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Zanchius saith that Chrysostom, Bullinger, and all good interpreters, understand the presbytery to be there meant by Christ when he saith, “Tell the church.” Chrysostom saith προίδροις καὶ προεστῶσι, that is, saith Junius, the ecclesiastical sanhedrim made up of pastors and elders. Thus Camero likewise expoundeth the place.
Camero, speaking of the servitude which is opposed to Christian liberty, saith, that it is either animi servitus, or corporis servitus. Then if the outward man be brought in bondage, this makes up spiritual thraldom, though there be no more. But, 3. The ceremonies are imposed with an opinion of necessity upon the conscience itself, for proof whereof I proceed to the next point. Sect. 1.
Neither can there be any occasion of fasting whereof I may not say that either it is particularly designed in Scripture, or else that it may be by necessary consequence defined out of Scripture; or, lastly, that it is of that sort of things which were not determinable by Scripture, because circumstances are infinite, as Camero hath told us. Sect. 5.
And as for particularities, all the particular causes, occasions, and times of fasting, could not be determined in Scripture, because they are infinite, as Camero saith.
To conclude, we condemn the English controverted ceremonies which are regarded as holy and significant, as most inexpedient, because they derogate from the true inward and spiritual worship; for man’s nature, saith Camero, “is delighted in that which is fleshly and outward, neglecting that which is spiritual and inward.” And this is the reason why least spiritual, lively, and holy disposition hath followed upon the addition of unnecessary ceremonies; and why there was never so much zeal, life, and power of religion inwardly, in the church of Christ, as then, when she was freest of ceremonies.
Sect. 6. 2d. That which the church may lawfully prescribe by her laws and ordinances, as a thing left to her determination, must be one of such things as were not determinable by Scripture, on that reason which Camero hath given us, namely, because individua are infinita.
May the church’s determination make all this good, forasmuch as these circumstances of the time when, and the persons by whom, baptism should be ministered, are in the general necessary, but not particularly defined in the word? Ite leves nugae. Sect. 3. Camero, as learned a Formalist as any of the former, expresseth his judgment copiously touching our present question.
If they like to speak to themselves: Camero, speaking of John’s leaning on Christ’s bosom at supper, saith, Christus autem sedebat medius; Dr Morton saith, it cannot be denied that the gesture of Christ and his apostles at the last supper was sitting,—only, saith he, the evangelists leave it uncertain whether this sitting was upright, or somewhat leaning. Sect. 8.
But some of our opposites go about to derive the obligatory power of the church’s laws, not so much from the utility of the laws themselves, or from any scandal which should follow upon the not obeying of them, as from the church’s own authority which maketh them. Camero speaketh of two sorts of ecclesiastical laws: 1. Such as prescribe things belonging to order and shunning of scandal.
Camero thinketh so much of ceremonies, that he holdeth our simplicity to notify that we have the true religion, and that the religion of Papists is superstitious because of their ceremonies.
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