If the Bishop help not himself with his sixth reason, he is like to come off with no great credit. May we then know what that is?
Lastly, saith he, as a holiday the Jews ever kept it,—have a peculiar set service for it in their Seders, set psalms to sing, set lessons to read, set prayers to say, good and godly all,—none but as they have used from all antiquity.
Ans. 1. The Bishop could not have made this word good, that the Jews did ever and from all antiquity keep the days of Purim in this fashion.
2. This manner of holding that feast, whensoever it began, had no warrant from the first institution, but was (as many other things) taken up by the Jews in after ages, and so the Bishop proveth not the point which he taketh in hand, namely, that the days spoken of in this text were enacted or appointed to be kept as holidays.
3. The service which the Jews in latter times use upon the days of Purim is not much to be regarded. For as Godwin noteth out of Hospinian,[847] they read the history of Esther in their synagogues, and so often as they hear mention of Haman, they do with their fists and hammers beat upon the benches and boards, as if they did knock upon Haman's head. When thus they have behaved themselves, in the very time of their liturgy, like furious and drunken people, the rest of the day they pass over in outrageous revelling. And here I take leave of the Bishop.
Sect. 10. Thirdly, We say, whether the days of Purim were instituted to be holidays or not, yet there was some more than ordinary warrant for them, because Mordecai, by whose advice and direction they were appointed to be kept, was a prophet by the instinct and revelation of the Spirit, Esth. iv. 13. Non multum fortasse aberraverimus, saith Hospinian,[848] si dicamus hoc à Mordochcæo et Hesthera, ex peculiari Spiritus Sancti instinctu factum.
Bishop Lindsey believeth[849] that they had only a general warrant, such as the church hath still, to put order to the circumstances belonging to God's worship, and all his reason is, because if the Jews had received any other particular warrant, the sacred story should not have passed it over in silence.
Ans. Thus much we understand from the sacred story, that the Jews had the direction of a prophet for the days of Purim; and that was a warrant more than ordinary, because prophets were the extraordinary ministers of God.
Sect. 11. Fourthly, As touching the feast of the dedication of the altar by Judas Maccabeus, 1. Let us hear what Cartwright very gravely and judiciously propoundeth:[850] “That this feast was unduly instituted and ungroundly, it may appear by conference of the dedication of the first temple under Solomon, and of the second after the captivity returned from Babylon. In which dedication, seeing there was no yearly remembrance by solemnity of feasts, not so much as one day, it is evident that the yearly celebration of this feast for eight days, was not compassed by that Spirit that Solomon and the captivity were directed by; which Spirit, when it dwelt more plentifully in Solomon, and in the prophets that stood at the stern of the captivity's dedication, than it did in Judas, it was in him so much the more presumptuous, as having a shorter leg than they, he durst in that matter overstride them, and his rashness is so much the more aggravated, as each of them, for the building of the whole temple, with all the implements and furniture thereof, made no feast to renew the annual memory, where Judas only for renewment of the altar, and of certain other decayed places of the temple, instituted this great solemnity.”
2. The feast of the dedication was not [pg 1-249] free of Pharisaical invention. For as Tremellius observeth out of the Talmud,[851] statuerunt sapientes illius seculi, ut recurrentibus annis, octo illi dies, &c. Yet albeit the Pharisees were called sapientes Israelis, Bishop Lindsey will not grant that they were the wise men of whom the Talmud speaketh; for, saith he, it behoved those who appointed festivities, not only to be wise men, but men of authority also.[852]