God is glorious in holiness. It is also true that ‘If in the duties of worship we are near to God, then hence appears the great honour that God puts upon his servants that do worship him.'
Guidance re buying Puritan books
John Owen is a marvelous entry into Puritanism. He has been rightly described as the Calvin of the Puritan authors. His writing style is prolix and a little verbose, but he is superb in terms of his penetrating and exhaustive treatment of an issue. Buy some of his Works if you can; they are printed by the Banner of Truth. Volume 6 on the believer’s struggle against sin is a good place to begin. Richard Baxter is also good, but only with regard to his practical works. His theology was a mish-mash (my words, but J. I. Packer's sentiments). Stay away from his theological works proper. But his practical stuff—e.g. The Reformed Pastor and The Saints’ Everlasting Rest are tops. Other series of Puritan works: Richard Sibbes, an early Puritan, is also superb. His works are published by the Banner of Truth. Thomas Goodwin is also excellent, especially on the Spirit. Two late Puritans are also highly recommended : John Howe, one of my favourite authors, and Matthew Henry—get his commentary, the first complete commentary on the entire Bible by an English author. Get the full edition of this commentary, not an abbreviation. Finally, John Bunyan is a must—any of his works. With regard to individual books there is Isaac Ambrose, Looking Unto Jesus—superb. And Thomas Wilcox, Honey out of the Rock. I have begun to read a little of David Dickson, who is not bad. Samuel Rutherford’s Letters are also a must—absolute gold. I.D.E. Thomas, A Puritan Golden Treasury is also worth possessing. It is published by the Banner of Truth, and is a weighty selection of Puritan quotes. Thomas Boston, a late Scottish Puritan author is also good.
8,000 Dissenter martyrs revisited
Is this 8,000 martyrs an inflated figure for the Stuart persecution? Michael Watts in his magisterial first volume of his multi-volume work The Dissenters (Clarendon Press 1978), reckons that W.C. Braithwaite was correct when he stated that 15,000 Quakers alone suffered during this era by "fines, imprisonment, and transportation" into exile and 450 died in prison (p.236). I just glanced at Gerald R. Cragg's Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution, another great book on this era, but could see nothing where he gave statistics of those who died in prison.
If 450 Quakers died in prison, that would mean there were 7,500 other Dissenters from the Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Baptist ranks that perished in the prisons--and that seems unlikely to me as the Quakers suffered very heavily in this era.
Does anyone have any other statistics?
8,000 martyrs
In response to my mention in the previous post of 8,000 Dissenters dying in prisons during the reign of Charles II and James II, a dear friend, Ron Miller, made this extremely helpful comment: "The 8000 number is found in De Foe's preface to De Laune's A Plea for the Non-Conformists, p 4 in the 1720 edition I have, the seventh paragraph from the start. De Foe says this, 'I am sorry to say, he is one of near eight thousand Protestant Dissenters that perish'd in prison in the days of that merciful [sarcasm?!] prince, King Charles the Second'."
Owen and A “Clear Shining From God”
Would you work for God in a specific cause? Then, there must be what John Owen, that immortal Puritan, called a “clear shining from God”: “Clear shining from God must be at the bottom of deep labouring with God.”[1]
[1] Cited Peter Barraclough, John Owen (1616-1683) (London: Independent Press Ltd., 1961), 6.
Possible Topics for Theses in 17th-Century Puritanism
Mark Jones, a dear brother, who is doing a fine dissertation on Thomas Goodwin’s Christology, has a list of potential PhD and MA theses. Excellent ideas: Possible Thesis Studies (17thC). I should add at some point a similar list for Baptists!
To Kill a King
To Kill A King (2003): I was utterly surprised to find this movie just released on DVD about that most tumultuous era of the British Isles’ history, the era of the 1640s and 1650s, when the world of our Anglophone forebears was “turned upside down” (a phrase actually used in the movie). It is well done in many ways: costumes and acting—Rupert Everett as King Charles I is excellent, as is Dougray Scott as Lord Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671), and Olivia Williams as Anne Vere, Fairfax’s wife. It was good to see married love—that between Fairfax and his wife—portrayed with sympathy. In fact, from Naseby to Charles II’s public hanging of Cromwell’s corpse, the movie is marked overall by historical accuracy—except in one instance: the character and rule of Oliver Cromwell.
I was sorely disappointed in the portrayal of Oliver Cromwell (acted by Tim Roth). Not by Roth’s acting, but by the portrayal of Cromwell as a morose individual who, according to the movie, eventually exercises a brutal tyranny through the Army. The movie thus perpetuates one of our great historical myths: that Cromwell was cut from the same cloth of such later tyrants like Robespierre and Stalin. As one reviewer put it, Roth’s Cromwell is “assured but troubled, righteous yet ruthless,…the ugly, human face of this riveting drama.”
Those of us who love the memory of Cromwell—in this, the 350th anniversary of his death—await a sensitive, accurate celluloid portrayal of this complex man.
Interpreting English Calvinistic Baptist History
The reigning paradigm for interpreting English Calvinistic Baptist history is as follows: Significant growth in the 1640s and 1650s
Persecution but still growth from 1660-1688
Increasing stagnation and even decline from 1688 to the 1770s /1780s
Revival between the 1770s/1780s and the 1830s
This is a common-enough hermeneutic grid for making sense of the English Calvinistic Baptist story. But it makes sense only if one presumes that the whole story is about numerical growth.
But what if we approached the whole history from the 1640s to the 1830s from a somewhat different angle, say the angle of being pilgrims and strangers? Do you still get the same graph of growth, decline and growth? No, then the pattern is somewhat different. Then the early period—when the historical background was the Puritan Cause Triumphant—is not as close to the New Testament pattern, since many of the Calvinistic Baptists were wielding power in the army and were influential in Puritan politics (witness Ireland, for example, and William Kiffin). The second era, the one of overt persecution, looks a lot more like New Testament faithfulness.
And the third era is not so stark. Why? Because the Baptists have been relegated to second-class status—and there are significant numbers abandoning the good ship Dissent (witness the Wesley brothers’ parents and Faithful Teate’s son, Nahum Tate). Then, the Baptists increasingly see themselves as a beleaguered minority, a pilgrim people in an alien land. Now, the question which must be asked is this: how did the Baptists of the third era from the 1680s to the 1770s—nearly hundred years—interpret the pilgrim people themes of the New Testament. Are they truly a pilgrim people? If so, then the story of that period is not so bad after all.
Two important caveats to all of this: I am not discounting the importance of evangelism. Far from it. But I am asking whether or not that is the only heuristic tool available. Second, I am not completely rejecting the older interpretation of this era from the 1688 to the 1770s as one of stagnation and decline. I am just seeking to see whether or not other interpretative models can yield valuable insights. PS: a blessed new year to all of my readers!
On the Difference between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The difference between seventeenth-century Puritan theology and that in the eighteenth century is well summed up by the following remark made by the Calvinistic Baptist David Kinghorn to his son, the famous Joseph Kinghorn: “I think if [Stephen] Charnock were abridged by a skilful hand, it would be a valuable work.”[1]
The seventeenth-century passion for big systematic tomes was simply not shared by the eighteenth-century men, even when the two different generations shared a similar commitment to Reformed orthodoxy.
[1] Letter to Joseph Kinghorn, December 18, 1790 [in Martin Hood Wilkin, Joseph Kinghorn, of Norwich: A Memoir [1855 ed.; repr. in The Life and Works of Joseph Kinghorn (Springfield, Missouri: Particular Baptist Press, 1995), I, 182].
The Dancing Puritan: Shattering the Stereotypes Once Again
In the past I have gone on record as saying that I have never read through Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Some friends have been horrified at this admission. But this does not mean that I do not appreciate aspects of this remarkable work. For instance, there is a tremendous scene in Part II, that second half of the work which many never look at—I have looked at parts even if I have not read the whole! Part II stresses the communal nature of the Christian life, with Christian’s wife, Christiana, and her family taking the pilgrim way along with a company including such characters as Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt (Oh those names! One reason I have not been able to persevere with the whole).
In one priceless scene, their guide, Mr. Great-heart slays the Giant-Despair and the company of pilgrims destroy the giant’s refuge, Doubting Castle. Two of the giant’s prisoners, Mr. Despondency and his daughter Much-Afraid, are rescued and they join the company of pilgrims, “for they were honest people.”
This liberation of the captives caused the pilgrims to rejoice greatly. Now, Christiana, we learn, “played upon the Vial and her daughter Mercy upon the Lute.” So they began to play, and “Ready-to-halt would dance.” So he took Despondency’s daughter, Much-Afraid, by the hand and “to dancing they went in the Road. True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand, but I promise you, he footed it well; also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the music handsomely.”
If I didn't already have a name for my blog, I would be half-disposed to call it "The Dancing Puritan"!