I have answered already, that their fasting and praying are not to be referred to the days of Purim, which were memorials of their delivery, but to the time past, when, by the means of fasting and prayer, they did impetrate their delivery, before ever the days of Purim were heard of, and as touching alms, it can make no holiday, because much alms may be, and hath been given upon days of civil joy and solemnity. If the Bishop help not himself with his sixth reason, he is like to come off with no great credit. May we then know what that is? Lastly, saith he, as a holiday the Jews ever kept it,—have a peculiar set service for it in their _Seders_, set psalms to sing, set lessons to read, set prayers to say, good and godly all,—none but as they have used from all antiquity. _Ans._ 1. The Bishop could not have made this word good, that the Jews did ever and from all antiquity keep the days of Purim in this fashion. 2. This manner of holding that feast, whensoever it began, had no warrant from the first institution, but was (as many other things) taken up by the Jews in after ages, and so the Bishop proveth not the point which he taketh in hand, namely, that the days spoken of in this text were enacted or appointed to be kept as holidays. 3. The service which the Jews in latter times use upon the days of Purim is not much to be regarded. For as Godwin noteth out of Hospinian,(847) they read the history of Esther in their synagogues, and so often as they hear mention of Haman, they do with their fists and hammers beat upon the benches and boards, as if they did knock upon Haman’s head. When thus they have behaved themselves, in the very time of their liturgy, like furious and drunken people, the rest of the day they pass over in outrageous revelling. And here I take leave of the Bishop. _Sect._ 10. Thirdly, We say, whether the days of Purim were instituted to be holidays or not, yet there was some more than ordinary warrant for them, because Mordecai, by whose advice and direction they were appointed to be kept, was a prophet by the instinct and revelation of the Spirit, Esth. iv. 13. _Non multum fortasse aberraverimus_, saith Hospinian,(848) _si dicamus hoc à Mordochcæo et Hesthera, ex peculiari Spiritus Sancti instinctu factum_. Bishop Lindsey believeth(849) that they had only a general warrant, such as the church hath still, to put order to the circumstances belonging to God’s worship, and all his reason is, because if the Jews had received any other particular warrant, the sacred story should not have passed it over in silence. _Ans._ Thus much we understand from the sacred story, that the Jews had the direction of a prophet for the days of Purim; and that was a warrant more than ordinary, because prophets were the extraordinary ministers of God.