The second part of The nonconformists plea for peace being an account of their…

To prepare the figure of the Crucifix and to buy an Image to describe the Sacrifice of the Cross— are things to no purpose, not only for the levity and theatrical gaieties and representments unbefitting the gravity and purity and spirituality of the Christian religion, but also the manner of teaching these truths by symbolical things and actions, is too low, too suspicious, too dangerous to be mingled with the Divine Liturgies —A Symbolical rite of humane invention to signify what it does not effect, and then introduced into the solemn worship of God, is so like those vain imaginations and representments forbidden in the second Commandment, that the very suspicion is more against edification, than their use can pretend to.—

To prepare the figure of the Crucifix and to buy an Image to describe the Sacrifice of the Cross— are things to no purpose, not only for the levity and theatrical gaieties and representments unbefitting the gravity and purity and spirituality of the Christian religion, but also the manner of teaching these truths by symbolical things and actions, is too low, too suspicious, too dangerous to be mingled with the Divine Liturgies —A Symbolical rite of humane invention to signifie what it does not effect, and then introduced into the solemn worship of God, is so like those vains imaginations and representments forbidden in the second Commandment, that the very suspicion is more against edification, than their use can pretend to.—

§. 30. p. 353. Nothing can oblige to a Divine faith but Divine authority, to which Councils can no more pretend for being General, than for being Provincial, and to which great Assemblies have no other title or pretence of promise than the private Congregations of the faithful, who though but two or three, shall be assisted by the Divine presence. But General Councils are so wholly of humane institution, that though by the dictate of right reason and natural wisdom they are to be convened, ⟨p. 104⟩^*yet to make them a formal Judicatory, and to give them a Legislative power or a dominion and Magistracy in faith, there are so many conditions required both to their indiction and convention, to their constitution and integrity, to their conduct and proceeding, to their conclusion and determination, that men are not to this day agreed about any one of them; and therefore they cannot be a legal Judicatory obliging any but them that do consent, and so oblige themselves.