to the controverted ceremonies. Temples, houses of prayer,
vessels for the ministration of the sacraments, and bells, are not used by
us in divine worship as things sacred, or as holier than other houses,
vessels, and bells; but we use them only for natural necessity,--partly for
that common decency which hath no less place in the actions of civil than
of sacred assemblies; yea, in some cases they may be applied to civil
uses, as hath been said;(535) whereas the controverted ceremonies are
respected and used as sacred rites, and as holier than any circumstance
which is alike common to civil and sacred actions, neither are they used
at all out of the case of worship. We see now a double respect wherefore
our argument inferreth not the necessity of abolishing and destroying such
temples, vessels, and bells, as have been abused to idolatry, viz. because
it can neither be said that they are not things necessary, nor yet that
they are things sacred.

_Sect._ 9. Nevertheless (to add this by the way), howbeit for those
reasons the retaining and using of temples which have been polluted with
idols be not in itself unlawful, yet the retaining of every such temple is
not ever necessary, but sometimes it is expedient, for farther extirpation
of superstition, to demolish and destroy some such temples as have been
horribly abused to idolatry, Calvin also(536) and Zanchius(537) do plainly
insinuate. Whereby I mean to defend (though not as in itself necessary,
yet as expedient _pro tunc_,) that which the reformers of the church of
Scotland did in casting down some of those churches which had been
consecrate to popish idols, and of a long time polluted with idolatrous
worship. As on the one part the reformers (not without great probability)
feared, that so long as these churches were not made even with the ground,
the memory of that superstition, whereunto they had been employed and
accustomed, should have been in them preserved, and, with some sort of
respect, recognised; so, on the other part, they saw it expedient to
demolish them, for strengthening the hands of such as adhered to the
reformation, for putting Papists out of all hope of the re-entry of
Popery, and for hedging up the way with thorns, that the
idolatrously-minded might not find their paths. And since the pulling down
of those churches wanted neither this happy intent not happy event, I must
say that the bitter invectives given forth against it, by some who carry a
favo