asion for divisions, He did not again
appoint more than one law or order for His entire people, and
that the holy mass. For, although baptism is also an external
ordinance, yet it takes place but once, and is not a practice of
the entire life, like the mass. Therefore, after baptism there is
to be no other external order for the service of God except the
mass. And where the mass is used, there is a true service, even
though there be no other form, with singing, playing,
bell-ringing, vestments, ornaments and postures; for everything
of this sort is an addition invented by men. When Christ Himself
first instituted this sacrament and held the first mass, there
were do patens, no chasuble, no singing, no pageantry, but only
thanksgiving to God, and the use of the sacrament. After this
same simplicity the Apostles and all Christians long time held
mass, until the divers forms and additions arose, by which the
Romans held mass one way, the Greeks another; and now it has
finally come to this, that the chief thing in the mass has become
unknown, and nothing is remembered except the additions of men.

[Sidenote: Christ's Institution and Man's Ordinances]

4. The nearer, now, our masses are to the first mass of Christ,
the better, without doubt, they are; and the farther from
Christ's mass, the more perilous. For that reason we may not
boast of ourselves, against the Russians or Greeks, that we alone
have a right to hold mass; as little as a priest who wears a red
chasuble may boast against him who wears one of white or black.
For such external additions and differences may by their
dissimilarity make sects and dissensions, but they can never make
the mass better. Although I neither wish nor am able to displace
or discard all such additions, still, because such pompous forms
are perilous, we must never permit ourselves to be led away by
them from the simple institution by Christ and from the right use
of the mass. And, indeed, the greatest and most useful art is to
know what really and properly belongs to the mass, and what is
added and foreign. For where there is no clear distinction, the
eyes and the heart are easily misled by such shamming into a
false impression and delusion; so that what men have invented is
reckoned the mass, and what the mass is, is never experienced, to
say nothing of deriving benefit from it. Thus, alas! it happens
in our times; for, I fear, every day more than a thousand masses
are said, of which p