A practical exposition of the X. Commandments with a resolution of several momentous questions…A practical exposition of the X. Commandements with a resolution of several momentous questions…

To singing and playing of light and wanton Songs and to lascivious Dancing, much also cry •d out against and condemned by Councils, Fathers and many Divines, and at great length most vehemently by the Waldenses and Albigenses, who account it no great singe of a ⟨image 14⟩Woman's honesty that she is a skilful and great Dancer: the remark likewise that the writer of Magica de spectris lib. 1. hist 287. pag. 285. hath of this profane promiscuous dancing which the wantons of this age so much practise, praise and pride themselves in, is very remarkable, that there was hardly any meeting betwixt the Devil and Witches, wherein there was not Dancing; such complacency hath that unclean Spirit in this Exercise; And to bring Spectators of profane Interludes and Stage-Plays, which (as the eminently learned and Pious Doctor Usher late Archbishop of Armagh affirmeth) offend against many branches of the 7th. Command together, in the abuse of Apparel, Tongue, Eyes, Countenance, Gestures, and almost all parts of the Body; therefore (saith the great man) they that go to see such sights and hear such words (what would he have said of the Penners or Composers of such Plays and of Actors in them? whom the ancient Church appointed to be excommunicated, and on several of both which remarkable judgments have lighted (whereof one may speak for many, affirmed by Ludovicus vives in his notes one Augustine de civit dei lib. 12 cap. 25. from persons of good credit, that a certain man who having in a Stage-Play in one of the Cities of Brabant acted the Devils part, and going home dancing to his house, and in that Habit accompanying with his Wife, and saying he would beget a Devil on her, had a Child brought forth to him that Danced so soon as ever it was born, being shaped as men use to paint the Devil,) of builders and doters of houses for them, called by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the Devils Temples, Chapels, Shops and Schools; as the Plays are called by them, the Devils Spectacles, Lectures, Sacrifices, Recreations, &c. and the Players, the Devils chiefest Factors; of such as have them in their own dwelling-houses (as some now have) which they give away in a manner to be Synagogues to the Devil to keep his Conventicles in; and of such as contribute whither to the Actors for their encouragement to follow that lewd way of living, or for liberty to look on?

To singing and playing of light and wanton Songs and to lascivious Dancing, much also cry •d out against and condemned by Councils, Fathers and many Divines, and at great length most vehomently by the Waldenses and Albigences, who account it no great singe of a