and that
the days of Purim were appointed for a religious festivity, and that upon
no such extraordinary warrant as the church hath not ever and always. The
rite which Abraham commanded his servant to use when he sware to him,
namely, the putting of his hand under his thigh, Gen. xxiv. 2, maketh them
as little help; for it was but a moral sign of that civil subjection,
reverence and fidelity which inferiors owe unto superiors, according to
the judgment of Calvin, Junius, Pareus, and Tremellius, all upon that
place. That altar which was built by the Reubenites, Gadites, and half
tribe of Manasseh, Josh. xxii., had (as some think) not a religious, but a
moral use, and was not a sacred, but a civil sign, to witness that those
two tribes and the half were of the stock and lineage of Israel; which, if
it were once called in question, then their fear (deducing the connection
of causes and consequents) led them in the end to forecast this issue: "In
time to come your children might speak unto our children, saying, What
have you to do with the Lord God of Israel? for the Lord hath made Jordan
a border betwixt us and you," &c. Therefore, to prevent all apparent
occasions of such doleful events, they erected the pattern of the Lord's
altar, _ut vinculum sit fraternae conjunctionis._(812)

And besides all this, there is nothing which can urge us to say that the
two tribes and the half did commendably in the erecting of this
altar.(813) Calvin finds two faults in their proceeding. 1. In that they
attempted such a notable and important innovation without advising with
their brethren of the other tribes, and especially without inquiring the
will of God by the high priest. 2. Whereas the law of God commanded only
to make one altar, forasmuch as God would be worshipped only in one place,
they did inordinately, scandalously, and with appearance of evil, erect
another altar; for every one who should look upon it could not but
presently think that they had forsaken the law, and were setting up a
strange and degenerate rite. Whether also that altar which they set up for
a pattern of the Lord's altar, was one of the images forbidden in the
second commandment, I leave it to the judicious reader to ruminate upon.
But if one would gather from ver. 33, that the priest, and the princes,
and the children of Israel, did allow of that which the two tribes and the
half had done, because it is said, "The thing pleased the children of
Israel, and the c