Ch. lxxi. 5. Case of the Feast of Purim in the Book of Esther. 397 things which the law of God leaveth arbitrary and at liberty BOOK V. are all subject unto positive laws of men, which laws for the common benefit abridge particular men's liberty in such things as far as the rules of equity will suffer. This we must either maintain, or else overturn the world and make every man his own commander. Seeing then that labour and rest upon any one day of the six throughout the year are granted free by the Law of God, how exempt we them from the force and power of ecclesiastical law, except we deprive the world of power to make any ordinance or law at all? [5] Besides is it probable that God should not only allow but command concurrency of rest with extraordinary occasions of doleful events befalling peradventure some one certain church, or not extending unto many, and not as much as permit or license the like, when piety triumphant with joy and gladness maketh solemn commemoration of God's most rare and unwonted mercies, such especially as the whole race of mankind doth or might participate? Of vacation from labour in times of sorrow the only cause is for that the general public prayers of the whole Church and our own private business. cannot both be followed at once: whereas of rest in the famous solemnities of public joy there is both this consideration the same, and also farther a kind of natural repugnancy, which maketh labours (as hath been proved) much more unfit to accompany festival praises of God than offices of humiliation and grief. Again if we sift what they bring for proof and approbation of rest with fasting, doth it not in all respects as fully warrant and as strictly command rest whensoever the Church hath equal reason by feasts and gladsome solemnities to testify public thankfulness towards God? I would know some cause, why those words of the prophet Joel", " Sanctify a fast, "call a solemn assembly," which words were uttered to the Jews in misery and great distress, should more bind the Church to do at all times after the like in their like perplexities, than the words of Moses to the same people in a time of joyful deliverance from misery 10, "Remember this day," may warrant any annual celebration of benefits no less importing Ch. lxxi. 6. 398 The Feast of Purim was not of Divine Institution. BOOK V. the good of men; and also justify as touching the manner and form thereof what circumstance soever we imitate only in respect of natural fitness or decency, without any Jewish regard to ceremonies such as were properly theirs and are not by us expedient to be continued. According to the rule of which general directions taken from the law of God no less in the one than the other, the practice of the Church commended unto us in holy Scripture doth not only make for the justification of black and dismal days (as one of the Fathers termeth them) but plainly offereth itself to be followed by such ordinances (if occasion require) as that which Mardocheus did sometime devise, Esther 11 what lay in her power help forward, and the rest of the Jews establish for perpetuity, namely that the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month Adar should be every year kept throughout all generations as days of feasting and joy, wherein they would rest from bodily labour, and what by gifts of charity bestowed upon the poor, what by other liberal signs of amity and love, all testify their thankful minds towards God, which almost beyond possibility had delivered them all when they all were as men dead. [6.] But this decree they say was divine not ecclesiastical12, as may appear in that there is another decree in another book of Scripture which decree is plain not to have proceeded from the Church's authority but from the mouth of the prophet only; and as a poor simple man sometime was fully persuaded that if Pontius Pilate had not been a saint the Apostles would never have suffered his name to stand in the Creed, so Summary of the Argument on Ecclesiastical Feasts. 399 Ch. lxxi. 7. these men have a strong opinion that because the book of BOOK V. Esther is canonical the decree of Esther cannot be possibly ecclesiastical. If it were, they ask how the Jews could bind themselves always to keep it, seeing ecclesiastical laws are mutable? As though the purposes of men might never intend constancy in that the nature whereof is subject to alteration. Doth the Scripture itself make mention of any divine commandment? Is the Scripture witness of more than only that Mardocheus was the author of this custom, that by letters written to his brethren the Jews throughout all provinces under Darius the king of Persia he gave them charge to celebrate yearly those two days for perpetual remembrance of God's miraculous deliverance and mercy, that the Jews hereupon undertook to do it, and made it with general consent an order for perpetuity, that Esther secondly by her letters confirmed the same which Mardocheus had before decreed, and that finally the ordinance was written to remain for ever upon record? Did not the Jews in provinces abroad observe at the first the fourteenth day, the Jews in Susis the fifteenth? Were they not all reduced to a uniform order by means of those two decrees, and so every where three days kept, the first with fasting in memory of danger, the rest in token of deliverance as festival and joyful days? Was not the first of these three afterwards, the day of sorrow and heaviness, abrogated, when the same Church saw it meet that a better day, a day in memory of like deliverance out of the bloody hands of Nicanor should succeed in the room thereof 13? [7] But forasmuch as there is no end of answering fruitless oppositions, let it suffice men of sober minds to know that the law both of God and nature alloweth generally days of rest Ch. lxxi. 7. 400 Express Scripture not to be required for Saints' Days. BOOK V. and festival solemnity to be observed by way of thankful and joyful remembrance, if such miraculous favours be shewed towards mankind as require the same; that such graces God hath bestowed upon his Church as well in later as in former times; that in some particulars when they have fallen out himself hath demanded his own honour, and in the rest hath left it to the wisdom of the Church directed by those precedents and enlightened by other means always to judge when the like is requisite 14. About questions therefore concerning days and times our manner is not to stand at bay with the Church of God demanding wherefore the memory of Paul 15 should be rather kept than the memory of Daniel 16, we are content to imagine it may be perhaps true that the least in the kingdom of Christ is greater than the greatest of all the prophets of God that have gone before; we never yet saw cause to despair but that the simplest 17 of the people might 14 I Mac. iv. 55. [59.] 15" Commemoratio Apostolicæ "Passionis totius Christianitatis "magistræ a cunctis jure celebra"tur.' Cod. lib. iii. tit. 12. 1. 7. [p. 89.] 66 66 66 16 T. C. lib. i. p. 153. [121. "As we reason against the popish purgatory, that it is therefore naught, "forasmuch as neither in the Old "Testament nor in the New there is any mention of prayer at any time "for the dead; so may it be reason"ed against these holidays ordained “ for the remembrance of the saints, " that for so much as the old people “ did never keep any feast or holiday for the remembrance either of “ Moses or Daniel, or Job or Abra“ ham or David, or any other, how holy and excellent soever they were; nor the Apostles nor the « Churches in their time never in"stituted any, either to keep the "remembrance of St. Stephen, or "of the Virgin Mary, or of John Baptist, or of any other notable "and rare personage; that the instituting and erecting of them now, "and this attempt by the churches "which followed... is not without some note of presumption.' Whitg. Def. 543. Purgatory is 66 66 "made a matter of salvation or "damnation, as all other doctrines "of the popes be; and therefore a negative reason, such as you use, " is sufficient enough to improve it. "But holidays in our Church have "no such necessity ascribed unto "them." The earliest clear instance of a saint's day being kept is perhaps that of St. Polycarp, A. D. 169. See the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna, containing the account of his martyrdom, c. 18. 'Hueis votepOV ἀνελόμενοι τὰ τιμιώτερα λίθων που λυτελῶν καὶ δοκιμώτερα ὑπὲρ χρυσίον ὀστᾶ αὐτοῦ, ἀπεθέμεθα ὅπου καὶ ἀκόλουθον ἦν· ἔνθα ὡς δυνατὸν ἡμῖν συναγομένοις, ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶ χαρᾷ, παρέξει ὁ Κύριος ἐπιτελεῖν τὴν τοῦ μαρτυρίου αὐτοῦ ἡμέραν γενέθλιον, εἷς τε τὴν τῶν ἠθληκότων μνήμην, καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἄσκησίν τε καὶ ἑτοιμασíav. ap. Coteler. PP. Apost. t. ii. p. 202.] 17 T. C. lib. i. p. 153. [121.] "The people, when it is called St. "Paul's day or the blessed Virgin "Mary's day, can understand no thing thereby but that they are "instituted to the honour of St. Paul The Abuse of them easily obviated. 401 Ch. lxxi. 7. be taught the right construction of as great mysteries as the BOOK V. 18 name of a saint's day doth comprehend, although the times of the year go on in their wonted course; we had rather glorify and bless God for the fruit we daily behold reaped by such ordinances as his gracious Spirit maketh the ripe wisdom of this national church to bring forth, than vainly boast of our own peculiar and private inventions, as if the skill of profitable 19 regiment had left her public habitation to dwell in retired manner with some few men of one livery; we make not our childish 20 appeals sometimes from our own to foreign 66 say let them so be taught, I have "answered that the teaching in this "land cannot by any order which is yet taken come to the most part "of those which have drunk this poison." &c. 66 66 "ries of saints and martyrs straighten 66 66 66 our consideration of them unto "those days, which should continually be thought of, and daily, as long as we live." Whitg. Def. 546. "You might as well say, there 18" Scilicet ignorant nos 66 nec ought to be no certain times ap"Christum unquam relinquere qui pointed for the receiving of the pro totius servandorum mundi "holy communion, because the "salute passus est, nec alium quem"meditation of the death and pas"sion of Christ, and the applica"tion of the same, is fettered to "these certain days.... The same might you say likewise of the "Sabbath day."] 66 piam colere posse. Nam hunc "quidem 'tanquam Filium Dei ado 66 ramus, martyres vero tanquam "discipulos et imitatores Domini 66 digne propter insuperabilem in "Regem ipsorum ac Præceptorem "benevolentiam diligimus, quorum "et nos consortes et discipulos fieri |