And his father refused, and said, I know [it], my son, I know [it]: he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.
Ver. 19. And his father refused, and said.] Here are father and son divided in matter of ceremony, as Bishop Babington observeth. This hath been an ancient quarrel, from the very cradle of the Christian Church. The Jewish converts stood hard for a mixture of Christ and Moses. Their rites they called "the rudiments of the world"; Col 2:8 because they held them as needful as the four elements of the world; or as the first letters of the book, to school God's people. Soon after, what a dispute was there among the primitive Christians, even unto blows and bloodshed, about the time of keeping Easter, and other like trifles and niceties! St Augustine complains, that in his time the Church, which the mercy of God would have to be at liberty, was woefully oppressed with many burdens and bondages this way; so that the condition of the Jews was in this respect more tolerable, for that they were held under by legal injunctions, and not by human presumptions. a What would this father have said to the following times, under the rise and reign of Antichrist? wherein the formality of God's worship had utterly eaten up the reality of it, as Pharaoh's lean kine did the fatter; and gotten out the very heart of it, as the ivy dealeth by the oak it grows on. Our heroic reformers, Luther, Zuinglius, &c., pruned and pared off these luxuriances for the most part; which caused John Hunt, a Roman Catholic, in his humble appeal to King James, thus to blaspheme: - The God of the Protestants is the most uncivil and ill-mannered God of all those who have borne the name of gods upon the earth; yea, worse than Pan, god of the clowns, which can endure no ceremonies, nor good manners at all. b But yet, what a grievous stir was there, about these indifferents, between Luther and Carolostadius, at Wittenberg; between the doctors of Magdeburg and Leipsic, Anno Dom. 1549; c and between Calvin d and his auditors of Geneva, about wafer cakes at the communion; insomuch as he was compelled to depart the city till he had yielded they should be used, though he never liked them, but could have wished it otherwise. Who knows not what jars and heart burnings were here between Ridley and Hooper, two godly bishops, in King Edward VI's time, about cap and surplice. They could never agree till they met in prison; and then misery bred unity; then they could heartily bewail their former dissensions about matters of no more moment. Peter Martyr commends it to the care of Queen Elizabeth, e that church governors endeavour not to carry the gospel into England upon the cart of needless ceremonies. By his advice, among others, in King Edward VI's days, some people contending for one image, some for another, the king took down all those Balaam's blocks. And the very self-same day and hour wherein the Reformation enjoined by Parliament was put ia execution at London by burning of idolatrous images, the English put to flight their enemies in Musselburgh field, as Mr Fox hath well observed. f
a Queritur Aug. suo tempore Ecclesiam, quam misericormdia Dei esse liberam voluit & c. - Pareus, in Matthew 15:2 .
b Dr Sheldon's Mark of the Beast., ep. ded. Scultet. Annul.
c Alsted., Chron., p. 550.
d Beza, in Vita.
e Epist. 36, ad Reg. Elizabeth.
f Act. and Mon.