ich they have, either by
divine or ecclesiastical institution, or for any worship which is
appropriated unto them, that may not be performed at another time, but for
the sacred use whereunto they are appointed to be employed as
circumstances only, and not as mysteries." _Ans._ This is but falsely
pretended, for as Didoclavius observeth,(469) _aliud est deputare, aliud
dedicare, aliud sanctificare_. Designation or deputation is when a man
appoints a thing for such an use, still reserving power and right to put
it to another use if he please; so the church appointeth times and hours
for preaching upon the week-days, yet reserving power to employ those
times otherwise, when she shall think fit. Dedication is when a man so
devotes a thing to some pious or civil use, that he denudes himself to all
right and title which thereafter he might claim unto it, as when a man
dedicates a sum of money for the building of an exchange, a judgment-hall,
&c., or a parcel of ground for a church, a churchyard, a glebe, a school,
an hospital, he can claim no longer right to the dedicated thing.
Sanctification is the setting apart of a thing for a holy and religious
use, in such sort that hereafter it may be put to no other use, Prov. xx.
25. Now whereas times set apart for ordinary and weekly preaching, are
only designed by the church for this end and purpose, so that they are not
holy, but only for the present they are applied to an holy use; neither is
the worship appointed as convenient or beseeming for those times, but the
times are appointed as convenient for the worship. Festival days are holy
both by dedication and consecration of them; and thus much the Bishop
himself forbeareth not to say,(470) only he laboureth to plaster over his
superstition with the untempered mortar of this quidditative distinction,
that some things are holy by consecration of them to holy and mystical
uses,(471) as water in baptism, &c., but other things are made holy by
consecration of them to holy political uses. This way, saith he, the
church hath power to make a thing holy, as to build and consecrate places
to be temples, houses to be hospitals; to give rent, lands, money and
goods, to the ministry and to the poor; to appoint vessels, and vestures,
and instruments for the public worship, as table, table-cloths, &c. _Ans._
1. The Bishop, I see, taketh upon him to coin new distinctions at his own
pleasure; yet they will not, I trust, pass current among the judi