honour
from it? He was scarce of warrants when he had no better than Parker could
afford him. His third condition rests, and touching it I ask, what if
those idolatrous appurtenances be not without apparent danger of ensnaring
people into idolatry? Are we not commanded to abstain from all appearance
of evil? Will he correct the Apostle, and teach us, that we need not care
for apparent, but for certain dangers? What more apparent danger of
ensnaring people into idolatry than unnecessary ceremonies, which have
been dedicated to and polluted with idols, and which, being retained, do
both admonish us to remember upon old idolatry, and move us to return to
the same, as I have before made evident?(557)

_Sect._ 17. Now, as for the assumption of our present argument, it cannot
be but evident to any who will not harden their minds against the light of
the truth, that the ceremonies in question have been most notoriously
abused to idolatry and superstition, and withal, that they have no
necessary use to make us retain them. I say, they have been notoriously
abused to idolatry. 1. Because they have been dedicated and consecrated to
the service of idols. 2. Because they have been deeply polluted, and
commonly employed in idolatrous worship. For both these reasons does
Zanchius condemn the surplice,(558) and such like popish ceremonies left
in England, because the whore of Rome has abused, and does yet abuse them,
_ad alliciendos homines ad scortandum. Sunt enim pompae istae omnes, et
ceremoniae Papistisae, nihil aliud quam fuci meretricii, ad hoc
excogitati, ut homines ad spiritualem scortationem alliciantur._ O golden
sentence, and worthy to be engraven with a pen of iron, and the point of a
diamond! for most needful it is to consider, that those ceremonies are the
very meretricious bravery and veigling trinkets wherewith the Romish whore
doth faird and paint herself, whilst she propineth to the world the cup of
her fornications. This makes Zanchius(559) to call those ceremonies the
relics and symbols of popish idolatry and superstition. When Queen Mary
set up Popery in England, and restored all of it which King Henry had
overthrown, she considered that Popery could not stand well-favoredly
without the ceremonies; whereupon she ordained,(560) _ut dies omnes
festicelebrentur, superioris aetatis ceremoniae restituantur, pueri
adultiores __ ante baptisati, ab episcopis confirmentur._ So that not in
remote regions, but in his Majesty'