The Cavaliers affected a recklessness and dissoluteness
greater than they really felt to be right, in order to differ most widely
from those purists who, urged by analogous motives, decried all amusements
as evil. Each party repelled the other to the extreme of opposition.
RELIGIOUS EXTREMES.--Loyalty was opposed by radicalism, and the invectives
of both were bitter in the extreme. The system and ceremonial of a
gorgeous worship restored by Laud, and accused by its opposers of
formalism and idolatry, were attacked by a spirit of excess, which, to
religionize daily life, took the words of Scripture, and especially those
of the Old Testament, as the language of common intercourse, which issued
them from a gloomy countenance, with a nasal twang, and often with a false
interpretation.
As opposed to the genuflections of Laud and the pomp of his ritual, the
land swarmed with unauthorized preachers; then came out from among the
Presbyterians the Independents; the fifth-monarchy men, shouting for King
Jesus; the Seekers, the Antinomians, who, like Trusty Tomkins, were elect
by the fore-knowledge of God, who were not under the law but under grace,
and who might therefore gratify every lust, and give the rein to every
passion, because they were sealed to a certain salvation.
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