, no more
than it followeth, _Si est animal, est Asinus; for a genere ad speciem non
valet consequentia affirmando_.

THE FOURTH PART.

AGAINST THE INDIFFERENCY OF THE CEREMONIES.

CHAPTER I.

OF OUR OPPOSITES' PLEADING FOR THE INDIFFERENCY OF THE CEREMONIES.

If it seem to any that it is a strange method to speak now of
indifferency, in the end of this dispute, which ought rather to have been
handled in the beginning of it, they may consider, that the method is not
ours, but our opposites'; for they have been fleeing upon Icarus' wings,
and soaring so high that their wings could not but melt from them: so have
they, from necessity fallen down to expediency; from it to lawfulness; and
from thence to indifferency.

I knew certain of them, who, after reasoning about the ceremonies with
some of our side, required, in the end, no more but that they would only
acknowledge the indifferency of the things in themselves. And so being
wooed and solicitously importuned by our former arguments against the
ceremonies, they take them to the weaving of Penelope's web, thereby to
suspend us, and to gain time against us: this indifferency, I mean, which
they shall never make out, and which themselves, otherwhiles, unweave
again. Always, so long as they think to get any place for higher notions
about the ceremonies, they speak not so meanly of them as of things
indifferent; but when all their forces of arguments and answers are spent
in vain, then are our ears filled with uncouth outcries and declamations,
which tend to make themselves appear blameless for receiving, and us
blameworthy for refusing matters of rite and indifferency.

Upon this string they harp over and over again, in books, in sermons, in
private discourses. Mr G. Powell (in his book _De Adiaphoris_), and Tilen
(in the 12th and 17th chapters of his _Paraenesis_), condemn those who
make aught ado about the controverted English ceremonies, for so much as
they are things indifferent. Paybody, in his Apology for kneeling at the
communion, standeth much upon the indifferency of this gesture, both in
every worship of God, and in that sacrament namely. The Archbishop of St.
Andrews, in his sermon at Perth Assembly, because he could not prove this
indifferency, he chose to suppose it. "Of the indifferency of these
articles (saith he) I think there is little or no question amongst us."
Whether he s