_Sect._ 1. Who can blame us for standing to the defence of our Christian liberty, which we ought to defend and pretend in _rebus quibusvis?_ saith Bucer.(64) Shall we bear the name of Christians, and yet make no great account of the liberty which hath been bought to us by the dearest drops of the precious blood of the Son of God? _Sumus empti_, saith Parcus:(65) _non igitur nostri juris ut nos mancipemus hominum servitio: id enim manifesta cum injuria redemptoris Christi fieret: sumus liberti Christi. Magistratui autem,_ saith Tilen,(66) _et ecclesioe proepositis, non nisi usque ad aras obtemperandum, neque ullum certamen aut periculum pro libertatis per Christum nobis partæ defensione defugiendum, siquidem mortem ipsius irritam fieri, Paulus asserit, si spiritualis servitutis jugo, nos implicari patiamur._ Gal. v. 1, “Let us stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and not be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” But that the urging of the ceremonies as necessary doth take away our Christian liberty, I will make it evident in four points. _Sect._ 2. First, They are imposed with a necessity of practice. Spotswood tells us,(67) that public constitutions must be obeyed, and that private men may not disobey them, and thus is our practice adstricted in the use of things which are not at all necessary, and acknowledged _gratis_ by the urgers to be indifferent, adstricted (I say) to one part without liberty to the other, and that by the mere authority of a human constitution, whereas Christian liberty gives us freedom both for the omission and for the observation of a thing indifferent, except some other reason do adstrict and restrain it than a bare human constitution. Chrysostome, speaking of such as are subject to bishops,(68) saith, _In potestate positum est obedire vel non._ Liberty in things indifferent,(69) saith Amandus Polanus, _est per quam Christiani sunt liberi in usu vel abstinentia rerum adiaphorarom._ Calvin, speaking of our liberty in things indifferent,(70) saith, We may _eas nunc usurpare nunc omittere indifferenter_, and places this liberty,(71) _tam in abstinendo quam in utendo._ It is marked of the rites of the ancient church,(72) that _liberae fuerunt horum rituum observationes in ecclesia._ And what meaneth the Apostle while he saith, “If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are to perish with the using,) after the commandments and doctrines of men?” Col. ii. 20-22. Surely he condemneth not only _humana decreta de ritibus_, but also subjection and obedience to such ordinances of men as take from us liberty of practice in the use of things indifferent,(73) obedience (I say) for conscience of their ordinances merely. What meaneth also that place, 1 Cor. vii. 23, “Be not ye the servants of men?” “It forbids us, (saith