t himself(250)
will not defend all the practices of those churches, whose practice he
allegeth against us. But that all sound teachers, of all times and places,
have taught the necessity of conformity to inconvenient ceremonies, in
case of deprivation, he neither doth, neither can make good; it is but a
bare and a bold affirmation to deceive the minds of the simple. Did not
the good old Waldenses,(251) notwithstanding of all the hot persecutions
raised against them, constantly refuse to conform unto any of those
ceremonies of the church of Rome, which they perceived to have no
necessary use in religion, and to occasion superstition rather than to
serve for edification? And we verily rejoice to be ranked with those
Waldenses, of whom a popish historiographer speaketh thus:(252) _Alius in
libris cathari dicuntur, quibus respondent qui hodie in Anglia puriorum
doctrinam __ prae se ferunt_. Moreover, it cannot be unknown to such as are
acquainted with the history of the Reformation, how that not Flacius
Illiricus only, but many others,(253) among whom was Calvin,(254) and the
Magdeburgian doctors,(255) and all the churches of Nether Saxony subject
to Maurice,(256) opposed themselves to those inconvenient and hurtful
ceremonies of the Interim, urged by the Adiaphorists. And howsoever they
perceived many great and grievous dangers ensuing upon their refusing to
conform to the same, yet they constantly refused, and many ministers
suffered deprivation for their refusal.(257) Besides, do not our divines
require, that the church's canons, even in matters of rite, be "profitable
to the edification of the church,"(258) and that the observation of the
same must carry before it a manifest utility,(259) that in rites and
ceremonies the church hath no power to destruction, but only to
edification?(260) Do they not put this clause in the very definition of
ecclesiastical rites,(261) that they be profitably ordained; considering,
that otherwise they are but intolerable misorders and abuses? Do they not
teach,(262) that no idle ceremony which serveth not unto edifying is to be
suffered in the church; and that godly brethren are not holden to subject
themselves unto such things as they perceive neither to be right nor
profitable?(263) That whatsoever either would scandalise our brother,(264)
or not be profitable to him for his edification, Christians for no respect
must dare to meddle with it? Do they not stand so much upon expediency,
that