ch happened upon them; so
that the worship performed on them is even appropriated to them; all which
is more than evident from those testimonies which I have in this place
collected.

And, finally, the author of _The Nullity of Perth Assembly_(502) proveth
this point forcibly: Doth not Hooker say "That the days of public
memorials should be clothed with the outward robes of holiness? They
allege for the warrant of anniversary festivities, the ancients, who call
them sacred and mystical days. If they were instituted only for order and
policy, that the people might assemble to religious exercises, wherefore
is there but one day appointed betwixt the passion and the resurrection;
forty days betwixt the resurrection and ascension; ten betwixt the
ascension and Pentecost? Wherefore follow we the course of the moon, as
the Jews did, in our moveable feasts? &c. Wherefore is there not a certain
day of the month kept for Easter as well as for the nativity?" &c. That
which is here alleged out of Hooker and the ancients, Bishop Lindsey
passeth quite over it, and neither inserts nor answers it. As touching
those demands which tie him as so many Gordian knots, because he cannot
unloose them, he goeth about to break them, telling us,(503) that they
order these things so for unity with the catholic church. This is even as
some natural philosophers, who take upon them to give a reason and cause
for all things in nature, when they can find no other, they flee to
_sympathia physica_. When it is asked, wherefore the loadstone doth
attract iron rather than other metal? they answer, that the cause thereof
is _sympathia physica inter magnetem et ferrum_. With such kind of
etymology doth the Bishop here serve us; yet peradventure he might have
given us another cause. If so, my retractation is, that if he be excused
one way, he must be accused another way; and if he be blameless of
ignorance, he is blameworthy for dissimulation. The true causes why those
things are so ordered, we may find in Bishop Andrew's sermons, which I
have made use of in handling this argument. For example,(504) the reason
why there is but one day betwixt the passion and the resurrection, is,
because that Jonas was but one day in the whale's belly, and Christ but
one day in the bosom of the earth; for in their going thither he sets out
Good Friday; in their being there, Easter eve; in their coming thence,
Easter day. As for the fifty days betwixt Easter and Pentecost, he