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The Market Day of the Soul: The Puritan Doctrine of the Sabbath in England, 1532–1700 . By James T. Dennison Jr Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983. xiv + 174 pp. $19.75 cloth; $9.75 paper.

Sabbatarianism long has precipitated controversy, and the subject has aroused fresh scholarly interest in recent years. James Dennison's focus is theological. He attributes the emergence of the Puritan doctrine of the sabbath in Reformation England to differing approaches to securing better observance of the sabbath. Whereas Anglicans perpetuated the pragmatic Catholic theory and grounded practice on church authority, Puritans identified the day of rest with the fourth commandment and regarded its observance as of divine authority. The "underground development" of Puritanism gave rise to a distinctive doctrine of the sabbath, which received classic expression in 1595. The sabbath grew in popularity and precipitated conflict between 1600 and 1650. Three positions on the subject arose in these years. Puritans insisted on the divine appointment and perpetual morality of the sabbath, whose celebration they transferred to the Lord's Day. Anglicans accepted a Sunday observance but grounded it on church authority. Seventh-Day Sabbatarians stressed the fourth commandment but kept the seventh day. Puritanism was the mediating school between judaizers on the right and prelates on the left, the author writes, but he never explains his critical terms. The Book of Sports intensified the controversy twice, prompting Puritans and Anglicans to dispute the matter in nineteen books published between 1635 and 1641. Dennison systematically analyzes their opposing arguments. The Puritan doctrine triumphed by 1648 and remained supreme in the later seventeenth century. After the Restoration, however, sabbath laws failed to stress the morality of the fourth commandment, and theological debate was low-keyed. Puritan controversialists now confronted Seventh-Day Sabbatarians more than Anglicans. But practice fell short of theory. The author contends that in focusing on theology his work differs from that of Christopher Hill and myself, but he rehearses material which we treat, especially for the earlier period. Dennison understands that the Puritan doctrine of the sabbath must be understood in social and political context, but he does not deal meaningfully with this dimension of the problem. His book, competent on its own terms, will be useful as a convenient introduction to the theological debate on the subject.