Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. PURITAN ECCENTRICITIES. "And we have known Williams and Richards, names not found in sacred story, but familiar to our country, prove as gracious saints as any Safe-deliverance, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith, or such like, which have been rather descriptions than names."—Thomas Adams, Meditations upon the Creed, 1629. " In giving names to children, it was their opinion that heathenish names should be avoided, as not so fit for Christians ; and also the names of God, and Christ, and angels, and the peculiar offices of the Mediator."—Neal, History of the Puritans, vol. 1, ch. v. 1565. I. Introductory. THERE are still many people who are sceptical about the stories told against the Puritans in the matter of name-giving. Of these some are Nonconformists, who do not like the slights thus cast upon their spiritual ancestry; unaware that while this curious phase was at its climax, Puritanism was yet within the pale of the Church ', of England. Others, having searched through the lists of the Protector's Parliaments, Commissioners, and army officers, and having found but a handful of oddbaptismal names, declare, without hesitation, that these stories are wicked calumnies. Mr. Peacock, whose book on the "Army Lists of Roundheads and Cavaliers " is well worth study, says, in one of the numbers of Notes and Queries— '' I know moder n writers have repeated the same thing over and over again; but I do not remember any trustworthy evidence of the Commonwealth time, or that of Charles II., that would lead us to believe that strange christian names were more common in those days than now. What passages have we on this subject in the works of the Restoration playwrights ? " This is an old mistake. If Mr. Peacock had looked at our registers from 15 80 to 1640, inste...