ist maintaineth
truly, that the craftsman cannot be lawfully commanded nor compelled to
leave his work and to go to public divine service, except on the day that
the Lord hath sanctified, he replieth,(176) "If he may be lawfully
commanded to cease from his labour during the time of divine service, he
may be as lawfully compelled to obey the command." Who can give these
words any sense, or see anything in them said against his antagonist's
position, except he be taken to say, that the craftsman may be both
commanded and compelled to leave his work and go to divine service on the
week-days appointed for the same? Nay, he laboureth to prove thus much out
of the ninth head of the _First Book of Discipline_, which saith, "In
great towns we think expedient, that every day there be either sermon or
common prayers," &c., where there is nothing of compulsion, or a forcing
command, only there is an exhortation. But ere the Bishop have said much,
he forgetteth himself, and tells us,(177) that it were against equity and
charity to adstrict the husbandman to leave his plough so oft as the days
of weekly preaching do return, but that, on the festival days, reason
would, that if he did not leave his plough willingly, by authority he
should be forced. Which place confirmeth this difference which we give
betwixt rest on the holidays, and rest at the times of weekly meeting.

CHAPTER VIII.

THAT FESTIVAL DAYS TAKE AWAY OUR CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, PROVED OUT OF THE
GOSPEL.

_Sect._ 1. My second argument whereby I prove that the imposing of the
observation of holidays doth bereave us of our liberty, I take out of two
places of the Apostle, the one, Gal. iv. 10, where he finds fault with the
Galatians for observing of days, and giveth them two reasons against them;
the one, ver. 3, They were a yoke of bondage which neither they nor their
fathers were able to bear; another, ver, 8, They were weak and beggarly
rudiments, not beseeming the Christian church, which is liberate from the
pedagogical instruction of the ceremonial law. The other place is Col. ii.
16, where the Apostle will have the Colossians not to suffer themselves to
be judged by any man in respect of an holiday, _i.e._ to be condemned for
not observing a holiday, for _judicare hic significat culpae reum
facere,_(178) and the meaning is, suffer not yourselves to be condemned by
those false apostles, or by any mortal man in the cause of meat, that