IV.12. Their exception against such ceremonies as have been abused by the church of Rome, and are said in that respect to be scandalous.

XII. But the weightiest exception, and of all the most worthy to be respected, is against such kind of ceremonies, as have been so grossly and shamefully abused in the church of Rome, that where they remain they are scandalous, yea, they cannot choose but be stumblingblocks and grievous causes of offence. Concerning this point therefore we are first to note, what properly it is to be scandalous or offensive; secondly, what kind of ceremonies are such; and thirdly, when they are necessarily for remedy thereof to be taken away, and when not.

The common conceit of the vulgar sort is, whensoever they see any thing which they mislike and are angry at, to think that every such thing is scandalous, and that themselves in this case are the men concerning whom our Saviour spake in so fearful manner, saying, “whosoever shall scandalize or offend any one of these little ones which believe in me”¹ (that is, as they construe it, whosoever shall anger the meanest and simplest artisan which carrieth a good mind, by not removing out of the Church such rites and ceremonies as displease him), “better he were drowned in the bottom of the sea.” But hard were the case of the Church of Christ, if this were to scandalize. Men are scandalized when they are moved, led, and provoked unto sin. At good things evil men may take occasion to do evil; and so Christ himself was a rock of offence in Israel², they taking occasion at his poor estate and at the ignominy of his cross, to think him unworthy the name of that great and glorious Messias, whom the Prophets describe in such ample and stately terms. But that which we therefore term offensive because it inviteth men to offend, and by a dumb kind of provocation encourageth, moveth, or any way leadeth unto sin, must of necessity be acknowledged actively scandalous.

Now some things are so even by their very essence and nature, so that wheresoever they are found they are not neither can be without this force of provocation unto evil; of which kind all examples of sin and wickedness are. Thus David was scandalous in that bloody act whereby he caused the enemies of God to be blasphemous³: thus the whole state of Israel scandalous, when their public disorders caused the name of God to be ill-spoken of amongst the nations⁴. It is of this kind that Tertullian meaneth: “Offence or scandal, if I be not deceived (saith he), is, when the example not of a good but of an evil thing doth set men forward unto sin. Good things can scandalize none save only evil minds:” good things have no scandalizing nature in them.

Yet that which is of its own nature either good or at least not evil, may by some accident become scandalous at certain times and in certain places and to certain men; the open use thereof nevertheless being otherwise without danger. The very nature of some rites and ceremonies therefore is scandalous, as it was in a number of those which the Manichees did use, and is in all such as the law of God doth forbid. Some are offensive only through the agreement of men to use them unto evil, and not else; as the most of those things indifferent which the heathens did to the service of their false gods, which another, in heart condemning their idolatry, could not do with them in show and token of approbation without being guilty of scandal given. Ceremonies of this kind are either devised at the first unto evil, as the Eunomian heretics in dishonour of the blessed Trinity brought in the laying on of water but once⁵, to cross the custom of the church which in baptism did it thrice; or else having had a profitable use they are afterwards interpreted and wrested to the contrary, as those heretics which held the Trinity to be three distinct not persons but natures, abused the ceremony of three times laying on water in baptism unto the strengthening of their heresy⁶. The element of water is in baptism necessary; once to lay it on or twice is indifferent. For which cause Gregory making mention thereof saith⁷, “To dive an infant either thrice or but once in baptism, can be no way a thing reprovable; seeing that both in three times washing the Trinity of persons, and in one the Unity of Godhead may be signified.” So that of these two ceremonies neither being hurtful in itself, both may serve unto good purpose; yet one was devised, and the other converted, unto evil.

Now whereas in the church of Rome certain ceremonies are said to have been shamefully abused unto evil, as the ceremony of crossing at baptism, of kneeling at the eucharist, of using wafer-cakes, and such like; the question is, whether for remedy of that evil wherein such ceremonies have been scandalous, and perhaps may be still unto some even amongst ourselves, whom the presence and sight of them may confirm in that former error whereto they served in times past, they are of necessity to be removed. Are these, or any other ceremonies we have common with the church of Rome, scandalous and wicked in their very nature? This no man objecteth. Are any such as have been polluted from their very birth, and instituted even at the first unto that thing which is evil? That which hath been ordained impiously at the first, may wear out that impiety in tract of time; and then what doth let but that the use thereof may stand without offence? The names of our months and of our days we are not ignorant from whence they came, and with what dishonour unto God they are said to have been devised at the first⁸. What could be spoken against any thing more effectual to stir hatred, than that which sometime the ancient Fathers in this case speak? Yet those very names are at this day in use throughout Christendom without hurt or scandal to any. Clear and manifest it is, that things devised by heretics, yea, devised of a very heretical purpose even against religion, and at their first devising worthy to have been withstood, may in time grow meet to be kept; as that custom, the inventors whereof were the Eunomian heretics. So that customs once established and confirmed by long use, being presently without harm, are not in regard of their corrupt original to be held scandalous.

But concerning those our ceremonies which they reckon for most popish, they are not able to avouch, that any of them was otherwise instituted than unto good, yea, so used at the first. It followeth then that they all are such, as having served to good purpose, were afterwards converted unto the contrary. And sith it is not so much as objected against us, that we retain together with them the evil wherewith they have been infected in the church of Rome, I would demand who they are whom we scandalize, by using harmless things unto that good end for which they were first instituted. Amongst ourselves that agree in the approbation of this kind of good use, no man will say that one of us is offensive and scandalous unto another. As for the favourers of the church of Rome, they know how far we herein differ and dissent from them; which thing neither we conceal, and they by their public writings also profess daily how much it grieveth them; so that of them there will not many rise up against us, as witnesses unto the indictment of scandal, whereby we might be condemned and cast, as having strengthened them in that evil wherewith they pollute themselves in the use of the same ceremonies. And concerning such as withstand the church of England herein, and hate it because it doth not sufficiently seem to hate Rome; they (I hope) are far enough from being by this mean drawn to any kind of popish error. The multitude therefore of them, unto whom we are scandalous through the use of abused ceremonies, is not so apparent, that it can justly be said in general of any one sort of men or other, we cause them to offend. If it be so, that now or then some few are espied, who, having been accustomed heretofore to the rites and ceremonies of the church of Rome, are not so scoured of their former rust as to forsake their ancient persuasion which they have had, howsoever they frame themselves to outward obedience of laws and orders: because such may misconstrue the meaning of our ceremonies, and so take them as though they were in every sort the same they have been, shall this be thought a reason sufficient whereon to conclude that some law must necessarily be made to abolish all such ceremonies?

They answer, that there is no law of God which doth bind us to retain them. And St. Paul’s rule is, that in those things from which without hurt we may lawfully abstain, we should frame the usage of our liberty with regard to the weakness and imbecility of our brethren. Wherefore unto them which stood upon their own defence saying, “All things are lawful unto me;” he replieth, “but all things are not expedient⁹” in regard of others. “All things are clean, all meats are lawful; but evil unto that man that eateth offensively. If for thy meat’s sake thy brother be grieved, thou walkest no longer according to charity. Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died. Dissolve not for food’s sake the work of God¹⁰. We that are strong must bear the imbecilities of the impotent, and not please ourselves¹¹.” It was a weakness in the Christian Jews, and a maim of judgment in them, that they thought the Gentiles polluted by the eating of those meats which themselves were afraid to touch for fear of transgressing the law of Moses; yea, hereat their hearts did so much rise, that the Apostle had just cause to fear, lest they would rather forsake Christianity than endure any fellowship with such as made no conscience of that which was unto them abominable. And for this cause mention is made of destroying the weak by meats, and of dissolving the work of God¹², which was his Church, a part of the living stones whereof were believing Jews. Now those weak brethren before-mentioned are said to be as the Jews were, and our ceremonies which have been abused in the church of Rome to be as the scandalous meats, from which the Gentiles are exhorted to abstain in the presence of Jews, for fear of averting them from Christian faith. Therefore, as charity did bind them to refrain from that for their brethren’s sake, which otherwise was lawful enough for them; so it bindeth us for our brethren’s sake likewise to abolish such ceremonies, although we might lawfully else retain them.

But between these two cases there are great odds. For neither are our weak brethren as the Jews, nor the ceremonies which we use as the meats which the Gentiles used. The Jews were known to be generally weak in that respect; whereas contrariwise the imbecility of ours is not common unto so many, that we can take any such certain notice of them. It is a chance if here and there some one be found; and therefore seeing we may presume men commonly otherwise, there is no necessity that our practice should frame itself by that which the Apostle doth prescribe to the Gentiles.

Again, their use of meats was not like unto our of ceremonies, that being a matter of private action in common life, where every man was free to order that which himself did; but this a public constitution for the ordering of the Church: and we are not to look that the Church should change her public laws and ordinances, made according to that which is judged ordinarily and commonly fittest for the whole, although it chance that for some particular men the same be found inconvenient¹³; especially when there may be other remedy also against the sores of particular inconveniences. In this case therefore where any private harm doth grow, we are not to reject instruction, as being an unmeet plaister to apply unto it; neither can we say, that he which appointeth teachers for physicians in this kind of evil, is “As if a man would set one to watch a child all day long lest he should hurt himself with a knife; whereas by taking away the knife from him, the danger is avoided, and the service of the man better employed¹⁴.” For a knife may be taken away from a child, without depriving them of the benefit thereof which have years and discretion to use it. But the ceremonies which children do abuse if we remove quite and clean, as it is by some required that we should, then are they not taken from children only, but from others also; which is as though because children may perhaps hurt themselves with knives, we should conclude, that therefore the use of knives is to be taken quite and clean even from men also.

Those particular ceremonies, which they pretend to be so scandalous, we shall in the next Book have occasion more throughly to sift, where other things also traduced in the public duties of the Church whereunto each of these appertaineth, are together with these to be touched, and such reasons to be examined as have at any time been brought either against the one or the other. In the meanwhile against the conveniency of curing such evils by instruction, strange it is that they should object the multitude of other necessary matters, wherein preachers may better bestow their time, than in giving men warning not to abuse ceremonies¹⁵: a wonder it is, that they should object this, which have so many years together troubled the Church with quarrels concerning these things, and are even to this very hour so earnest in them, that if they write or speak publicly but five words, one of them is lightly about the dangerous estate of the church of England in respect of abused ceremonies. How much happier had it been for this whole Church, if they which have raised contention therein about the abuse of rites and ceremonies, had considered in due time that there is indeed store of matters fitter and better a great deal for teachers to spend time and labour in! It is through their importunate and vehement asseverations, more than through any such experience which we have had of our own, that we are forced to think it possible for one or other now and then, at leastwise in the prime of the reformation of our church, to have stumbled at some kind of ceremony: wherein forasmuch as we are contented to take this upon their credit, and to think it may be; sith also they further pretend the same to be so dangerous a snare to their souls that are at any time taken therein; they must give our teachers leave for the saving of those souls (be they never so few) to intermingle sometime with other more necessary things admonition concerning these not unnecessary. Wherein they should in reason more easily yield this leave, considering that hereunto we shall not need to use the hundredth part of that time, which themselves think very needful to bestow in making most bitter invectives against the ceremonies of the Church.

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Footnotes

1. Matt. xviii. 6. ↩

2. 1 Pet. ii. 8. ↩

3. 2 Sam. xii. 14. ↩

4. Rom. ii. 24; Ezek. xxxvi. 20; Tertull. lib. de Virgin. Veland. [c. iii. “Scandalum, nisi fallor, non bonæ rei sed malæ exemplum est, ædificans ad delictum. Bonæ res neminem scandalizant, nisi malam mentem.”] ↩

5. [Sozom. vi. 26. ϕασὶ δέ τινες, πρω̑τον του̑τον Εὐνόμιον τολμη̑σαι εἰσηγήσασθαι, ἐν μίᾳ καταδύσει χρη̑ναι ἐπιτελει̑ν τὴν θείαν βάπτισιν, καὶ παραχαράξαι τὴν ἀπὸ τω̑ν Ἀποστόλων εἰσέτι νυ̑ν ἐν πα̑σι ϕυλαττομένην παράδοσιν.] ↩

6. [Concil. Tolet. iv. Can. 6, t. v. p. 1706. “Propter vitandum schismatis scandalum, vel hæretici dogmatis usum, simplam teneamus baptismi mersionem; ne videantur apud nos, qui tertio mergunt, hæreticorum approbare assertionem dum sequuntur et morem.”] ↩

7. Epist. ad Leandrum Hisp. [lib. i. ep. 43. “De trina vero mersione baptismatis nil responderi verius potest quam ipsi sensistis: quia in una fide nihil officit ecclesiæ consuetudo diversa. Nos autem quod tertio mergimus, triduanæ sepulturæ sacramenta signamus, ut dum tertio infans ab aquis educitur, resurrectio triduani temporis exprimatur. Quod si quis forte etiam pro summæ Trinitatis veneratione æstimet fieri, neque ad hoc aliquid obsistit, baptizandum semel in aquis mergere: quia dum in tribus subsistentiis una substantia est, reprehensibile esse nullatenus potest, infantem in baptismate vel ter vel semel mergere: quando et in tribus mersionibus personarum Trinitas, et in una potest divinitatis singularitas designari.” II. 532.] ↩

8. [Euseb. Emis.] Hom. xi. de Pasch. [p. 566. par. i. t. v. Biblioth. Patr. Colon.] “Idololatriæ consuetudo in tantum homines occæcaverat, ut Solis, Lunæ, Martis atque Mercurii, Jovis, Veneris, Saturni, et diversis elementorum ac dæmonum appellationibus dies vocitarent, et luci tenebrarum nomen imponerent.” Beda de Ration. Temp. cap. 4. [6.] “Octavus dies idem primus est, ad quem reditur, indeque [l. eoque] rursus hebdomada inchoatur [l. semper orditur.] His nomina a planetis Gentilitas indidit, habere se credens a Sole spiritum, a Luna corpus, a Marte sanguinem, a Mercurio ingenium et linguam, a Jove temperantiam, a Venere voluptatem, a Saturno tarditatem.” Isid. Hist. lib. v. Etymol. cap. 30. [p. 938, ed. Gothofred.] “Dies dicti a diis, quorum nomina Romani quibusdam sideribus sacraverunt.” ↩

9. 1 Cor. vi. 12. ↩

10. [Rom. xiv. 20, 15, 20.] ↩

11. [Rom. xv. 1.] ↩

12. Rom. xiv; xv. 1. ↩

13. Vide Harmenop. [Harmenopuli Promptuarium Juris.] (Greek jurist and canonist, 1320-1383. His Πρόχειρον νόμων was first printed 1540, and by Gothofr. 1587.) lib. i. tit. 1. sect. 28. [παραβαίνουσι γὰρ οἱ νομοθέται τὸ ἅπαξ ἢ τὸ δὶς γενόμενον. p. 20. ed. Gothofr.] ↩

14. T. C. lib. iii. p. 178. [156.] ↩

15. T. C. lib. iii. p. 177. “It is not so convenient that the minister, having so many necessary points to bestow his time in, should be driven to spend it in giving warning of not abusing them, of which (although they were used to the best) there is no profit.” [See also i. 56, ap. Whitg. Defence, 277. The words are, “A counsell not so convenient, that the ministers and pastors, which have so many necessary points to bestow their time on, and to inform the people of, should be driven to cut off their time appointed thereto, to teach them not to abuse these things, which if they use never so well, they can gain nothing.”] ↩