The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these outrages (in Scotland). For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by the prelatist to the ancient holidays of the Church.
On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters by concert in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which at that season were probably better stocked than usual. The priest of Baal was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniture was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turned out of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the market place, and exposed during some time as a malefactor. His gown was torn to shreds over his head: if he had a prayer book in his pocket it was burned; and he was dismissed with a charge, never, as he valued his life, to officiate in the parish again. The work of reformation having been thus completed, the reformers locked up the church and departed with the keys.
The Puritan, who was, in general, but too ready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in the Old Testament quite as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives.
He certainly did not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in abhorrence; for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertions of Calvin that Christmas was, after an interval of some years, again observed by the citizens of Geneva. But there had arisen in Scotland Calvinists who were to Calvin what Calvin was to Laud. To these austere fanatics a holiday was an object of positive disgust and hatred. They long continued in their solemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins which would one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that the Court of Session took a vacation in the last week of December,
Over 2500 years ago the cult worship of Baal had infected Israel and become the dominant belief system and worship practice amongst the people God called His own. In order to combat this distorted belief system God raised up the prophet Elijah to confront the false system of worship.
Despite Elijah’s singular victory over Baal at Mt. Carmel, Baal worship persisted through history as various cultures adopted Baal, changing his name to suit their time and place in history. Baal became Zeus to the Greeks, Jupiter to the Romans and Thor to the Germanic and Norse peoples, and with the conversion of Constantine Baal insidiously infected Christianity. God, through the prophet Malachi, foretold that before Christ returns the people of God would again, like Israel 3500 years ago, need the prophet Elijah to call them back to the worship of the true God.
“The Hebrew noun ba‘al means ‘master’, ‘possessor’ or ‘husband’. Used with suffixes, e.g. Baal-peor or Baal-berith, the word may have retained something of its original sense; but in general Baal is a proper name in the OT, and refers to a specific deity, Hadad, the W Semitic storm-god, the most important deity in the Canaanite pantheon.
Excerpt From
Thomas Babington Macaulay
“The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 3.”
I am forever reminded of the violence which derives from fiction, works of the imagination, fabrication. Whether it were children’s fables, traditional legends, historic myths or horror films, fiction is a double edged sword, the one side the assertive, the other side the objectionable. The two sides of contrary disposition play opposite one another, sometimes cruelly, far surpassing the wholly intellectual standards of debate. What however makes the debates more reprehensible is that the Motion before the House is akin to, “BE IT RESOLVED THAT Little Red Riding Hood is a sexual myth”. There is no more answer to such preposterous Motion than there is to the proper manner to eat a boiled egg as satirized in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745).
The two great empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu… have… been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. It began upon the following occasion: It is allowed on all hands that the primitive way of breaking eggs before we eat them was upon the larger end; but his present Majesty’s grandfather while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the Emperor, his father, published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs. The people so highly resented this law that, our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire. It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy; but the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. During the course of these troubles the Emperors of Blefuscu did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great Prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Alcoran). This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: That all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end. And which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion, to be left to every man’s conscience.
And yet such nonsense and entertainment persists at the hands of those with no competing capacity. Granted the incivility and bawdy nature of such devotion is a hard act to follow. The appeal to hoi polloi is unquestionable.
Some linguists argue that, given that hoi is a definite article, the phrase “the hoi polloi” is redundant, akin to saying “the the masses”. Others argue that this is inconsistent with other English loanwords. The word “alcohol”, for instance, derives from the Arabic al-kuhl, al being an article, yet “the alcohol” is universally accepted as good grammar. However, as a social marker of security in the classical languages, the point is rather undercut by the article duplet, even if it is grammatically correct as a connected loan word “hoi polloi.”
The devotees were undiminished in the fulfillment of their ambition.
By the late 1630s, Puritans were in alliance with the growing commercial world, with the parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, and with the Scottish Presbyterians with whom they had much in common. Consequently, they became a major political force in England and came to power as a result of the First English Civil War (1642–1646).
The dubious (almost perversely greedy) capacity of these people for division is as undeniable as their lack of capacity for unity.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging (fourteen women and five men). One other man, Giles Corey, died under torture after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in the disease-ridden jails.
In America, Salem’s events have been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolation, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.
Prior to the constitutional turmoil of the 1680s, the Massachusetts government had been dominated by conservative Puritan leaders. While Puritans and the Church of England both shared a common influence in Calvinism, Puritans had opposed many of the traditions of the Church of England, including use of the Book of Common Prayer, the use of clergy vestments during services, the use of the sign of the cross at baptism, and kneeling to receive communion, all of which they believed constituted popery. King Charles I was hostile to this viewpoint, and Anglican church officials tried to repress these dissenting views during the 1620s and 1630s. Some Puritans and other religious minorities had sought refuge in the Netherlands but ultimately many made a major migration to colonial North America to establish their own society.
Recognizing as we do today the bloody comic feature of these on-going quarrels, and perhaps sadly the complete want of interest in the outcome or source of these laughable arguments, one must nonetheless question how it happened in the first place, by what demon was the public contaminated to such extreme hatred and malevolence, how were they possessed? Or does this risk elevating a renewed avenue of anger and punishment? And why is it that the basis of so much controversy between people is fiction? Are fictional writers really that clever that they can deceive us into believing manifestly absurd propositions? Are they merely disguised behind their robes of authorship? Where did they go to school? What were they taught? And more importantly what have they to gain by such absurdity? Because the only thing about which I am certain is that the best mask for a treacherous heart is an honest face!
Capt. William Kidd: Now then, me bullies! Would you rather do the gallows dance, and hang in chains ’til the crows pluck your eyes from your rotten skulls? Or would you feel the roll of a stout ship beneath your feet again?