IV.3. Our orders and ceremonies blamed, in that so many of them are the same which the Church of Rome useth. (part 2)

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Touching the example of the eldest churches of God; in one council it was decreed, “that⁹ Christians should not deck their houses with bay leaves and green boughs, because the Pagans did use so to do; and that they should not rest from their labours those days that the Pagans did; that they should not keep the first day of every month as they did. ¹⁰Another council decreed that Christians should not celebrate feasts on the birthdays of the martyrs, because it was the manner of the heathen.” “ ‘O!’ saith Tertullian, ‘better is the religion of the heathen: for they use no solemnity of the Christians, neither the Lord’s day¹¹, neither the Pentecost; and if they knew them they would have nothing to do with them: for they would be afraid lest they should seem Christians; but we are not afraid to be called heathen¹².’ ” The same Tertullian would not have Christians to sit after they have prayed, because the idolaters did so¹³. Whereby it appeareth, that both of particular men and of councils, in making or abolishing of ceremonies, heed hath been taken that the Christians should not be like the idolaters, no not in those things which of themselves are most indifferent to be used or not used.

The same conformity is not less opposite unto reason; first inasmuch as “contraries must be cured by their contraries, and therefore popery being anti-christianity is not healed, but by establishment of orders thereunto opposite. The way to bring a drunken man to sobriety is to carry him as far from excess of drink as may be. To rectify a crooked stick we bend it on the contrary side, as far as it was at the first on that side from whence we draw it, and so it cometh in the end to a middle between both, which is perfect straightness¹⁴. Utter inconformity therefore with the church of Rome in these things is the best and surest policy which the Church can use. While we use their ceremonies they take occasion to blaspheme, saying, that our religion cannot stand by itself, unless it lean upon the staff of their ceremonies. They hereby conceive great hope of having the rest of their popery in the end, which hope causeth them to be more frozen in their wickedness. Neither is it without cause that they have this hope, considering that which Master Bucer noteth upon the eighteenth of St. Matthew¹⁵, that where these things have been left, popery hath returned; but on the other part in places which have been cleansed of these things, it hath not yet been seen that it hath had any entrance¹⁶. None make such clamours for these ceremonies, as the papists and those whom they suborn; a manifest token how much they triumph and joy in these things. They breed grief of mind in a number, that are godly-minded and have anti-christianity in such detestation, that their minds are martyred with the very sight of them in the Church¹⁷. Such godly brethren we ought not thus to grieve with unprofitable ceremonies, yea, ceremonies wherein there is not only no profit, but also danger of great hurt, that may grow to the Church by infection, which popish ceremonies are means to breed¹⁸.”

This in effect is the sum and substance of that which they bring by way of opposition against those orders which we have common with the church of Rome; these are the reasons wherewith they would prove our ceremonies in that respect worthy of blame.

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Eccles. Disc. fol. 12. [“Video architectos Ecclesiæ nostræ in ea restauranda soli doctrinæ intentos, de disciplina non laborasse, et talem fere qualem a Papistis acceperint retinere.”] T. C. lib. i. p. 131. [102. Whitg. Def. 474.] ↩
T. C. i. 20. [al. 8, 9. ap. Def. 54. “Judge whether they be more joined with the Papists which would have no communion with them, neither in ceremonies, nor doctrine, nor government; or they which forsaking their doctrine retain part of their ceremonies and almost all their government: that is, they that separate themselves by three walls or by one.”] ↩
T. C. i. 25. [al. 13. Def. 76. from Answ. 20.] ↩
T. C. lib. i. p. 131. [102.] ↩
T. C. lib. i. p. 30. [17.] ↩
[Ep. 36. 2. t. ii. 68.] ↩
T. C. lib. i. p. 131. [102.] ↩
T. C. lib. i. p. 132. [103. and Eccl. Disc. fol. 100. “A quibus nos tanto magis recedere et abhorrere debueramus, quanto gravius periculum nobis ab illis quam ab aliis hæreticis, quod inter eos versamur, immineat. Qua ratione etiam Dominus in Cananæos atrocius quam in reliquos idololatras sæviri voluit.”] ↩
Tom. ii. [Ed. Surii.] Braca. 73. [Capitula Martini Episc. Bracar. ad 572. in Concil. t. v. 913. “Non liceat iniquas observationes agere Kalendarum, et otiis vacare gentilibus, neque lauro aut viriditate arborum cingere domos. Omnis hæc observatio paganismi est.” This is not a decree of either of the councils of Braga, but one of a collection of oriental canons made by Martin archbishop of Braga (the reformer of the Gallician church from Arianism) and sent to the archbishop of Lugo, then the second see in the province, and to his provincial council. The oriental original of the seventy-third canon does not appear.] ↩
Con. Afric. cap. 27. [“Illud etiam petendum,” (scil. ab imperatoribus) “ut quæ contra præcepta divina convivia multis in locis exercentur, quæ ab errore gentili attracta sunt, (ita ut nunc a Paganis Christiani ad hæc celebranda agantur, ex qua re temporibus Christianorum imperatorum persecutio altera fieri occulta videatur) vetari talia jubeant, et de civitatibus et de possessionibus imposita pœna prohiberi: maxime, cum etiam in natalibus beatissimorum martyrum per nonnullas civitates, et in ipsis locis sacris, talia committere non reformident. Quibus diebus etiam (quod pudoris est dicere) saltationes sceleratissimas per vicos atque plateas exercent, ut matronalis honor, et innumerabilium fœminarum pudor, devote venientium ad sacratissimum diem, injuriis lascivientibus appetatur; ut etiam ipsius sanctæ religionis pœne fugiatur accessus.” Concil. ii. 1649. The exact date of this canon seems to be uncertain: but it clearly refers not to Christians having feasts of their own as the Gentiles had, but to the danger they were in of being tempted to join with the Gentiles in their feasts, especially when happening on our sacred days. It is one of several canons, which imply a kind of evil something similar to what Christians living in India now experience.The following is the summary of it given by Aristænus: Τὰ Ἑλληνικὰ συμπόσια παυέσθω, διὰ τὴν οἰκείαν ἀσχημοσύνην, καὶ τὸ πολλοὺς ἀϕέλκεσθαι Χριστιανω̑ν, καὶ ἐν ἡμέραις μνήμης μαρτύρων γίνεσθαι. Beveridge, Synodicon, i. 598.] ↩
Lib. de Idololatria, [c. 14. “O melior fides nationum in suam sectam; quæ nullamsolennitatem Christianorum sibi vindicat, non Dominicum diem, non Pentecosten: etiam si nossent, nobiscum non communicassent; timerent enim, ne Christiani viderentur; nos, ne Ethnici pronunciemur, non veremur.”] He seemeth to mean the feast of Easter-day, celebrated in the memory of our Saviour’s resurrection, and for that cause termed the Lord’s day. ↩
[T. C. i. 103.] ↩
Lib. de Anima. [a mistake in Cartwright’s reference, for “de Oratione.” c. 16. (The error is noted by Whitgift, Def. 480.) “Quum perinde faciant nationes, adoratis sigillaribus suis residendo, vel propterea in nobis reprehendi meretur, quod apud idola celebratur.”] ↩
[Abridged from T. C. i. 103.] ↩
[P. 144. ed. 1553. “His certe hodie debemus ut in multis locis, ubi diu prædicatum Evangelium fuit, adversa sint restituta omnia: quum id nusquam, ubi serio et pure prædicato Christo etiam ad ipsius verbum reformatæ ceremoniæ sunt, accidisse videamus.”] ↩
T. C. lib. iii. p. 178. ↩
Ibid. p. 179. ↩
Ibid. p. 180. ↩

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Footnotes