ABSTRACT
This chapter explores one aspect of contradictions: continuity versus change in the area of moral instruction, and specifically in the construction of sin. As a simple list of ten divinely inspired and morally binding rules, the Ten Commandments appeared to be the very embodiment of continuity. The Ten Commandments begin with a set of religious obligations not explicitly mentioned in any of the Seven Sins. The commandment Thou shalt have no other gods, followed by the prohibition against graven images, the ban against blaspheming and the injunction to Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. The chapter focuses crucial the commandments, and more especially their numerous expositions, were in conditioning the religious and moral landscape of reformation England. The theological distance travelled between the text of the Decalogue and this analysis of dancing, cited approvingly by numerous reformers, was astonishing evidence of the mental agility with which Protestant divines enthusiastically constructed the moral landscape of reformation England.
