De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. The Lutherans again mutter that the Christian people are oppressed by the observance of many ceremonies, and say that this is contrary to evangelical liberty.

For our Savior Jesus Christ did not think that the divine worship should be built up with so many ceremonies, but was content with a certain simple form of its celebration¹. Thus, since he himself instituted and established the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist before his disciples with no superfluous display of words or ceremonies, they say that we too ought to be content with his simplicity in the administration of this sacrament. Likewise², he wished the sacrament of Baptism to be carried out with a certain plain and simple arrangement of words; but we, by contrast, envelop it in many ceremonies and a great display of things and words. We have so enveloped everything that evangelical liberty has been diminished even in the use of all the sacred rites. These, indeed, are some of the provocations against the holy Roman Church³ which the inventors of this perverse doctrine stirred up after they had grown disgusted with spiritual things.

2. But in this slander about ceremonies they do not see that they are erasing and condemning not only the most holy customs of our Catholic Church, but also the long-standing observances of every people and every nation. For there is no nation that does not offer some worship to God with the greatest ceremonies it can. Who is so mad as not to think that outward worship ought to be offered to God, if he believes there is any God whose providence governs us? Those who strive to overthrow this divine worship set themselves against not only the Roman Church but the whole world. Yet the words of Augustine in his book to Januarius seem to support this error, into which some of the ancient heretics also fell.⁴ For he complains that certain people, to use his words, “oppress with servile burdens our very religion, which the mercy of God wished to be free, with the few and most manifest sacraments of its celebrations.” But we must understand this⁵: just as the end of divine law is that we be led to true knowledge and reverence of God Almighty, so the purpose of the ecclesiastical ruler in making laws ought to be that the majesty and clemency of God Most High dwell in human hearts, and that people render him some worship⁶ which gives evidence of their inward reverence. But how can we give evidence of inward worship and reverence unless we express it through some outward display? This, then, is the true and unquestionable reason for all the sacred⁷ ceremonies the Church observes: that the worship due to God be adorned in many ways⁸, and that the human mind, through the appearance and image of sensible things, rise to greater reverence and love of God Almighty. For the Roman Church has instituted no ceremony that is not endowed with some spiritual meaning.

3. The reason why these ceremonies, with which the Catholic Church is now adorned, were not established by our Savior Christ in his laws is that, as we showed above, only those things had to be laid down in the New Law—which we said consists above all in the grace of the Holy Spirit—that either provide a way to obtain grace or make proper use of grace possible. Therefore, since we obtain grace through the reception of the sacraments, while the good use of grace consists in works of charity, our lawgiver Jesus Christ had to ordain the sacraments and give precepts concerning the love of charity; he had no need to address ceremonies, since they are necessary neither for obtaining grace nor for its good use. They therefore had to be left to human judgment, so that those who would govern the Christian Church might define matters pertaining to divine worship according to the devotion of the faithful and the needs of the times. As a result, the Church's ceremonies were not all instituted at one and the same time, but grew up successively in accordance with the will of the Pontiffs and holy Fathers. God Most High can never be praised and worshiped enough for the excellence of his majesty.⁹¹⁰ Moreover, it seems highly reasonable that many rites and ceremonies were instituted and handed down by the Apostles. For Dionysius the Areopagite, the disciple of Paul,¹¹ mentions many things observed in the sacrament of Baptism, many that adorn the consecrations of priests and ministers, and many that must be performed in our other sacred rites.¹² The words of Augustine, however, are not contrary to our rites and ceremonies.¹³ For he does not condemn those introduced by Pontiffs, Councils, or the custom of the ancient Church,¹⁴¹⁵ but reasonably condemns certain vain and irrational ceremonies that each little priest wanted to introduce at his own discretion, out of a sort of indiscriminate devotion.