He answered and said unto them: Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying: Honour thy father and thy mother; and: He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say: Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother; It is a gift by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. [31a]
Now where is the perceptible difference, between the conduct of the Jewish Rabbins, and the conduct of the Romish Clergy?
(1.) The Written Word commanded: that a man should honour his father and mother.
But the Jewish Rabbins made this commandment of none effect by their Unwritten Tradition: that, if a man vowed to dedicate his substance to God, he was not bound to relieve out of it the necessities of his parents.
(2.) The Written Word has prohibited the bowing down before graven images and the invocation of any being save the Deity.
But the Romish Clergy have made this prohibition of none effect by their Unwritten Tradition: that images may be worshipped relatively with the worship due to their prototypes, that dead saints may be justifiably invocated to give us their intercessory assistance, and that, provided only we take care to denominate the worship of the Saints and the Virgin Dulia and Hyperdulia while we rigidly style the worship of the Deity Latria, we may laudably (after the precise manner of the old Pagan idolaters [31b]) kiss and uncover our heads and fall prostrate before their images, duly through each image (again on the exact avowed principle of the same Old Pagan idolaters [31c]) referring to each being represented by such image his own appropriate reverence and adoration. [32a]
2. A similar admonition, against the vanity of following Unwritten Tradition rather than the certainty of the Written Word, is given by the Apostle St. Paul.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him; rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. [32b]
3. The romish pretence of an EQUALLY authoritative Unwritten Tradition plainly involves an assertion of the Insufficiency of the Written Word. But the written Word declares its own Sufficiency. Therefore, on that precise ground, it condemns the romish pretence of an EQUALLY authoritative concurrent Unwritten Tradition.
(1.) Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it: that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. [32c]