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Have not we then reason to exclaim against our holidays, as a yoke of bondage, heavier than that of the Jews, for that our holidays are men’s inventions, and so were not theirs? The other reason, Gal. iv. 9, holdeth as good against our holidays.
There was the king’s garden and the palace, and the other wonderful buildings, tall and stately—mighty buildings which seemed to speak of mighty builders, noble thoughts and great men’s deeds. Some were even more stately, some more humble, than the palace. But in all there was a sense of grander, nobler life than the life those knew who were with her now, and who, laughing, called her a dreamer.
Men’s minds have no hiding-place out of themselves—their affectations do but betray another phase of their nature.
And this kind of things, whensover they are men’s devices, and not God’s ordinances, cannot be lawfully enjoined by princes, as hath been showed. But if any man will needs have these ceremonies in question to go under the name of mere circumstances, let us put the case they were no other, yet our conforming unto them, which is urged, cannot stand with the rules of the word.
Piously allowing that the dread Commoter of our globe might have seen all mortal doings, even from the depth of his own cerulean kingdom, I still felt that if a station were to be chosen from which to see the fight, old Homer, so material in his ways of thought, so averse from all haziness and overreaching, would have meant to give the god for his station some spot within reach of men’s eyes from the plains of Troy.
In this wondrous Age, at this time when the Ancient Beauty, the Most Great Name, bearing unnumbered gifts, hath risen above the horizon of the world, the Word of God hath infused such awesome power into the inmost essence of humankind that He hath stripped men’s human qualities of all effect, and hath, with His all-conquering might, unified the peoples in a vast sea of oneness.
And if iniquity be not committed, what is it that can proclaim Thee to be the Concealer of men’s sins, the Ever-Forgiving, the Omniscient, the All-Wise? May my soul be a sacrifice to the trespasses of them that trespass against Thee, for upon such trespasses are wafted the sweet savors of the tender mercies of Thy Name, the Compassionate, the All-Merciful.
But in all the Scripture princes have neither a commendable example, nor any other warrant, for the making of any innovation in religion, or for the prescribing of sacred significant ceremonies of men’s devising.
The writer compiling the opinions of many men, and chiefly of the ancients, set forth, I know not how quaintly, that the Iliad was all in all to the human race—that it was history, poetry, revelation; that the works of men’s hands were folly and vanity, and would pass away like the dreams of a child, but that the kingdom of Homer would endure for ever and ever. I assented with all my soul.
There has been, indeed, fantastical men, who, under pretence and cloak of Christian liberty, would abolish and cast out laws and judgments, orders also, degrees and honours, out of the commonwealth, and have been bold to reckon the function of the magistrate armed with the sword among evil things and unlawful: but the reformed churches do renounce and detest these dreams, and do most harmoniously and most willingly confess and acknowledge it to be God’s will that the world be governed by laws and policy, and that he himself hath appointed the civil magistrate, and hath delivered to him the sword to the protection and praise of good men, but for punishment and revenge on the evil, that by this bridle, men’s vices and faults may be restrained, whether these are committed against the first or second table.
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