thereafter. Now, in the third century,(32) historiographers observe, that
_Paulatum ceremoniae auctae sunt, hominum superstitionorum opinionibus: unde
in baptismo unctionem olei, cruces signaculum, et osculum
addiderunt_--Ceremonies were by little and little augmented by the opinions
of superstitious men, whence it was that they added the unction of oil,
the sign of the cross, and a kiss in baptism. And in the fourth century
they say, _Subinde magis magisque, traditiones humanae cumulatae
sunt_--Forthwith human traditions were more and more augmented. And so from
that time forward vain and idle ceremonies were still added to the worship
of God, till the same was, under Popery, wholly corrupted with
superstitious rites, yes, and Mr Sprint hath told us, even of the first
two hundred years after Christ, that the "devil, in those days, began to
sow his tares (as the watchmen began to sleep), both of false doctrine and
corrupt ceremonies." And now, though some of the controverted ceremonies
have been kept and reserved in many (not all), the reformed churches, yet
they are not therefore to be the better liked of. For the reason of the
reservation was, because some reverend divines who dealt and laboured in
the reformation of those churches, perceiving the occurring lets and
oppositions which were caused by most dangerous schisms and seditions, and
by the raging of bloody wars, scarcely expected to effectuate so much as
the purging of the church from fundamental errors and gross idolatry,
which wrought them to be content, that lesser abuses in discipline and
church policy should be then tolerated, because they saw not how to
overtake them all at that time. In the meanwhile, they were so far from
desiring any of the churches to retain these popish ceremonies, which
might have convenient occasion of ejecting them (far less to recal them,
being once ejected), that they testified plainly their dislike of the
same, and wished that those churches wherein they lived, might have some
blessed opportunity to be rid of all such rotten relics, riven rags and
rotten remainders of Popery. All which, since they were once purged away
from the church of Scotland and cast forth as things accursed into the
jakes of eternal detestation, how vile and abominable may we now call the
resuming of them? Or what a piacular prevarication is it to borrow from
any other church which was less reformed, a pattern of policy for this
church which was more reform