hildren of Israel blessed God, and did not intend to go
up against them in battle:"

I answer, the Hebrew text hath it thus: "And the word was good in the eyes
of the children of Israel," &c.; that is, the children of Israel blessed
God for the word which Phinehas and the ten princes brought to them,
because thereby they understood that the two tribes and the half had not
turned away from following the Lord, nor made them an altar for
burnt-offerings or sacrifice; which was enough to make them (the nine
tribes and a half) desist from their purpose of going up to war against
their brethren, to shed their blood. Again, when Phinehas and the ten
princes say to the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh,
This day we perceive that the Lord is among us, "because ye have not
committed this trespass against the Lord," they do not exempt them from
all prevarication; only they say _signanter_, "this trespass," to wit, of
turning away from the Lord, and building an altar for sacrifice, whereof
they were accused. Thus we see that no approbation of that which the two
tribes and the half did, in erecting the altar, can be drawn from the
text.

_Sect._ 10. But to proceed, our opposites allege for another example
against us, a new altar built by Solomon, 1 Kings viii. 64. In which place
there is no such thing to be found as a new altar built by Solomon; but
only that he sanctified the pavement of the inner court, that the whole
court might be as an altar, necessity so requiring, because the brazen
altar of the Lord was not able to contain so many sacrifices as then were
offered. The building of synagogues can make as little against us.

For, 1. After the tribes were settled in the land of promise, synagogues
were built, in the case of an urgent necessity, because all Israel could
not come every Sabbath day to the reading and expounding of the law in the
place which God had chosen that his name might dwell there. What hath that
case to do with the addition of our unnecessary ceremonies?

2. If Formalists will make any advantage of the building of synagogues,
they must prove that they were founded, not upon the extraordinary warrant
of prophets, but upon that ordinary power which the church retaineth
still. As for the love-feasts used in the primitive church, 1. They had no
religious state in divine worship, but were used only as moral signs of
mutual charity. The Rhemists(814) will have them to be called _caenas
dominica