as already come,
could not keep them as figures of his coming as the Jews did, but rather
as memorials that he was already come, saith Cartwright.(187) 1. If the
Apostle's reasons wherewith he impugns the observation of days, hold good
against our holidays so well as against the Jewish or popish days, then
doth he condemn those, no less these. But the Apostle's reasons agree to
our holidays for, 1. According to that reason, Gal. iv. 3, they bring us
under a yoke of bondage. Augustine,(188) complaining of some ceremonies
wherewith the church in his time was burdened, thought it altogether best
that they should be cut off, _Etiamsi fidei non videantur adversari, quia
religionem quam Christus liberam esse voluit, servilibus oneribus
premunt._ Yea, he thought this yoke of servitude greater bondage, and less
tolerable than the servility of the Jews, because they were subject to the
burdens of the law of God, and not to the presumptions of men. The yoke of
bondage of Christians, in respect of feasts, is heavier than the yoke of
the Jews, not only for the multitude of them, but because _Christianorum
festa, ab hominibus tantum, judaeorum vero a Deo fuerint instituta_, saith
Hospinian.(189) 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. They are rudimental and
pedagogical elements, which beseem not the Christian church, for as
touching that which Tilen objecteth,(190) that many in the church of the
New Testament are still babes to be fed with milk, it maketh as much
against the Apostle as against us; for by this reason, he may as well
throw back the Apostle's ground of condemning holidays among the
Galatians, and say, because many of the Galatians were babes, therefore
they had the more need of those elements and rudiments. The Apostle, Gal.
iv. 3, compareth the church of the Old Testament to an infant, and
insinuateth, that in the days of the New Testament the infancy of the
church hath taken an end. And whereas it might be objected, that in the
church of the New Testament there are many babes, and that the Apostle
himself speaketh of the Corinthians and Hebrews as babes: it is answered
by Pareus,(191) _Non de paucis personis, sed de statu totius ecclesiae
intelligendum est quod hic dicitur._ There were also some in the church of
the