Five disputations of church-government and worship

And God himself hath already appointed a day for the same purposes as these are pretended for. For the Lords Day is to commemorate the Resurrection, as the great Triumphant act of the Redeemer, implying all the rest of his works: so that though it be principally for the Resurrection, above any single work of Christ, yet also for all the work of Redemption: And the whole is on that day to be commemorated with holy Joy and Praise. Now when God himself hath set apart one day in every week to commemorate the whole work of Redemption, it seems an accusing of his Institutions of insufficiency, to come after him to mend them, and say we must have an anniversary day for this or that part of the work. 4. The fourth Commandment being one of the Decalogue, seems to be of so high a nature, that man is not to presume to make the like. Else why may we not turn the ten commandments into twenty or a hundred? But it seems a doing the same or of like nature to what God hath done in the fourth commandment, if any will make a necessary sta•ed holy day to the universal Church. 5. And it seems also that these Holy days (excepting Easter and Whitsuntide and other Lords days) are but of later introduction. Many passages of Antiquity ⟨p. 414⟩seem to intimate, that Christmas Day it self was not of many hundred years after Christ. I remember not any before Gregory N•zianzene that seem to speak of it. The allegations out of spurious authors, and that of later date, such as the counterfeit Clement, Dionysius, Cyprian, &c. are brought to deceive and not to convince. 6. Yea more, the time was a matter of controversy among the Churches of the East and West, for many •undred years after Christ▪ Epiphanius ▪ and the Churches of Judea and all those Eastern parts, took the sixth of January to be the day (see Casaubon's Exercitat ▪ on this, and Cloppenburgius more fully in Th•s. Chrysostom saith, it was but ten years before he wrote that Homily that the Church at Constantinople was persuaded by them at Rome to change their account of the day: And is it possible that, when for about four hundred years or more the Churches were utterly disagreed of the day, that it was then Commonly kept as an Holy day? The keeping o it would sure have kep a common knowledge of the day: Or at least, the difference of observation would have raised conention, as the difference about Easter did: