If they take them (as needs they must) to the latter part, then let them either say that the ceremonies are lawful unto us, because the church judgeth them to be agreeable to the law of God and nature, or because the church proveth unto us, by evident reasons, that they are indeed agreeable to these laws. If they yield us the latter, then it is not the church's law, but the church's reasons given for her law, which can warrant the lawfulness of them unto us, which doth elude and elide all that which they allege for the lawfulness of them from the power and authority of the church.
And further, if any such reasons be to be given forth for the ceremonies, why are they so long kept up from us? But if they hold them at the former, thereupon it will follow, that it shall be lawful for us to do every thing which the church shall judge to be agreeable to the law of God and nature, and consequently to all the Jewish, popish, and heathenish ceremonies, yea, to worship images, if it happen that the church judge these things to be agreeable to the law of God and nature.
It will be answered (I know), that if the church command anything repugnant to God's word we are not bound to do it, nor [pg 1-267] to receive it as lawful, though the church judge so of it; but otherwise, if that which the church judgeth to be agreeable to the law of God and nature (and in that respect prescribeth) be not repugnant to the word of God, but in itself indifferent, then are we to embrace it as convenient, and consonant to the law of God and nature, neither ought we to call in question the lawfulness of it.
But I reply, that either we must judge a thing to be repugnant or not repugnant to the word, to be indifferent or not indifferent in itself, because the church judgeth so of it, or else because the church proveth unto us by an evident reason that it is so. If the latter, we have what we would; if the former, we are just where we were: the argument is still set afoot; then we must receive everything (be it ever so bad) as indifferent, if only the church happen so to judge of it; for quod competit alicui qua tale, &c. So that if we receive anything as indifferent, for this respect, because the church judgeth it to be so, then shall we receive everything for indifferent which the church shall so judge of.
Sect. 10. 3d. The church is forbidden to add anything to the commandments of God which he hath given unto us, concerning his worship and service, Deut. iv. 2; xii. 32; Prov. xxx. 6; therefore she may not lawfully prescribe anything in the works of divine worship, if it be not a mere circumstance belonging to that kind of things which were not determinate by Scripture.
Our opposites have no other distinctions which they make any use of against this argument, but the very same which Papists use in defence of their unwritten dogmatical traditions, namely, that additio corrumpens is forbidden, but not additio perficiens: that there is not alike reason of the Christian church and of the Jewish; that the church may not add to the essential parts of God's worship, but to the accidentary she may add.
To the first of those distinctions, we answer, 1. That the distinction itself is an addition to the word, and so doth but beg the question.
2. It is blasphemous; for it argueth that the commandments of God are imperfect, and that by addition they are made perfect.
3. Since our opposites will speak in this dialect, let them resolve us whether the washings of the Pharisees, condemned by [pg 1-268] Christ, were corrupting or perfecting additions. They cannot say they were corrupting, for there was no commandment of God which those washings did corrupt or destroy, except that commandment which forbiddeth men's additions. But for this respect our opposites dare not call them corrupting additions, for so they should condemn all additions whatsoever. Except, therefore, they can show us that those washings were not added by the Pharisees for perfecting, but for corrupting the law of God, let them consider how they rank their own ceremonial additions with those of the Pharisees. We read of no other reason wherefore Christ condemned them but because they were doctrines which had no other warrant than the commandments of men, Matt. xv. 9; for as the law ordained divers washings, for teaching and signifying that true holiness and cleanness which ought to be among God's people, so the Pharisees would have perfected the law by adding other washings (and more than God had commanded) for the same end and purpose.
Sect. 11. To the second distinction, we say that the Christian church hath no more liberty to add to the commandments of God than the Jewish church had; for the second commandment is moral and perpetual, and forbiddeth to us as well as to them the additions and inventions of men in the worship of God. Nay, as Calvin noteth,[901] much more are we forbidden to add unto God's word than they were. “Before the coming of his well-beloved Son in the flesh (saith John Knox),[902] severely he punished all such as durst enterprise to alter or change his ceremonies and statutes,—as in Saul, (1 Kings xiii.; xv.) Uzziah, Nadab, Abihu, (Lev. x.) is to be read. And will he now, after that he hath opened his counsel to the world by his only Son, whom he commandeth to be heard, Matt, xvii.; and alter that, by his holy Spirit speaking by his apostles, he hath established the religion in which he will his true worshippers abide to the end,—will he now, I say, admit men's inventions in the matter of religion? &c., 2 Cor. xi.; Col. i.; ii. For this sentence he pronounceth: ‘Not that which seemeth good in thy eyes shalt thou do to the Lord thy God, but that which the Lord thy God commanded thee, that do thou: Add nothing [pg 1-269] unto it, diminish nothing from it,’ Deut. iv. 12. Which, sealing up his New Testament, he repeateth in these words: ‘That which ye have, hold till I come,’ ” &c., Rev. ii.