_Sect._ 12. Secondly, Our opposites answer us, that beside the purging of things and rites abused by idolaters from the idolatrous pollution, and the restoring of them to a right use, preaching and teaching against the superstition and abuse which hath followed upon them, is another means to avoid that harm which we fear to ensue upon the retaining of them. _Ans._ 1. This is upon as good ground pretended for the keeping of images in churches: _At inquiunt statim, docemus has imagines non esse adorandas. Quasi vero_, saith Zanchius,(544) _non idem olim fecerit diligentius Deus, per Mosen et prophetas, quam nos faciamus. Cur igitur etiam volebat tolli imagines omnes? quia non satis est verbo docere non esse faciendum malum; sed tollenda etiam sunt malorum offendicula, irritamenta, causœ, occasiones._ It is not enough, with the scribes and Pharisees, to teach out of Moses’ chair what the people should do, but all occasions, yea, appearances of evil, are to be taken out of their sight. _Efficacious enim et plus movent, quae in oculos quam quae in aures incidunt. Potuerat et Hezekias populum monere, ne serpentem adorarent, sed muluit confringere et penitus e conspectu auferre; et rectius fecit,_ saith one well to this purpose.(545) 2. Experience hath taught to how little purpose such admonitions do serve. Calvin,(546) writing to the Lord Protector of England of some popish ceremonies which did still remain in that church after the reformation of the same, desireth that they may be abolished, because of their former abuse, in time of Popery. _Quid enim_, saith he, _illae ceremoniae aliud fuerunt, quam totidem lenocinia quae miseras animas ad malum perducerent?_ &c. But because he saw that some might answer that which our Formalists answer now to us, and say, it were enough to warn and teach men that they abuse not these ceremonies, and that the abolishing of these ceremonies themselves were not necessary; therefore immediately he subjoineth these words: _Jam si de cautione agitur, monebuntur homines scilicet, ne ad illas nunc impingant, &c. Quis tamen non videt obdurari ipsos nihilominus, nihil ut infelici illa cautione obtineri possit._ Whereupon he concludes, that if such ceremonies were suffered to remain, this should be a means to nourish a greater hardness and confirmation in evil, and a veil drawn, so that the sincere doctrine which is propounded should not be admitted as it ought to be. In another epistle to Cranmer,(547) archbishop of Canterbury, he complaineth that external superstitions were so corrected in the church of England, _ut residui maneant innumeri surculi, qui assidue pullulent_. And what good, then, was done by their admonitions, whereby they did, in some sort, send the reviving twigs of old superstition, since forasmuch as they were not wholly eradicate, they did still shoot forth again? If a man should dig a pit by the way-side, for some commodity of his own, and thou admonish the