(900) "I grant it is unlawful to do in God's worship anything upon
the mere pleasure of man?"

If they take them (as needs they must) to the latter part, then let them
either say that the ceremonies are lawful unto us, because the church
judgeth them to be agreeable to the law of God and nature, or because the
church proveth unto us, by evident reasons, that they are indeed agreeable
to these laws. If they yield us the latter, then it is not the church's
law, but the church's reasons given for her law, which can warrant the
lawfulness of them unto us, which doth elude and elide all that which they
allege for the lawfulness of them from the power and authority of the
church.

And further, if any such reasons be to be given forth for the ceremonies,
why are they so long kept up from us? But if they hold them at the former,
thereupon it will follow, that it shall be lawful for us to do every thing
which the church shall judge to be agreeable to the law of God and nature,
and consequently to all the Jewish, popish, and heathenish ceremonies,
yea, to worship images, if it happen that the church judge these things to
be agreeable to the law of God and nature.

It will be answered (I know), that if the church command anything
repugnant to God's word we are not bound to do it, nor to receive it as
lawful, though the church judge so of it; but otherwise, if that which the
church judgeth to be agreeable to the law of God and nature (and in that
respect prescribeth) be not repugnant to the word of God, but in itself
indifferent, then are we to embrace it as convenient, and consonant to the
law of God and nature, neither ought we to call in question the lawfulness
of it.

But I reply, that either we must judge a thing to be repugnant or not
repugnant to the word, to be indifferent or not indifferent in itself,
because the church judgeth so of it, or else because the church proveth
unto us by an evident reason that it is so. If the latter, we have what we
would; if the former, we are just where we were: the argument is still set
afoot; then we must receive everything (be it ever so bad) as indifferent,
if only the church happen so to judge of it; for _quod competit alicui qua
tale_, &c. So that if we receive anything as indifferent, for this
respect, because the church judgeth it to be so, then shall we receive
everything for indifferent which the church shall so judge of.

_Sect._ 10. 3d. The church is forbidden to add anything