without hands, after his propitiatory sacrifice, offered up for the quick and the dead, and for all yet unborn, at Easter. And it was the tenth day; and this now is the tenth day since.” He hath told us also why there is not a certain day of the month appointed for Easter,(506) as there is for the nativity, namely, because the fast of Lent must end with that high feast, according to the prophecy of Zechariah. Wherefore I conclude, _aliquid mysterii alunt_, and so _aliquid monstri_ too. CHAPTER II. THAT THE CEREMONIES ARE UNLAWFUL BECAUSE THEY ARE MONUMENTS OF BY-PAST IDOLATRY, WHICH NOT BEING NECESSARY TO BE RETAINED, SHOULD BE UTTERLY ABOLISHED, BECAUSE OF THEIR IDOLATROUS ABUSES: ALL WHICH IS PARTICULARLY MADE GOOD OF KNEELING. _Sect._ 1. I have here proved the ceremonies to be superstitious; now I will prove them to be idolatrous. These are different arguments; for every idolatry is superstition, but every superstition is not idolatry, as is rightly by some distinguished.(507) As for the idolatry of the controverted ceremonies, I will prove that they are thrice idolatrous: 1. _Reductive_, because they are monuments of by-past idolatry; 2._Participative_, because they are badges of present idolatry; 3._Formaliter_, because they are idols themselves. First, then, they are idolatrous, because having been notoriously abused to idolatry heretofore, they are the detestable and accursed monuments, which give no small honour to the memory of that by-past idolatry which should lie buried in hell. Dr Burges(508) reckons for idolatrous all ceremonies devised and used in and to the honouring of an idol, whether properly or by interpretation such. “Of which sort (saith he) were all the ceremonies of the pagans, and not a few of the Papists.” If an opposite, writing against us, be forced to acknowledge this much, one may easily conjecture what enforcing reason we have to double out our point. The argument in hand I frame thus:— All things and rites which have been notoriously abused to idolatry, if they be not such as either God or nature hath made to be of a necessary use, should be utterly abolished and purged away from divine worship, in such sort that they may not be accounted nor used by us as sacred things or rites pertaining to the same. But the cross, surplice, kneeling in the act of receiving the communion, &c., are things and rites, &c., and are not such as either God or nature, &c. Therefore they should be utterly abolished, &c.