ed to be kept only for order and policy, they might be applied to
another use as well as those ordinary times of weekly meetings in great
towns, whereas we are required of necessity to keep them holy.

_Sect._ 12. 3d. If the holidays be kept only for order and policy, why do
they esteem some of them above others? Doth not Bishop Andrews call the
feast of Easter the highest and greatest of our religion?(493) and doth
not Bishop Lindsey himself, with Chrysostom, call the festival of Christ's
nativity, _metropolim omnium festorum_?(494) By this reason doth
Bellarmine prove(495) that the feasts of Christians are celebrated _non
solum ratione ordinis et politiae, sed etiam mysterii_, because otherwise
they should be all equal in celebrity, whereas Leo calls Easter _festum
festorum_, and Nazianzen, _celebritatem celebritatum_.

_Sect._ 13. 4. If the holidays be kept only for order and policy, then the
sanctification of them should be placed _in ipso actuali externi cultus
exercitio_.(496) But Hooker hath told us before, that they are made holy
and worthily advanced above other days by God's extraordinary works
wrought upon them. Whereupon it followeth, that as _Deus septimum
sanctificavit vacatione sancta, et ordinatione ad usum sanctum_(497) so
hath he made festival days no less holy in themselves, and that as the
Sabbath was holy from the beginning, because of God's resting upon it, and
his ordaining of it for an holy use, howbeit it had never been applied by
men to the exercises of God's worship, even so festival days are holy,
being advanced truly and worthily by the extraordinary works of God, and
for this cause commended to all men that honour God to be holier with them
than other days, albeit it should happen that by us they were never
applied to an holy use. If Bishop Lindsey thinketh that all this toucheth
not him, he may be pleased to remember that he himself hath
confessed,(498) that the very presence of the festivity puts a man in mind
of the mystery, howbeit he have not occasion to be present in the holy
assembly. What order or policy is here, when a man being quiet in his
parlour or cabinet, is made to remember of such a mystery on such a day?
What hath external order and policy to do with the internal thoughts of a
man's heart, to put in order the same?

_Sect._ 14. 5th. By their fruits shall we know them. Look whether they
give so much liberty to others, and take so much to themselves upon their
holidays, for