Looking in a northerly direction on Saint Matthias's Day

On this feast of Saint Matthias, a very simple but yet revealing comparison.

This is what the Second Helvetic Confession says of such observances:

we do not approve of feasts instituted for men and for saints. Holy days have to do with the first Table of the Law and belong to God alone. Finally, holy days which have been instituted for the saints and which we have abolished, have much that is absurd and useless, and are not to be tolerated.

Now contrast it with the Augsburg Confession:

Of Usages in the Church they teach that those ought to be observed which may be observed without sin, and which are profitable unto tranquillity and good order in the Church, as particular holy days, festivals, and the like.

The Book of Common Prayer - both in its 1559 and 1662 forms - is, quite clearly, following the Augsburg Confession rather than the Second Helvetic Confession. Not only does it make liturgical provision for observance of commemorations of the Saints, it also - in 1559 and 1662 - refers to them as "holy days". 1662 added a "Vigil or Eve" to many of these holy days.

We might also note how both the 1559 and 1662 Acts of Uniformity themselves reflect this liturgical commitment - following Augsburg, rejecting the Helvetic Confession - to the observance of Saints' Days. The 1559 Act required acceptance by "the feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist", that of 1662 by "the Feast of Saint Bartholomew".

Hooker's defence of the Prayer Book's provision of festival and holy days also echoes the reasoning of Augsburg:

Generally therefore touching feasts in the Church of Christ, they have that profitable use whereof St. Augustine speaketh: "By festival solemnities and set days we dedicate and sanctify to God the memory of his benefits, less unthankful forgetfulness thereof should creep upon us in course of time" (LEP V.70.8).

It is another example (alongside episcopacy, liturgy, and images) which should lead us to look in a northerly direction when seeking to define the character of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana, demonstrating how it and the Lutheran Churches of the northern kingdoms shared a reformed Catholicism: liturgical, sacramental, episcopal.

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