Five disputations of church-government and worship

CHAP. I. Distinctions and Propositions in order to the Decision.

§. 1. THE discussion of the Controversy about the Etymology of the word [Ceremony] is unnecessary to our ends, and would be more troublesome then useful. Whether it be derived ab oppido Caere, or à carendo, or à Caritate, or à Cerere, as several mens conjectures run, or rather as Scaliger and Martinius think, from Cerus, which in veteri lingua erat sanctus; it sufficeth us that it signifieth a sacred rite. Servius saith that all sacred things among the Greeks were called [Greek or Hebrew], and among the Latins Ceremoniae: But by Ceremonies we mean only external Rites or Orders in or about the worship of God. And by Humane, we mean such ⟨p. 396⟩as are devised and appointed to be used, by men, without any special Revelation from God, or any extraordinary inspiration of his Spirit, by which the institution might have been justly ascribed to God as the certain principal cause.

§. 1. THE discussion of the Controversie about the Etymologie of the word [Ceremony] is unnecessary to our ends, and would be more troublesome then usefull. Whether it be derived ab oppido Caere, or à carendo, or à Caritate, or à Cerere, as several mens conjectures run, or rather as Scaliger and Martinius think, from Cerus, which in veteri lingua erat sanctus; it sufficeth us that it signifieth a sacred rite. Servius saith that all sacred things among the Greeks were called 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, and among the Latines Ceremoniae: But by Ceremonies we mean only external Rites or Orders in or about the worship of God. And by Humane, we mean such ⟨p. 396⟩as are devised and appointed to be used, by men, without any special Revelation from God, or any extraordinary inspiration of his Spirit, by which the institution might have been justly ascribed to God as the certain principal cause.