Note 556 — Chapter VII

This large view underlies the whole of the Ecclesiastical Polity. I can only afford room for a few extracts, which will be illustrations rather than proofs: the proof will be obvious to every competent reader of the work itself. ‘True it is, the ancienter the better ceremonies of religion are; howbeit not absolutely true and without exception; but true only so far forth as those different ages do agree in the state of those things for which, at the first, those rites, orders, and ceremonies were instituted.’ vol. i. p. 36. ‘We count those things perfect which want nothing requisite for the end whereto they were instituted.’ vol. i. p. 191. ‘Because when a thing doth cease to be available unto the end which gave it being, the continuance of it must then of necessity appear superfluous.’ And even of the laws of God, he boldly adds: ‘Notwithstanding the authority of their Maker, the mutability of that end for which they are made doth also make them changeable.’ vol. i. p. 236. ‘And therefore laws, though both ordained of God himself, and the end for which they were ordained continuing, may notwithstanding cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found unsufficient to attain unto that end.’ vol. i. p. 238. At p. 240: ‘I therefore conclude, that neither God's being Author of laws for government of his church, nor his committing them unto Scripture, is any reason sufficient wherefore all churches should for ever be bound to keep them without change.’ See, too, vol. iii. p. 169, on ‘the exigence of necessity.’ Compare pp. 182, 183, and vol. i. p. 323, vol. ii. pp. 273, 424. Not a vestige of such arguments can be found in Jewel; who, on the contrary, says (Apologia, p. 114), ‘Certè in religionem Dei nihil gravius dici potest, quàm si ea accusetur novitatis. Ut enim in Deo ipso, ita in ejus cultu nihil oportet esse novum.’