a passable proof and so satisfactory that our Author has nothing to except against it but by pretending its inconsistency with some other parts of my Discourse but for the present that is no Objection against the positive truth and direct reason of the Argument it self and in short 't is this All Rituals and Ceremonies and Postures and Manners of performing the outward Expressions of Devotion are not from their own nature capable of being parts of Religion and therefore unless we used and imposed them as such 't is lamentably precarious to charge their Determination with Will-Worship because that consists in making those things parts of Religion that God has not made so so that when the Church expresly declares against this use of them and professeth to injoin them only as meer circumstances of Religious VVorship 't is apparent that it cannot by imposing them make any Additions to the VVorship of God but only provides that what God has required be performed in a decent and orderly manner And this is the real difference between the Christian and Mosaick Ceremonies in that theirs were made lasting and necessary parts of their Religion by being establish't with the same impress of Divine Authority as the Duties of the Moral Law whereas ours are not any integral parts of Divine VVorship but purely accidental and alterable circumstances of Religious Services and so are not of the same standing Necessity and Obligation as were the Mosaick Rites but as they were first established by our Superiours according to the common Rules of decency and discretion so may they be reversed by the same Authority In a word they are of the same Nature and Obligation with all other matters of humane Laws that are only disposed of by the publick Wisdom as it shall by the common notices of things judge them most convenient to publick Ends. § 4. And now upon this Bottom we might fairly wind up this Controversie for I am secure this ever has been and ever will be its real Issue But our Author cries no no. For if this Principle should fail us there are yet other general Maxims which Non-conformists adhere unto and suppose not justly questionable which they can firmly stand and build upon in the management of their Plea as to all differences between me and them i. e. He is a resolved and incorrigible Schismatick and the plain design of these words is only to encourage the People to stand firm to their Principles what though we may be stormed out of our old Elsibeth-pretensions let us not immediately resign up our Colours and march out of our Cause we have when all is lost unknown retreats and fastnesses as all Banditi and Moss-Troopers have to secure our selves from perfect discovery and destruction This man is a Demetrius a Ring-leader in sedition and therefore it more peculiarly concerns him to bestir himself and keep the Mutineers together and raise and animate their fainting spirits against discouragements and despondencies The People may murmur among themselves Is this poor Pretence the only ground of all our Schisms and Disturbances Have our Leaders no greater grievance against the publick Laws than this lank and pitiful Story which themselves it seems dare not own without mincing and disguising it with their own shuffling and to us unintelligible Reservations Is this all the Popery and Idolatry of the Church of England against which they are still inveighing with so much Zeal and Bitterness at the Meetings Must all this noise and stir be made and the King and Parliament thus disturbed for this Neighbours let us be advised and not create all this needless trouble to our selves and others only to countenance their Pride and Peevishness The plain troth is their Zeal was so flush'd with success in the late Tumults as transported them to too much Outrage and Cruelty against the Church and now because forsooth they are ashamed to acknowledge their fault and folly for what disgrace so grievous to proud and self-opinionated men as to confess an Error we fools as we are must be inveigled and drawn in to bear out their Extravagances Come come this is the true Mystery of Separation For you may see they themselves whatever they pretend are not so fond as seriously to believe the Publick Worship Popish and Idolatrous Do we not know that the Chiefs of the Presbyterians came constantly to Church and to Common Prayer till of late and those that are more modest and peaceable do so still which 't is apparent they could never have done had they really deem'd it Idolatry How then shall we justifie our selves in running thus giddily into these wild and unwarrantable Schisms Does not common sense tell us though perhaps we understand nor their School subtilties that 't is a base and unworthy thing thus insolently to affront the Kings Laws when we may avoid it without breaking Gods And therefore seeing whatever Reasons they may have for their own Non-conformity we are satisfied by their own example they have none big enough to warrant our Separation Let us then resolve with one Consent to be peaceable and ingenuous and return every man to his own home and his own Parish-Church But bear back this great Chieftain appears for he is still upon all Occasions the most bold and forward Oratour to hearten his back-sliding Brethren against Doubts and Despondencies witness Ianuary 31. in the year 48. when those wretched Miscreants wanted some spiritual Comfort and Cordial against the horrour of their Yesterdays villany And thus he appears in this present streight and thus you may suppose him after Preface of solemn wink to bespeak the mutinous Churches My Friends do you consider what you attempt Do you know what dreadful and horrible things are still behind Alas False Worship Superstition Tyranny and Cruelty lye at the Bottom and when these have possessed the Governours of a Nation and wrapt in the consent of the greatest Part of the People who have been acquainted with the mind of God that People and Nation assure your selves without unpresidented Mercy is obnoxious to remediless Ruine If you think Babylon is confined to Rome and its open Idolatry you know nothing of Babylon or the new Ierusalem no no their darling Errors are stones of the old Babel closing and coupling with that tremendous Fabrick which the man of sin has erected to dethrone Jesus Christ. You may venture to taste if you please but remember who forewarned you there is death in the Episcopal Pot. But as for your own Parts let all the World know and let the House of England know this day that you lie unthankfully under as full a dispensation of mercy and grace as ever Nation in the World enjoyed well you will one day know what it is to undervalue the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ i. e. the seditious Preachings of I.O. Good Lord What would helpless Macedonians give for one of your Enjoyments O that Wales O that Ireland O
Superstition What mean those Flatteries and Congratulations wherewith they besprinkle their Followers as if they were the onely People that are acquainted with the Mysteries and Spiritualities of the Gospel What means their Confinement of the Preaching of the Covenant of Grace to their own Doctrines and their own Congregations What means their boasting of themselves as the onely powerful Soul-searching experimental and spiritual Preachers In brief what means their bestowing nothing but fair Words upon themselves and nothing but foul Language upon us Sure he cannot forget the Words of their own Party and who they were that were The Godly Professors Sion God's Jacobs the Israel of God God's Inheritance when we were Aegypt and Babylon Enemies of the Power of Godliness scoffing Edomites Men of the World Antichristian Apostates Idolaters and Followers of the Whore He certainly must needs be a very young Professor that is unacquainted with this Language But however what is all this to our Author He you may take his word is none of them But what is that to me Did I ever accuse him My design was to describe the Genius of the Party and not the Humour of every individual Professor But 't is the mis-fortune of indiscreet People to betray themselves by their own unnecessary Apologies and to cry Not guilty before they are indicted when their own Consciences Arraign and Convict them For our Author I perceive by sundry Passages and Notions in his Book is a Brother of the Independent Communion and therefore let him seeing he has put himself upon it produce me but one Writer of that Fraternity that is not notoriously guilty of this piece of Pride and Partiality I confess I am not very conversant in their Writings yet I have by chance read one of whom I am confident he has no very small Opinion that exceeds all the Scriblers I ever had the fortune to meet with or the leisure to peruse in these foul and malapert Censures and that is I. O. one of the great Patriarchs of the Congregational Churches All whose Pamphlets are little better then so many Libels against the Church of England and had we been down-right Miscreants or the most wretched Apâ—states in the World he could scarce have given us more unfriendly Language 'T is hard to dip into a Page of his Writings that is not embellish't with some or other of these decent and beautiful Expressions It was the peculiar way of his Sermons and Discourses to magnifie the Parliament-Reformation for a wonderful and providential Recovery of the departed Gospel to these Nations and to represent the design of that Holy War as begun and carried on by the Power and Procurement of the Lord Christ in order to the final Overthrow of the Episcopal Antichrist and the Restauration and Establishment of his own Kingdom He has publish't many excellent Sermons to this purpose such is that entituled A Vision of unchangeable Free Mercy in sending the Means of Grace to undeserving Sinners wherein Gods uncontroulable eternal Purpose in sending and continuing the Gospel by which they all along intend nothing else but their sweaty way of Preaching unto this Nation in the midst of Oppositions and Contingencies is discovered c. preached before the Honourable House of Commons April 29. 1646. Where beside the apparent scope of the Sermon it self he reckons up three Departures of the Gospel from England That by the Saxon Conquest that by the Roman Harlot and that in our days by an almost universal treacherous Apostacy from the Purity of Worship from which the Free Grace and good Pleasure of God has made a great Progress again towards a Recovery So that the Episcopal way of Worship is a perfect Apostacy from the Purity of the Gospel and had it been universal it had been total And again such is his Sermon Of the Branch of the Lord or the Beauty of Sion preached at Edinburgh 1650. where compiling a Catalogue of the Enemies of the House of God in all Ages he reckons up Pharaoh Nebuchadnezzar Dioclesian Iulian and the late Prelates whose Rochets he adds were for that Reason together with other Garments of their Adherents and the Imperial Robes of the forementioned Emperours roll'd up in Blood by the Divine Vengeance and hung up in Gods House as the Spoils of Gods Enemies And 't is no doubt no unpleasant reflection to his People to consider how willing and prodigal their gracious Father is to sacrifice Crowns and Mitres Kingdoms and Churches to the Interest and Plunder of his secret ones For so our Author stiles them I suppose because no body knows or suspects them to be Gods People beside themselves And in his Dedication to the Supreme Authority of the Nation the Commons Assembled in Parliament prefixed to his Sermon preached Octob. 24. 1651. being a Solemn Day of Thanksgiving for the Destruction of the Scots Army at Worcester with sundry other Mercies he tells his Patrons That as whatever there has been of Beauty Glory or Advantage unto the People of God in the late Transactions at Worcester hath been eminently of undeserved Grace so the dreadful Vengeance which the Lord hath executed against the Men of his Enmity and Warfare hath been most righteously procured by their clothing cursed designs of Revenge Persecution Bondage in Soul and Body Spoil and Rapine with the most glorious Pretences of Zeal Covenant and Reformation and such like things which never came into their Hearts Here the dear Brethren of the Presbytery as well as the Reprobate Cavaliers were Listed among the Enemies of the Cause and of the Church of God and now all People and all Parties in the three Kingdoms except onely the Army-Saints and their Adherents were become perfect Aegyptians And so they were upon this Account that the People of God had gain'd a certain Right to Rob and Plunder them by Divine Commission And here also you may observe that I.O. bold Man and God Almighty were always of the same side and the same Communion and whatever he was for was doubtless the Cause of God They were for Presbytery and Independency and Democracy together and never parted Counsels and Designs till the Lord grew weary of these right Godly Men and so was at length pleased to turn Cavalier And that upon good grounds for by this time his old Friends were become as bad or worse then his old Enemies For so the same Author informs us to mention but one place more though I omit as many as would make a Volume in a little Treatise of Temptation pag. 65 66. where giving an Account of the Temptations which in those days had even cast down the People of God from their Excellency and had cut their Locks and made them become like other Men he reckons in the first place the specious Pretence of Christian Liberty and Freedom from a Bondage-frame at which door sundry had gone out into Sensuality and Apostacy into a neglect of Sabbaths Publick and Private
that alone was enough to pass it for the work of the Lord and the Rabble imagined they were acting over again all the Wars and Battels of the Old Testament and pouring out all the Vials and fulfilling all the Prophesies of the New Beside Faith supports it self and engages Providence by chewing the Cud upon its own blessings as well as those of former Ages David esteemed it very good Logick to argue from the victory God gave him over the Lion and Bear to a confidence of Victory over Goliah Make use then of your past mercies deliverances blessings with promised incomings carry them about you by Faith use them or they 'l grow rusty where is the God of Elijah Awake awake Oh Arm of the Lord. Let former Mercies be an Anchor of hope in time of present distresses Where is the God of Marstone-moor and the God of Naseby is an acceptable Expostulation in a gloomy day O what a Catalogue of Mercies has this Nation to plead by in time of trouble God came from Naseby and the holy One from the West Selah his Glory covered the Heavens and the Earth was full of his Praise He went forth in the North and in the East he did not with-hold his hand So that in this gloomy day of their Persecution they are forced to support themselves and their hopes by chewing the Cud upon their naseby-Naseby-mercies and their Marston-moore mercies till God shall be pleased to give them in some stores of fresh Providences For however he may at present counterfeit a total departure to punish their Apostasie and their want of Zeal in his Work yet he will not he cannot utterly forsake them Because he is engaged in point of honour What shall he do for his great Name yea so tender is the Lord herein of his Glory that when he hath been exceedingly provoked to remove men out of his Presence yet because they have been called by his Name and have visibly held forth a following after him he would not suffer them to be trodden down lest the Enemy should exalt themselves and say Where is now their God They shall not take from him the Honour of former deliveranceâ— and protections In such a Nation as this if the Lord now upon manifold provocations should give up Parliament People Army to calamity and ruine would not the glory of former Counsels successes deliverances be utterly lost Would not men say it was not the Lord but Chance that hapned to them And thus when Providence was once drawn in it was bound to go through unless it would either lose the glory of all its former exploits or what was more dishonourable confess it was over-reach'd as the Presbyterians were by the Independent Hypocrisie By this Artifice they drew on each other to the height and perfection of Villany because they were so far engaged that they could not possibly retreat either with honour or safety and therefore resolved to secure themselves in the death of the King suspecting lest if he should ever be restored to his Crown and Royal Authority they might be called to an After-reckoning according to that Maxim so much taught and practised in the School of Rebellion that when men have run themselves into unpardonable disorders there remains no way of doing better but by doing worse And in this Lesson they must needs instruct Providence now you are engaged there is no way for you to retire with honour and if you do not justifie your own Actings in our former wickednesses by proceeding with us to greater Impieties you do not only condemn them and your self but lose the honour of all the Margarets Fasts and Thanksgivings What a mean opinion must these prophane Enthusiasts have of the divine Understanding that imagined they could impose upon the Almighty by such thin and shallow Fetches § 6.3 The third Maxime of Faith is to believe that Providence is really and in good earnest for them though it is seemingly and in outward appearance against them Thus whilst themselves sate at the Helm it befriended them from all Points of the Compass and into whatsoever Corner it shifted it self it still favoured their designs and fill'd their sails with success and victory When Affairs succâ—eded to their wishes then Providence drove them on with a full Gale but when there hapned any cross or changeable Dispensation so far was it from hindring their Progress that it gave them the greater advantage of a side wind For as the same Author informs us I have heard that a full wind behind the Ship drives her not so fast forward as a side wind that seems almost as much against her as with her And the reason they say is because a full wind fills but some of her sails which keep it from the rest that they are empty when a side wind fills all her sails and sets her speedily forward So if the Lord should give us a full wind and continual Gale of Mercies it would fill but some of our sails but when he comes with a side wind a Dispensation that seems almost as much against us as for us then he fills all our sails takes up all our Affections making his works wide and broad enough to entertain them every one then are we carried freely and fully towards the Haven where we would be And thus for that is the Application the imprisonment of the Committee of Essex was but a side wind of Providence that drove them on with the greater speed to the taking of Colchester So that while their Faith was resolute in the Belief of this Principle it was not possible for Providence to shake them off by any Affronts or Indignities but they served it just as Horace was served by the importunate Fellow he describes Serm. lib. 1. Sat. 9. from whose irksom Impertinency he could neither by Art nor Violence redeem himself Did he divert to salute a Friend It was his Acquaintance Did he pretend a visit He was at leisure to wait upon him Did he counterfeit any business He had Interest to assist him And thus did they tease and persecute Providence which way soever it turn'd they still would follow no rebukes could dash their bold-faced Faith out of countenance though it beat them off with open Affronts they would still insinuate and fawn upon it and though it knock'd off their hands an hundred times and sent them away with bloudy fingers they would not let go their hold but they would cling about him by faith do what he can they will not be shifted off And let him vary his dispensations as oft as he will they are resolved to follow him with their Songs upon Sigionoth Songs upon Sigionoth What are they I remember I am under the Obligation of a Promise to unriddle their meaning and therefore to be short they are a sort of Pindarick Psalms not tied to the same Rhime or Measure but to be sung with variety of Notes and interchangeable Tunes Now I.
that France where shall I stop I would offend none but give me leave to say O that every I had almost said O that any Part of the World had such unparallel'd helps means of Grace as you who yet are so unworthy as scarce to acknowledg the Mercy The Lord break the pride of your Hearts before it break the staff of your Bread and the help of your Salvation But as for us Poor nothings the Ministers of the Lord Christ in the Work of the Gospel we can spend our sweat and our Lungs upon the barren and the parched corners of the Land upon those poor Gospelless Creatures that as yet sit in darkness and the shadow of death and have none to hold out the bread of life to their fainting souls Does not Wales cry and the North cry yea and the West cry come and help us But this it is though the sound of the Gospel pass through all your streets though your Villages enjoy them who preach Peace and bring glad tidings of good things so that neither you nor your Fathers nor your Fathers Fathers and this God knows is a serious truth ever saw the like before us Though Manna fall round about your Tents every day yet Manna is loathed as light bread no the Presence of Christ it seems is not Recompence for the loss of your Swine yes you had rather be again in Aegypt than hazard a Pilgrimage in the Wilderness You forsooth boggle at tumults and disorders poor ignorant souls how unacquainted are you with the methods and workings of Providence For why these are the only signs and symptoms of Reformation great works for God will cause great troubles among men And for the carrying on of the Interest of Christ and the Gospel God is resolved to work wonderful Providential Alterations in the Governments of the Earth what replied brave Martin Luther when it was objected to him that that could not be the cause of God that was the cause of so much desolation Ego nisi tumultus istos viderem Christum in mundo esse non crederem I tell you he who is the only Potentate will sooner or later shake all the Monarchies of the Western World All the Kings of the Earth have suck'd in invented and what it seems with him is coincident Idolatrous Worship from the Cup of Fornication held out to them by the Roman Whore Shew me seven of them that ever yet laboured sincerely to advance the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus and I dare boldly say Octavus quis fuerit nondum constat The whole Constitution of the Governments of the Nations is cemented from top to bottom with the Interest of Antichrist and nothing but a thorough shaking can ever cleanse them And to this end has the Lord been pleased in his good Providence to hold forth a new light to his People of this Generation whereby they might discover the Mystery of Civil and Ecclesiastical Tyranny And you are called forth to punish Tyrants break the Jaws of Oppressours and disappoint the designs of Bloudy and Revengeful Persecutours and to roll up the Heavens of the Nations like a Scroll and to serve him in your several Capacities in the high places of Armageddon Does not the Lord think you require that in the great things which he has to accomplish in this Generation all his should close with him And what that is I have often and long since informed you out of his own Word and would you have greater Assurance Read the Prophet Isaiah 23.9 Verily the Lord of Hosts hath purposed to pollute the pride of all Glory and to bring into Contempt all the honourable of the Earth Now does God call forth his Saints to execute vengeance upon the Heathen and punishments upon the People to bind their Kings with chains and their Nobles with fetters of Iron Does he bring you forth to burn the Whore to fight with the Beast and overcome him with his Followers And will he not give glorious Assistances to your Undertakings I tell you you shall be assisted protected carried on though it cost him the making his Bow quite naked What though some prove false and treacherous some base and cowardly What though men every where combine and associate themselves against you What though whole Kingdoms and mighty Armies appear for your ruine help you need and help you shall have or I tell you once again God will make his Bow quite naked He will put on the Garments of vengeance for cloathing and cover himself with Zeal as a Cloak and according to their deeds accordingly he will repay them fury to his Adversaries Recompence to his Enemies to the Island he will repay Recompence Isa. 59.18 And though all other means should fail of success 't is in your Power to pray and believe the Beast into destruction Antichrist into the Pit and Magog to ruine Do but believe that the Enemies of Jesus Christ shall be made his Footstool that the Nations shall be his Inheritance that he shall reign gloriously in beauty that he shall smite in pieces the heads over divers Nations and live in the Faith of these things and as it will give you the sweetness of them before they come so it will hasten their coming beyond the endeavours of thousands yea Millions of Armed men But my Brethren if there be any of you here that do not only refuse to come forth to help the Lord against the Mighty but that entertain thoughts to give up the Worship of God to Superstition his Churches to Tyranny and the Doctrine of the Gospel to Episcopal Corruptions Let him give glory to God and repent speedily and passionately otherwise it will be Bitterness in the end it will it will And therefore as you tender the salvation of your poor souls and the continuance of the Gospel to your Families and Posterity not one syllable more of this Tumultuatingness of spirit against the Prophets of the Lord and so every man to his Tents O Israel § 5. Sir have you not read how that when discontent had shatter'd the Roman Legions into Mutiny and Sedition and that the Excesses of Outrage and Insolence like the violence of a resistless Torrent had broken down all the Banks of Government and Discipline amongst them yet at the presence of a Scipio or Fabricius they did immediately retire into place and order His look charm'd them into Obedience and with a Nod he awed away Confusion they that never dreaded Kings trembled at his voice that was more affrightful than assured death His Authority with three syllables stifled Sedition disarm'd and confounded the guilty and they could endure any thing rather than his frown and his displeasure And thus is all the noise and tumult of the discontented Churches hush'd into peace and order this great Commander looks the murmur of the People into silence and obedience and the Winds and Seas obey his Voice He can raise or allay storms and seditions with the breath of his
be brief all the dreadful Prophesies of St. Iohn are not to be appeased till the Princes of Christendom shall be pleased to agree in the Ius Divinum of Independency In the next following Section I demand why forsooth this Proposition must be limited to matters of Religion only And why the Scripture ought not to be esteemed as perfect a Rule of Civil as of Ecclesiastical Polity and why not as complete a System of Ethicks as a Canon of Worship So that if I should require any other Reason of this Limitation beside their own humour it is not in its own nature capable of any other account but what is given by the Scriptures themselves and therefore unless they can shew us where they expresly limit this Doctrine to matters of Worship the very Pretence disproves and condemns it self But our Author instead of standing to this Appeal and satisfying my demands by Determinations out of the Word of God endeavours to account for this difference by the meer Reason of things themselves which though it were true is yet coarsly impertinent seeing the Principle it self disclaims any other proof or Confirmation but what relies upon express Testimony of Scripture And yet 't is as false as 't is impertinent for 't is in many words to this purpose That matters of Civil Government relate to the Conveniences of this Life and so are capable of being varied according to the Circumstances of things and Rules of prudence whereas the things that appertain to the Worship of God have another reference to the pleasing of God and the purchase of Eternity and therefore are stated by him in all particulars and not at all left to prudential Accommodations This little subterfuge you know I have already stopt and though I had not it is obvious at the first glance of a reflecting thought that all matters Civil Moral and Religious have a common Relation to the Concerns both of our present and future state The Affairs of Religion may as they are managed be either useful or hurtful to the Conveniences of this Life and on the contrary our Civil and Political Interests have an unavoidable Reference to the Accounts of the Life to come and therefore to spare more words this can make no difference between them as to the Jurisdiction of Earthly Powers § 10. In the next Paragraph I endeavoured to represent how this delicacy and coyness of Conscience must engage men to remonstrate to the Institutions of all Churches that either were are or shall be in the World And here I instanced in some Customs both of the Jewish and the Primitive Christian Churches of old and of late in those of the Lutheran and Calvinian Communion and more particularly in some of the Rites and Usages of the Long-Parliament Reformation But here he wisely winks at all the Instances I produced of things now in being for their notoreity of Fact is so certain and unquestionable that 't is impossible any Face should be varnish'd with Confidence enough to deny it with eyes open And then as for the Precedents I alledged out of the Records of Ancient times he turns them all off with one short and scornful glance What tell you me says he of the Feast of Purim was it not a Civil Observance Though 't is so infinitely certain it was a solemn day of Thanksgiving instituted by Mordecai for so eminent and unexpected a Deliverance of the Jewish Nation from that general Massacre that was so bloudily plotted and so fiercely prosecuted by Haman and his Accomplices And for this reason was it attended as all their other Festivals of Joy ever were and ours ought to be with bounty and charity to the Poor But if he will not allow the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the Month Adar to have been Religious Feasts 't is to be feared he will in time proceed to deny that the twenty fourth of October in the year 1651. was observed with Holy-day Respect and Religion though it be marked out in some bodies Calendar as a solemn day of Thanksgiving for the destruction of the Scots Army at Worcester and the Providential deliverance of these Nations from their Civil and Ecclesiastical Bondage and from a Tyrant full of Revenge and a Discipline full of Persecution with sundry other Mercies In the next place what do I twit him with the Feasts of the Dedication and the Fasts of the Captivity when I have no proof of their being approved But gentle Sir had they been such bold and unwarrantable Encroachments upon the divine Prerogative as you pretend it can scarce be imagined but that God would sometime or other have protested against them as he often did against all their other Obliquities and misdemeanours so that their not being expresly scorn'd and rejected is of it self a just and safe Presumption of their Acceptance And yet however as for the first Feast of the Dedication of the Altar instituted and observed by Solomon there is the same evidence of its being accepted as there is of the whole solemnity of consecrating the Temple for immediately after the end of this Ceremony which was the last part of this Princely and magnificent Performance God himself is pleased to declare to Solomon his full and entire Approbation of the whole duty And then as for the latter Feast of Dedication for rebuilding the Altar by Iudas and the Maccabees it was performed with extraordinary Gravity and Devotion and is represented by the Author of that History as a remarkable Instance of their Zeal and Piety And that is sufficient proof that the Jews themselves as strictly as they were tied up by the Mosaick Canon to prescript Forms had no such terrible Conceptions of the Sacrilegious Boldness of new occasional Solemnities and ceremonial Additions But those were Apocryphal Times and therefore not capable of the evidence of divine Testimony unless it were that our Saviour afterward sufficiently intimated he did not dislike the Institution by vouchsafing his Presence at the Solemnity which had it been such an unlawful observance he would never have done unless that he might take occasion to reprove it as he did all their other unwarrantable Traditions And as for the other Parallel Instance of the Fasts of the Captivity I see not how we can expect or desire a more express Allowance and Approbation than what the Almighty himself has been pleased to give us by his own immediate Inspiration Thus saith the Lord of Hosts the Fast of the fourth month and the Fast of the fifth and the fast of the seventh and the Fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Iudah Ioy and Gladness and chearful Feasts therefore love the Truth and Peace Where are reckoned up without any mark of difference three Fasts instituted upon emergent and occasional reasons together with one ordained and appointed by God himself and where also 't is promised if they would reform their Immoralities according to the