even(655) _ex opere operato, effectus mirabiles
signi crucis, etiam apud infideles, aliquando enituerint_. "Shall I say
(saith Mr Hooker),(656) that the sign of the cross (as we use it) is a
mean in some sort to work our preservation from reproach? Surely the mind
which as yet hath not hardened itself in sin, is seldom provoked thereunto
in any gross and grievous manner, but nature's secret suggestion objecteth
against it ignominy as a bar, which conceit being entered into that place
of man's fancy (the forehead), the gates whereof have imprinted in them
that holy sign (the cross), which bringeth forthwith to mind whatsoever
Christ hath wrought and we vowed against sin; it cometh hereby to pass,
that Christian men never want a most effectual, though a silent teacher,
to avoid whatsoever may deservedly procure shame." What more do Papists
ascribe to the sign of the cross, when they say, that by it Christ keeps
his own faithful ones(657) _contra omnes tentationes et hostes_. Now if
the covetous man be called an idolater, Eph. v. 5, because, though he
think not his money to be God, yet he trusteth to live and prosper by it
(which confidence and hope we should repose in God only, Jer. xvii. 7), as
Rainold marketh,(658) then do they make the sign of the cross an idol who
trust by it to be preserved from sin, shame, and reproach, and to have
their minds stayed in the instant of tentation. For who hath given such a
virtue to that dumb and idle sign as to work that which God only can work?
And how have these good fellows imagined, that not by knocking at their
brains, as Jupiter, but by only signing their foreheads, they can
procreate some menacing Minerva, or armed Pallas, to put to flight the
devil himself.

_Sect._ 5. The same kind of operative virtue is ascribed to the ceremony
of confirmation or bishopping; for the English service book teacheth, that
by it children receive strength against sin, and against tentation. And
Hooker hath told us,(659) that albeit the successors of the apostles had
but only for a time such power as by prayer and imposition of hands to
bestow the Holy Ghost, yet confirmation hath continued hitherto for very
special benefits; and that the fathers impute everywhere unto it "that
gift or grace of the Holy Ghost, not which maketh us first Christian men,
but when we are made such, assisteth us in all virtue, armeth us against
tentation and sin." Moreover, whilst he is a-showing why this ceremony of
con