sting, purity amid pleasures,
so is justification by faith imperilled among ceremonies. Solomon says,
"Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?"
(Prov. vi. 27). And yet as we must live among riches, business, honours,
pleasures, feastings, so must we among ceremonies, that is among perils.
Just as infant boys have the greatest need of being cherished in the
bosoms and by the care of girls, that they may not die, and yet, when
they are grown, there is peril to their salvation in living among
girls, so inexperienced and fervid young men require to be kept in and
restrained by the barriers of ceremonies, even were they of iron, lest
their weak minds should rush headlong into vice. And yet it would be
death to them to persevere in believing that they can be justified
by these things. They must rather be taught that they have been thus
imprisoned, not with the purpose of their being justified or gaining
merit in this way, but in order that they might avoid wrong-doing, and
be more easily instructed in that righteousness which is by faith, a
thing which the headlong character of youth would not bear unless it
were put under restraint.

Hence in the Christian life ceremonies are to be no otherwise looked
upon than as builders and workmen look upon those preparations for
building or working which are not made with any view of being permanent
or anything in themselves, but only because without them there could be
no building and no work. When the structure is completed, they are laid
aside. Here you see that we do not contemn these preparations, but set
the highest value on them; a belief in them we do contemn, because no
one thinks that they constitute a real and permanent structure. If any
one were so manifestly out of his senses as to have no other object
in life but that of setting up these preparations with all possible
expense, diligence, and perseverance, while he never thought of the
structure itself, but pleased himself and made his boast of these
useless preparations and props, should we not all pity his madness and
think that, at the cost thus thrown away, some great building might have
been raised?

Thus, too, we do not contemn works and ceremonies--nay, we set the
highest value on them; but we contemn the belief in works, which no one
should consider to constitute true righteousness, as do those hypocrites
who employ and throw away their whole life in the pursuit of works, and
yet never att