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For divers men have made divers books which in all points accord not, as Dictes, Dares, and Homer. For Dictes and Homer, as Greeks, say and write favorably for the Greeks, and give to them more worship than to the Trojans; and Dares writeth otherwise than they do.
Do they thus blaspheme the sancts and holy men of God, as to make them like unto the devils, who do nothing but hurt unto mankind, as Homer writeth, that the plague was sent into the camp of the Greeks by Apollo, and as the poets feign a great rabble of Vejoves and mischievous gods.
Moreover, the proctors for holidays among us think to make advantage of the practice of other reformed churches, and the judgment of modern divines. But we are to consider, 1. As they have the example of some churches for them, so we have the example of other churches for us, for the church of Geneva in Savoy, and the church of Strasburg in Germany, did abolish festival days, as Calvin writeth.
And hitherto reasons see I none at all, but that I may as well give credit unto their doings as to any of the rest. It must be Peregrinationis historia, that is, true reports of skilful travellers, as Ptolemy writeth, that in such controversies of geography must put us out of doubt.
Here are some who are no civil magistrates set over the Thessalonians in the Lord, 1 Thess. v. 12; Paul writeth to Timothy of elders that rule well, 1 Tim. v. 17; the churches of the Hebrews had some rulers who had spoken to them the word of God, Heb. xiii. 7; rulers that watched for their souls as they that must give an account, ver. 17.
And because there ware some so hard fauoured, that menne would not onely be loth to giue money for them, but some menne also for a litle money to take theim: the fairest ware first solde, and with the prices of theim brought into the commune Treasourie, ware the fowler bestowed. Whervpon Sabellicus takyng an occasion, writeth in this maner.
There are some whom the lightning of fortune blasts, only to render holy. Amidst all that humbles and scathes; amidst all that shatters from their life its verdure, smites to the dust the pomp and summit of their pride, and in the very heart of existence writeth a sudden and "strange defeature," they stand erect, riven, not uprooted, a monument less of pity than of awe!
Yea, in hac tota provincia aboliti fuerunt dies festi, saith he. The church of Zurich in Helvetia did also banish them all away, as Bullinger writeth to Calvin. 2. The practice of the greatest part of the reformed churches in observing holidays, cannot commend them in the church of Scotland, 1.
What good they shall do him, St. Paul declareth, when he writeth unto Timothy, "They that long to be rich fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil, and into many desires unprofitable and noxious, which drown men into death and into perdition."
But the youth hath a good and a winning face, and writeth Greek like an angel. Well then, my children, to comprehend the ways of the Church, we should still rise a little above the earth, since the Church is between heaven and earth, and interprets betwixt them. "The question is then, not how vulgar men feel, but how the common Creator of man and beast doth feel, towards the lower animals.
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