Basilius Magnus[865] doth flatly refuse to admit the authority of custom: Consuetudo sine veritate (saith Cyprian),[866] vetustas erroris est. Frustra enim qui ratione vincuntur (saith Augustine),[867] consuetudinem nobis objiciunt, quasi consuetudo major sit veritate, &c. Nullus pudor est ad meliora transire, saith Ambrose[868] to the Emperor Valentinian. Quaelibet consuetudo (saith Gratian),[869] veritati est postponenda.
And again,[870] Corrigendum est quod illicite admittitur, aut a praedecessoribus admissum invenitur. A politic writer admonisheth[871] retinere antiqua, only with this caution, Si proba.
Calvin[872] (speaking against human ceremonies) [pg 1-253] saith, Si objiciatur, &c. “If (saith he) antiquity be objected (albeit they who are too much addicted to custom and to received fashions, do boldly use this buckler to defend all their corruptions), the refutation is easy; for the ancients also themselves, with heavy complaints, have abundantly testified that they did not approve of anything which was devised by the will of men.” In the end of the epistle he allegeth this testimony of Cyprian: “If Christ alone be to be heard, then we ought not to give heed what any man before us hath thought fit to be done, but what Christ (who is before all) hath done; for we must not follow the customs of man, but the truth of God.”
What can be more plain than that antiquity cannot be a confirmation to error, nor custom a prejudice to truth?
Wherefore Dr Forbesse[873] also despiseth such arguments as are taken from the custom of the church.
Sect. 14. 3. There was a custom in the churches of God to give the holy communion to infants; and another custom to minister baptism only about Easter and Pentecost. Sundry such abuses got place in the church.
If, then, it be enough to pitch upon custom, why ought not those customs to have been commended and continued? But if they were commendably changed, then ought we not to follow blindly the bare custom of the church, but examine the equity of the same, and demand grounds of reason for it.
St. Paul (saith Dr Fulk[874]) doth give reason for that order of covering women's heads: “By whose example the preachers are likewise to endeavour to satisfy, by reason, both men and women, that humbly desire their resolution for quiet of their conscience, and not to beat them down with the club of custom only.”
4. Whereas the custom of some churches is alleged for the ceremonies, we have objected the custom of other churches against them; neither shall ever our opposites prove them to be the customs of the church universal.
5. A great part of that ecclesiastical custom which is alleged for the ceremonies, resolveth into that idolatrous and superstitious [pg 1-254] use of them which hath long continued in the kingdom of antichrist; but that such a custom maketh against them, it hath been proved before.[875]