The Institution of Christian Religion

But it is diligently to be •oted, that Christian liberty is in all the parts of it a spiritual thing, yt whole strength whereof consisteth in appeasing fearful consciences before God, if either they be unquieted or careful for the forgiveness of sins, or if they be pensive whether our imperfect works & defiled with the faults of our flesh do please God, or if they be troubled about the use of indifferent things. Wherefore they do wrongfully expound it, which either do make it a cloak for their own desires, that they may abuse the gifts of God to their own lust, or which do think that there is no liberty but that which is used before men, & therefore in using it have no regard of the weak brethren. In the first kind, men do at this day much offend. There is almost no man which may by his ability of wealth be sumptuous, which delighteth not in excessive gorgeousness in furniture of banquets, in apparel of body, in building of houses, which hath not a will to excel other in all kind of stateliness: which doth not marvellously flatter himself in his fineness. And all these things are defended under the pretence of Christian liberty. ⟨p. 211⟩They say that they are things indifferent: I grant, so that a man indifferently use them. But when they are to greedily coveted, when they are proudly boasted, when they are wastefully spent, it is certain that those things which otherwise were of themselves lawful, are by these faults defiled. This saying of Paul doth very well put difference between things indifferent: All things are clean to the clean: but to the defiled & unbelieving,¹ nothing is clean, because their mind & conscience is defiled. For why are accursed the rich men, they which have their comfort,² which are satisfied with meat, which do now laugh, which sleep in beds of ivory, which join land to land, whose banquets have lute, harp, tabor & wine? Verily both ivory, & gold, & richesse, are the good creatures of God, permitted yea & appointed by the providence of God for men to use. Neither is it any where forbidden either to laugh, or to be satisfied with meat, or to join new possessions to their own old possessions or of their ancestors, or to be delighted with musical melody, or to drink wine. This is true in deed.