People went to them without any view of the improvement of their minds.

The motive was either to see or to be seen." They considered the manner of the drama as objectionable.

They believed "that he who was the author of truth, could never approve of that which was false, and that he, who condemned hypocrisy, could never approve of him, who personated the character of others; and that those therefore, who pretended to be in love, or to be angry, or to grieve, when none of those passions existed in their minds, were guilty of a kind of adultery in the eyes of the Supreme Being." They considered their contents to be noxious.

They "looked upon them as consistories of immorality.

They affirmed that things were spoken there which it did not become christians to hear, and that things were shewn there, which it did not become christians to see; and that, while these things polluted those from whom they come, they polluted those in time, in whose sight and hearing they were shewn or spoken." They believed also, "that these things not only polluted the spectators, but that the representations of certain characters upon the stage pointed out to them the various roads to vice, and inclined them to become the persons, whom they had seen represented, or to be actors in reality of what they had seen feigned upon the stage." They believed again, "that dramatic exhibitions produced a frame of mind contrary to that, which should exist in a christian's breast; that there was nothing to be seen upon the stage, that could lead or encourage him to devotion; but, on the other hand, that the noise and fury of the play-house, and the representations there, produced a state of excitement, that disturbed the internal man.