III. If you would not be drawn away after the error of the wicked, neither fall from your own stedfastness, the apostle Peter teacheth you, that ye must grow both in grace and knowledge, 2 Pet. iii. 18, for, if either your minds be darkened through want of knowledge, or your affections frozen through want of the love of God, then are you naked, and not guarded against the tentations of the time. Wherefore, as the perverters of the truth and simplicity of religion do daily multiply errors, so must you (shunning those shelves and quicksands of deceiving errors which witty make-bates design for you), labour daily for increase of knowledge, and as they to their errors in opinion do add the overplus of a licentious practice and lewd conversation, so must you (having so much the more ado to flee from their impiety), labour still for a greature measure of the lively work of sanctifying grace; in which respects Augustine saith well, that the adversaries of the truth do this good to the true members of the church, that the fall of those makes these to take better hold upon God.(13) IV. Be not deceived, to think that they who so eagerly press this course of conformity have any such end as God’s glory, or the good of his church and profit of religion. When a violent urger of the ceremonies pretendeth religious respects for his proceedings, it may be well answered in Hillary’s(14) words. _Subrepis nomine blandienti, occidis specie religionis_—Thou privily creepest in with an enticing title, thou killest with the pretence of religion, for, 1. It is most evidently true of these ceremonies, which our divines(15) say of the gestures and rites used in the mass, “They are all frivolous and hypocritical, stealing away true devotion from the heart, and making men to rest in the outward gestures of the body.” There is more sound religion among them who refuse, than among them who receive the same, even our enemies themselves being judges, the reason whereof let me give in the words of one of our opposites(16) _Supervacua hoec occupatio circa traditiones humanas, gignit semper ignorantiam et contemptum proeceptorum divinorum_—This needless business about human traditions doth ever beget the ignorance and contempt of divine commandments. 2. Where read we that the servants of God have at any time sought to advance religion by such hideous courses of stern violence, as are intended and assayed against us by those who press the ceremonies upon us? The jirking and nibbling of their unformal huggermugger cometh nearer to sycophancy than to sincerity, and is sibber to appeaching hostility than fraternal charity, for just so they deal with us as the Arians did with the catholics of old. _Sinceros_, &c.(17) “The sincere teachers of the churches they delated and accused before magistrates, as if they alone did continually perturb the church’s peace and tranquillity, and did only labour that the divided churches might never again piously