... errors, like that New England ukase of Cotton Mather's, who is said to have punished the woman who should kiss her infant on the Sabbath day. Yet their extravagances on this point were but the honest revulsion from other extravagances on the opposite side. If the undistinguishing and immoral Autotheism of the playwrights, and the luxury and heathendom of the higher classes, first in Italy and then in England, were the natural revolt of the human mind against the Manichaeism of monkery: then the severity and exclusiveness of Puritanism was a natural and necessary revolt ... — Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley