_Sect._ 5. As touching those laws which forbade the Israelites to make round the corners of their heads, or to mar the corners of their beards, or to make any cuttings in their flesh, or to make any baldness between their eyes, Hooker answereth,(579) that the cutting round of the corners of the head, and the tearing off the tufts of the beard, howbeit they were in themselves indifferent, yet they are not indifferent being used as signs of immoderate and hopeless lamentation for the dead; in which sense it is, that the law forbiddeth them. To the same purpose saith Paybody,(580) that the Lord did not forbid his people to mar and abuse their heads and beards for the dead, because the heathen did so, but because the practice doth not agree to the faith and hope of a Christian, if the heathen had never used it. _Ans._ 1. How much surer and sounder is Calvin’s judgment,(581) _non aliud fuisse Dei consilium, quam ut interposito obstaculo populum suum a prophanis Gentibus dirimiret_? For albeit the cutting the hair be a thing in itself indifferent, yet because the Gentiles did use it superstitiously, therefore, saith Calvin, albeit it was _per se medium, Deus tamen noluit populo suo liberum esse, ut tanquam pueri discerent ex parvis rudimentis, se non aliter Deo fore gratos, nisi exteris et proeputiatis essent prorsus dissimiles, ac longissime abessent ab eorum exemplis, praesertim vero ritus omnes fugerent, quibus testata fuerit religio_. So that from this law it doth most manifestly appear, that we may not be like idolaters, no not in things which are in themselves indifferent, when we know they do use them superstitiously. 2. What warrant is there for this gloss, that the law forbiddeth the cutting round of the corners of the head, and the matting of the corners of the beard, to be used as signs of immoderate and hopeless lamentation for the dead, and that in no other sense they are forbidden? Albeit the cutting of the flesh may be expounded to proceed from immoderate grief, and to be a sign of hopeless lamentation; yet this cannot be said of rounding the hair, marring the beard, and making of baldness, which might have been used in moderate and hopeful lamentation, as well as our putting on of mourning apparel for the dead. The law saith nothing of the immoderate use of these things, but simply forbiddeth to round the head, or mar the beard for the dead; and that because this was one of the rites which the idolatrous and superstitious Gentiles did use, concerning whom the Lord commanded his people, that they should not do like them, because he had chosen them to be a holy and peculiar people, above all people upon the earth. So that the thing which was forbidden, if the Gentiles had not used it, should have been otherwise lawful enough to God’s people, as we have seen out of Calvin’s commentary.