laudable Practice

As we abhor the superstitious observation of festival days by the Papists, and detest all licentious and profane abuse thereof by the common sort of professors, so we think, that the inestimable benefits received from God by our Lord Jesus Christ, his birth, passion, resurrection, ascension, and sending down of the Holy Ghost, were commendably and godly remembered at certain particular days and times ... The Articles of Perth , adopted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1618, restored the observance of the great feasts of our redemption. The Second Helvetic Confession had said of these observances, "we approve of it highly". The opponents of the Articles of Perth, however, invoked the 1560 Book of Discipline , which dismissed these observances as feasts "that the Papists have invented". In particular, opponents viewed the observances as a binding of the conscience: imposed vpon the consciences of men without the expresse Commandement of Gods Word,...

As David Lindsay - Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - continues his defence of the Articles of Perth, in his 1621 account of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth in 1618 , he again emphasises that such matters of ceremony and practice are not  determined by Scripture. Contrary to those who attacked the Articles of Perth, and who exalted the previous ceremonial order of the 1560 Book of Discipline , Lindsay explicitly states that the provisions of the Articles were not "knowne verities": None of the affirmatiue voters approued the Articles for knowne verities; for when wee speake of knowne verities, we vnderstand the verities defined in Scripture, such as are the points of our faith, which no man ought to call in question: but that any man did giue his voice otherwise, then his iudgement led him, yee will hardly perswade vs, much lesse, that any man would openly professe this. This, as Lindsay has previously demonstrated , re...