it veneration,(722) forasmuch
as we esteem highly of it, as a most holy thing, and meddle reverently
with it, without all contempt or unworthy usage. _Res profecto
inanimatae_, saith the Archbishop of Spalato,(723) _sint sacrae quantum
placet, alium honorem a nobis non merentur, nisi in sensu negativo_, as
that they be not contemned, nor unworthily handled. If it be said that we
ought not to contemn the word, yet hath it not that respect given to it
which the sacrament hath, at which we are uncovered, so that this
veneration given to the sacrament must be somewhat more than
_profanatio_,--I answer, as honour both in the positive and negative sense,
has various degrees, and according to the more or less immediate
manifestation of divine ordinances to us, so ought the degrees of our
veneration to be intended or remitted; which is not so to be understood as
if one part of God's sacred worship were to be less contemned than another
(for none of God's most holy ordinances may be in any sort contemned), but
that for the greater regard of those things which are more immediately
divine, we are not in the usage of them, to take to ourselves so much
scope and liberty as otherwise we may lawfully allow to ourselves in
meddling with such things as are not merely but mixedly divine, and which
are not from God so immediately as the other, but more by the intervention
of means; and thus a higher degree of veneration is due to the sacrament
than to the word preached, not by taking aught from the word, but by
adding more respect to the sacrament than the word hath. The reason hereof
is given to be this,(724) because when we come to the sacrament, _nihil
hic humanum, sed divina omnia_; for Christ's own words are, or at least
should be spoken to us when we receive the sacrament, and the elements
also are, by Christ's own institution, holy symbols of his blessed body
and blood; whereas the word preached to us is but fixedly and mediately
divine; and because of this intervention of the ministry of men, and
mixture of their conceptions with the holy Scriptures of God, we are
bidden try the spirits, and are required, after the example of the
Bereans, to search the Scriptures daily, whether these things which we
hear preached be so or not. Now we are not in the like sort to try the
elements, and the words of the institution, whether they be of God or not,
because this is sure to all who know out of Scripture the first principles
of the oracles o