ses with
green boughs and bay leaves, to observe the calends of January, to keep
the first day of every month, &c., because the pagans used to do so? Last
of all, read we not in the fourth century of the ecclesiastical
history,(597) that the frame of Christians in that age was such, that _nec
cum haereticis commune quicquam habere voluerunt_?

_Sect._ 8. One would think that nothing could be answered to any of these
things, by such as pretend no less than that they have devoted themselves
to bend all their wishes and labours for procuring the imitation of
venerable antiquity. Yet Hooker can coin a conjecture to frustrate all
which we allege.(598) "In things (saith he) of their own nature
indifferent, if either councils or particular men have at any time with
sound judgment misliked conformity between the church of God and infidels,
the cause thereof hath not been affectation of dissimilitude, but some
special accident which the church, not being always subject unto, hath not
still cause to do the like. For example (saith he), in the dangerous days
of trial, wherein there was no way for the truth of Jesus Christ to
triumph over infidelity but through the constancy of his saints, whom yet
a natural desire to save themselves from the flame might, peradventure,
cause to join with the pagans in external customs, too far using the same
as a cloak to conceal themselves in, and a mist to darken the eyes of
infidels withal; for remedy hereof, it might be, those laws were
provided." _Ans._ 1. This answer is altogether doubtful and conjectural,
made up of _if_, and _peradventure_, and _it might be_. Neither is
anything found which can make such a conjecture probable. 2. The true
reason why Christians were forbidden to use the rites and customs of
pagans, was neither a bare affectation of dissimilitude, nor yet any
special accident which the church is not always subject unto, but because
it was held unlawful to symbolise with idolaters in the use of such rites
as they placed any religion in. For in the fathers and councils which we
have cited to this purpose, there is no other reason mentioned why it
behoved Christians to abstain from those forbidden customs, but only
because the pagans and infidels used so. 3. And what if Hooker's
divination shall have place? Doth it not agree to us, so as it should make
us mislike the Papists? Yes, sure, and more properly. For put the case,
that those ancient Christians had not avoided conformity