_Ans._ Our refusal to conform to inconvenient ceremonies being a necessary duty, if the magistrate be provoked therewith, we are blameless; neither can it any otherwise provoke him to disgrace those well-deserving ministers, than Moses’ seeking of liberty for Israel to go and serve God according to his will, provoked Pharaoh the more to oppress them; or than Christ’s preaching of the truth, and his abstaining from the superstitious ceremonies of the Pharisees, provoked them to disgrace him, and plot his hurt. Howbeit we are not ignorant that the magistrate is not provoked by our refusing to conform, except as it is misreported, misdeemed, and misconstructed to him by the false calumnies of our adversaries, which being so, he is not incited by our deed, but by theirs. _Sect._ 5. Now, _Sixthly_, saith Mr Sprint, it unjustly condemneth the harmony of all true churches that ever were primitive and reformed, and all sound teachers of all times and places, whose universal doctrine it hath been, that conformity to inconvenient ceremonies is necessary, in case of deprivation. _Ans._ That the ceremonies practised by the apostles and apostolic churches were not inconvenient, it hath been already showed; that since their times, sundry churches, both ancient and reformed, have practised inconvenient ceremonies, we deny not: yet Mr Sprint himself(250) will not defend all the practices of those churches, whose practice he allegeth against us. But that all sound teachers, of all times and places, have taught the necessity of conformity to inconvenient ceremonies, in case of deprivation, he neither doth, neither can make good; it is but a bare and a bold affirmation to deceive the minds of the simple. Did not the good old Waldenses,(251) notwithstanding of all the hot persecutions raised against them, constantly refuse to conform unto any of those ceremonies of the church of Rome, which they perceived to have no necessary use in religion, and to occasion superstition rather than to serve for edification? And we verily rejoice to be ranked with those Waldenses, of whom a popish historiographer speaketh thus:(252) _Alius in libris cathari dicuntur, quibus respondent qui hodie in Anglia puriorum doctrinam __ præ se ferunt_. Moreover, it cannot be unknown to such as are acquainted with the history of the Reformation, how that not Flacius Illiricus only, but many others,(253) among whom was Calvin,(254) and the Magdeburgian doctors,(255) and all the churches of Nether Saxony subject to Maurice,(256) opposed themselves to those inconvenient and hurtful ceremonies of the Interim, urged by the Adiaphorists. And howsoever they perceived many great and grievous dangers ensuing upon their refusing to conform to the same, yet they constantly refused, and many ministers suffered deprivation for their refusal.(257) Besides, do not our divines require, that the church’s canons, even in matters of rite, be “profitable