ip of God
than was to the Jewish, but because the Christian church was to spread
itself over the whole earth, and not to be confined within the bounds of
one nation as the synagogue was.

_Sect._ 12. Let us then here call to mind the distinction which hath been
showed betwixt religious ceremonies and moral circumstances; for as
touching moral circumstances, which serve for common order and decency in
the worship of God, they being so many and so alterable, that they could
not be particularly determined in Scripture, for all the different and
almost infinite cases which might occur, the Jewish synagogue had the same
power for determining things of this nature which the church of Christ now
hath. For the law did not define, but left to be defined by the synagogue,
the set hours for all public divine service,--when it should begin, how
long it should last, the order that should be kept in the reading and
expounding of the law, praying, singing, catechising, excommunicating,
censuring, absolving of delinquents, &c., the circumstances of the
celebration of marriage, of the education of youth in schools and
colleges, &c.

But as for ceremonies which are proper to God's holy worship, shall we say
that the fidelity of Christ, the Son, hath been less than the fidelity of
Moses, the servant? Heb. iii. 2, which were to be said, if Christ had not,
by as plain, plentiful, and particular directions and ordinances, provided
for all the necessities of the Christian church in the matter of religion,
as Moses for the Jewish; or if the least pin, and the meanest appurtenance
of the tabernacle, and all the service thereof, behooved to be ordered
according to the express commandment of God by the hand of Moses, how
shall we think, that in the rearing, framing, ordering, and beautifying of
the church, the house of the living God, he would have less honour and
prerogative given than to his own well-beloved Son, by whom he hath spoken
to us in these last days, and whom he hath commanded us to hear in all
things? Or that he will accept, at our hands, any sacred ceremony which
men have presumed to bring into his holy and pure worship, without the
appointment of his own word and will revealed unto us? Albeit the worship
of God and religion, in the church of the New Testament, be accompanied
without ceremonies, _numero paucissimis, observatione facillimis,
significatione proestantissimis_ (as Augustine speaketh of our
sacraments,(907)) yet we hav