_Sect._ 3. Before we go further, we will see what our opposites have said to those Scriptures which we allege. Hooker saith,(574) that the reason why God forbade his people Israel the use of such rites and customs as were among the Egyptians and the Canaanites, was not because it behoved his people to be framed of set purpose to an utter dissimilitude with those nations, but his meaning was to bar Israel from similitude with those nations in such things as were repugnant to his ordinances and laws. _Ans._ 1. Let it be so, he has said enough against himself. For we have the same reason to make us abstain from all the rites and customs of idolaters, that we may be barred from similitude with them in such things as are flatly repugnant to God’s word, because dissimilitude in ceremonies is a bar to stop similitude in substance, and, on the contrary, similitude in ceremonies openeth a way to similitude in greater substance. 2. His answer is but a begging of that which is in question, forasmuch as we allege those laws and prohibitions to prove that all the rites and customs of those nations were repugnant to the ordinances and laws of God, and that Israel was simply forbidden to use them. 3. Yet this was not a framing of Israel of set purpose to an utter dissimilitude with those nations, for Israel used food and raiment, sowing and reaping, sitting, standing, lying, walking, talking, trading, laws, government, &c., notwithstanding that the Egyptians and Canaanites used so. They were only forbidden to be like those nations in such unnecessary rites and customs as had neither institution from God nor nature, but were the inventions and devices of men only. In things and rites of this kind alone it is that we plead for dissimilitude with the idolatrous Papists; for the ceremonies in controversy are not only proved to be under the compass of such, but are, besides, made by the Papists badges and marks of their religion, as we shall see afterwards.