I wyll vse an example in one, and that the chiefe of holydayes, and most generally, & of longest tyme obserued in the Churche, which is the feaste of Easter, whiche was kept of some more dayes, of some fewer. Howe many thousandes are there, I wyll not saye of the ignoraunt Papistes, but of those also which professe the Gospell, which when they haue celebrated those dayes with diligent heede taken vnto theyr lyfe, and with some earnest deuotion in praying and hearing the worde of God, do not by and by thynke that they haue well celebrated the feaste of Easter, and yet haue they thus notably deceyued them selues. For Saint Paule teacheth the celebratyng of the feaste of the* 1.1 Christians Easter, is not as the Iewes Easter was, for certayne dayes, but sheweth that wee must keepe this feaste all the dayes of our lyfe, in the vnleauened bread of sinceritie and of truthe, by which we see that the obseruing of the feaste of Easter for certayne dayes in the yeare, doth pul out of our myndes or euer wee bee aware, the doctrine of the Gospell, and causeth vs to reste in that neare consyderation of our duties for the space of a fewe dayes, whiche shoulde bee extended to all our lyfe.
What? do you condemne the feast of Easter also? would you haue it abrogated* 1.2 bicause it hath bene abused? do you not knowe that the Apostles them selues obser∣ued it, and the Churche euer sithence their tyme? reade Eusebius lib. 5. cap. 23. and you shall finde it to be a tradition of the Apostles: per vse the. 24. and 25. chapter of the same* 1.3 booke, & you shall vnderstand by the testimony of Polycrates, & all the other byshops in Asia, that Philip the Apostle, Iohn the Euangelist, Polycarpus his scholler, & other by∣shops likewyse of greatest antiquitie, kept solēly the feast of Easter. But why should I labour to proue that, that all histories, all aunciēt fathers, al late wryters, al learned men confesse? and especially séeing that S. Augustine ad Ianu. 119. sayeth that the ob∣seruation