e coat of some fig leaves wherewith they are trimmed
up. And first, I hope it will appear to how small purpose Dr Davenant
would conciliate his reader's mind(204) to allow of the church's
ordinances about holidays (peradventure because he saw all that he had
said of that purpose to be too invalid proof), by six cautions, whereby
all superstition and abuse which may ensue upon them may be shunned. For
whatsoever doth manifestly endanger men's souls, being a thing not
necessary in itself, at which they take occasion of superstitious abuse,
should rather be removed altogether out of the way, than be set about with
a weak and easily-penetrable hedge of some equivocative cautions, which
the ruder sort do always, and the learned do too oft, either not
understand or not remember. Now, Bishop Lindsey confesseth,(205) and puts
it out of all doubt, that when the set times of these solemnities return,
superstitious conceits are most pregnant in the heads of people; therefore
it must be the safest course to banish those days out of the church, since
there is so great hazard, and no necessity, of retaining them.

What they can allege for holidays, from our duty to remember the
inestimable benefits of our redemption, and to praise God for the same,
hath been already answered.(206) And as touching any expediency which they
imagine in holidays, we shall see to that afterward.(207)

_Sect._ 2. The Act of Perth Assembly allegeth the practice of the ancient
church for warrant of holidays, and Tilen allegeth the judgment of
antiquity to the same purpose.(208) _Ans._ The festivities of the ancient
church cannot warrant ours; for, 1. In the purest times of the church
there was no law to tie men to the observation of holidays. _Observandum
est_, say the divines of Magdeburg,(209) _apostolos et apostolicos viros,
neque de paschate, neque de aliis quibuscunque, festivitatibus legem
aliquam constituisse_. Socrates reporteth,(210) that men did celebrate the
feast of Easter, and other festival days, _sicuti voluerunt, ex
consuetudine quadam_. Nicephorus saith,(211) that men did celebrate
festivities, _sicuti cuique visum erat, in regionibus passim ex
consuitudine quadam per traditionem accepta adducti_. In which place, as
the reader will plainly perceive, he opposeth tradition to an evangelical
or apostolical ordinance. Sozomen tells us,(212) that men were left to
their own judgment about the keeping of Easter, Jerome saith of the
feasts(213) whic