o say it hath a necessary use; this is the dead lift, which yet
helpeth not, as I have showed. All things, then, which are not necessary
(whereof kneeling is one), being notoriously abused to idolatry, fall
under the brazen serpent.

_Sect._ 16. Paybody also will here talk with us, therefore we will talk
with him too. He saith,(555) that God did not absolutely condemn things
abused to idolatry, and tells us of three conditions on which it was
lawful to spare idolatrous appurtenances. 1. If there were a needful use
of them in God's worship. 2. In case they were so altered and disposed, as
that they tended not to the honour of the idol, and his damnable worship.
3. If they were without certain danger of ensnaring people into idolatry.
_Ans._ 1. Either he requires all these conditions in every idolothite and
idolatrous appurtenance which may be retained, or else he thinks that any
one of them sufficeth. If he require all these, the last two are
superfluous; for that which hath a needful use in God's worship, can
neither tend to the honour of the idol, nor yet can have in it any danger
of ensnaring people into idolatry. If he think any one of those conditions
enough, then let us go through them: The first I admit, but it will not
help his cause, for while the world standeth they shall never prove that
kneeling in the act of receiving the communion, and the other controverted
ceremonies, have either a needful, or a profitable, or a lawful use in
God's worship. As for his second condition, it is all one with that which
I have already confuted,(556) namely, that things abused to idolatry may
be kept, if they be purged from their abuse, and restored to the right
use. But he allegeth for it a passage of Parker, _of the Cross_, cap. 1,
sect. 7, p. 10, where he showeth out of Augustine, that an idolothite may
not be kept for private use, except, 1. _Omnis honor idoli, cum
appertessima destructione subvertatur_. 2. That not only his honour be not
despoiled, but also all show thereof. How doth this place (now would I
know) make anything for Paybody? Do they keep kneeling for private use? Do
they destroy most openly all honour of the idol to which kneeling was
dedicated? Hath their kneeling not so much as any show of the breaden
god's honour? Who will say so? And if any will say it, who will believe
it? Who knoweth not that kneeling is kept for a public, and not for a
private use, and that the breaden idol receiveth very great show of