Promiscuous Dancing

We are indebted to one of our ministers for sending us this extract from a book which has apparently been long out of print James Durham on the Ten Commandments. Durham died in 1658 at the early age of 36.

Commandment Number Seven.

“There are many other sins which come in here…. Add dancing, a thing condemned by the people of God as no honest recreation, at least when companies that are mixed, and (as we call it) promiscuous dancing, such as useth to be at marriages, and the like occasions, both of old (as may be seen in the canons of several councils), as also of late by our own authority and other reformed churches.

1. I shall say these things in short of it: First, that ye will not find it mentioned in scripture in the person of any of the godly, it becometh an Herodias’ daughter better than the professors of religion.
2. That it will be readily found to indispose for the exercise of godliness, and so to be inconsistent, or at best hardly consistent, with either a pious and lively, or a sober frame of spirit.
3. That it marreth not only the gravity of persons for the time, putting them in a sort of regular distraction, but lesseneth the esteem of such persons; this insobriety being like a dead fly that maketh the box of ointment (if any be) to stink.
4. That in scripture-examples we find this sort of dancing among profane and loose people, and recorded also as a piece of their stain or blot, rendering them in some way infamous; and oftentimes it hath also snares waiting upon it, as in the Israelites among themselves, Exodus xxxii and in the daughters of Moab with the people of Israel, and in that of Herodias’ daughter. Some also suppose those that Dinah went forth to see, Genesis xxxiv, were thus employed at some feast, or such other solemnity, where she was ensnared and deflowered.
5. Yea, it is often, if not ever, the fruit of some former looseness and carnalness, being the effect that excessive wantonness usually breaketh out in; and can God’s people warrantably have fellowship with these works of darkness? Or can they (if guilty themselves) reprove it in others? Cicero calleth it, Postremum vitiorum, quia acta sequitur, the last of all vices, because usually it followeth former loose carriages.
6. There is no lawful means of recreation which is useful for health of the body, but is, and may, and should be sanctified by the word and prayer; yet, I suppose neither useth this to be so, neither would any think it very suitable, or well consistent with a praying frame, and can that which standeth not with the serious exercise of repentance, and a praying disposition, or that which none would think a fit posture to meet death, or the Lord’s appearing with, be in reason thought consistent with a Christian walk? Which should always be with the loins girded, and the lamps burning. It is somewhat like this, or less than this, which the Lord condemneth, Isaiah iii. 16, Walking and mincing, or tripping and making a tinkling with their feet. What is that, but disdaining the grave way of walking, to affect an art in it? As many do in our days; and shall this be displeasing to the Lord, and not the other? Seeing he loveth, and is best pleased with the native way of carrying the body. Junius and Rivet from him, calleth this mincing or tripping, “a walking or standing on the earth in an artificial way.”