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| Chapter IV.
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Chapter IV.
If, for these and other such rules, you insist
upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none.
Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom
as their strengthener, and faith as their observer. That reason will
support tradition, and custom, and faith, you will either yourself
perceive, or learn from some one who has. Meanwhile you will believe
that there is some reason to which submission is due. I add still one
case more, as it will be proper to show you how it was among the
ancients also. Among the Jews, so usual is it for their women to have
the head veiled, that they may thereby be recognised. I ask in this
instance for the law. I put the apostle aside. If Rebecca at once drew
down her veil, when in the distance she saw her betrothed, this modesty
of a mere private individual could not have made a law, or it will have
made it only for those who have the reason which she had. Let virgins
alone be veiled, and this when they are coming to be married, and not
till they have recognised their destined husband. If Susanna also, who
was subjected to unveiling on her trial,391
furnishes an argument for the veiling of women, I can say here also,
the veil was a voluntary thing. She had come accused, ashamed of the
disgrace she had brought on herself, properly concealing her beauty,
even because now she feared to please. But I should not suppose that,
when it was her aim to please, she took walks with a veil on in her
husband’s avenue. Grant, now, that she was always veiled. In this
particular case, too, or, in fact, in that of any other, I demand the
dress-law. If I nowhere find a law, it follows that tradition has
given the fashion in question to custom, to find subsequently (its
authorization in) the apostle’s sanction, from the true
interpretation of reason. This instances, therefore, will make it
sufficiently plain that you can vindicate the keeping of even unwritten
tradition established by custom; the proper witness for tradition when
demonstrated by long-continued observance.392
| 392 [Observe it must (1.) be
based on Apostolic grounds; (2.) must not be a novelty, but derived
from a time “to which the memory of men runneth not
contrary.”] | But
even in civil matters custom is accepted as law, when positive legal
enactment is wanting; and it is the same thing whether it depends on
writing or on reason, since reason is, in fact, the basis of law. But,
(you say), if reason is the ground of law, all will now henceforth have
to be counted law, whoever brings it forward, which shall have reason
as its ground.393
| 393 [I slightly amend the
translation to bring out the force of an objection to which our author
gives a Montanistic reply.] | Or do you think that
every believer is entitled to originate and establish a law, if only it
be such as is agreeable to God, as is helpful to discipline, as
promotes salvation, when the Lord says, “But why do you not even
of your own selves judge what is right?”394
And
not merely in regard to a judicial sentence, but in regard to every
decision in matters we are called on to consider, the apostle also
says, “If of anything you are ignorant, God shall reveal it unto
you;”395
he himself, too,
being accustomed to afford counsel though he had not the command of the
Lord, and to dictate of himself396
| 396 [See luminous remarks in
Kaye, pp. 371–373.] | as possessing the
Spirit of God who guides into all truth. Therefore his advice has, by
the warrant of divine reason, become equivalent to nothing less than a
divine command. Earnestly now inquire of this teacher,397
| 397 [This teacher, i.e.,
right reason, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. He is here
foisting in a plea for the “New Prophecy,” apparently, and
this is one of the most decided instances in the treatise.] | keeping intact your regard for tradition,
from whomsoever it originally sprang; nor have regard to the author,
but to the authority, and especially that of custom itself, which on
this very account we should revere, that we may not want an
interpreter; so that if reason too is God’s gift, you may then
learn, not whether custom has to be followed by you, but
why.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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