it be as possible for God to be a humble bee or a gourd, as a man?  Whether he can produce respect without a foundation or term, make a whore a virgin? fetch Trajan’s soul from hell, and how? with a rabble of questions about hell-fire:  whether it be a greater sin to kill a man, or to clout shoes upon a Sunday? whether God can make another God like unto himself?  Such, saith Kemnisius, are most of your schoolmen, (mere alchemists) 200 commentators on Peter Lambard; (Pitsius catal. scriptorum Anglic. reckons up 180 English commentators alone, on the matter of the sentences), Scotists, Thomists, Reals, Nominals, &c., and so perhaps that of St. [6582]Austin may be verified. Indocti rapiunt coelum, docti interim descendunt ad infernum. Thus they continued in such error, blindness, decrees, sophisms, superstitions; idle ceremonies and traditions were the sum of their new-coined holiness and religion, and by these knaveries and stratagems they were able to involve multitudes, to deceive the most sanctified souls, and, if it were possible, the very elect.  In the mean time the true Church, as wine and water mixed, lay hid and obscure to speak of, till Luther’s time, who began upon a sudden to defecate, and as another sun to drive away those foggy mists of superstition, to restore it to that purity of the primitive Church.  And after him many good and godly men, divine spirits, have done their endeavours, and still do.

[6583] “And what their ignorance esteem’d so holy,
        Our wiser ages do account as folly.”

But see the devil, that will never suffer the Church to be quiet or at rest:  no garden so well tilled but some noxious weeds grow up in it, no wheat but it hath some tares:  we have a mad giddy company of precisians, schismatics, and some heretics, even, in our own bosoms in another extreme. [6584]_Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt_; that out of too much zeal in opposition to Antichrist, human traditions, those Romish rites and superstitions, will quite demolish all, they will admit of no ceremonies at all, no fasting days, no cross in baptism, kneeling at communion, no church music, &c., no bishops’ courts, no church government, rail at all our church discipline, will not hold their tongues, and all for the peace of thee, O Sion!  No, not so much as degrees some of them will tolerate, or universities, all human learning, (’tis cloaca diaboli) hoods, habits, cap and surplice, such as are things indifferent in themselves, and wholly for ornament, decency, or distinction’s sake, they abhor, hate, and snuff at, as a stone-horse when he meets a bear:  they make matters of conscience of them, and will rather forsake their livings than subscribe to them.  They will admit of no holidays, or honest recreations, as of hawking, hunting, &c., no churches, no bells some of them, because papists use them; no discipline, no ceremonies but what they invent themselves; no interpretations of ’scriptures,