Only the Lord can sanctify and set aside a day for purposes of worshipping Him. To think a day is more sacred than another, or that one of the 52 days a year the Lord has made holy and commanded to set aside for His worship is some way more holy because we decided it should be, is superstition and will worship.
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EPC on Superstition.
§5. 5. The ceremonies are not free of superstition, inasmuch as they give to God an external service, and grace-defacing worship, which he cares not for, and make fleshly observations to step into the room of God’s most spiritual worship. Augustine alleges that which is said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17[:21]), against superstitious persons who devote their primary concern to externals.1 The Christian worship ought to be in spirit, without the carnal ceremonies and rites, says one of our divines.2 Yea, the kingdom of God cometh not with splendor and worldly ostentation, so that a time or place can be noticed, says a papist.3 Carnal worship, therefore, and ceremonial observations, are (to say the least) superfluous in religion, and by consequence superstitious.
….
As of places, so of times, our opposites think most superstitiously. For of holy days Hooker says thus, No doubt as God’s extraordinary presence has hallowed and sanctified certain places, so they are his extraordinary works that have truly and worthily advanced certain times, for which cause they ought to be with all men that honor God more holy than other days.4 What is this but popish superstition? For just so the Rhemists think that the times and places of Christ’s nativity, passion, burial, resurrection, and ascension, were made holy;5 and just so Bellarmine holds, that Christ did consecrate the days of his nativity, passion, and resurrection, being born in that stable he consecrated it; dying, the cross; rising again, the tomb.6 Hooker has been of opinion, that the holy days were so advanced above other days, by God’s great and extraordinary work done upon them, that they should have been holier than other days, even albeit the church had not appointed them to be kept holy. Yet Bishop Lindsay would have us believe that they think them holy, only because of the church’s consecration of them to holy political uses.
1. Apud Aquinas, 2a 2æ quest. 93, art. 2. exterioribus principalem curam impendunt. [Cf. Augustine, De Vera Religione, PL 34.125, ¶4.]
2. John Rainold’s Confer. with J. Hart, cap. 8, divis. 4, p. 489 [1609 ed.].
3. Com. in Luke 17:20. cum apparatu aut pompa mundana, ita ut observari possit tempus vel locus. [Didacus Stella (Diego de Estella), In sanctum Jesu Christi evangelium secundum Lucam (1599) page 194.]
4. Eccl. Polity, lib. 5, sect. 69 [cf. Works (1821) 2.281].
5. Annot. on 1 Tim. 4:5 [Cartwright, Confutation, 559; sect. 10].
6. De Cult. Sanct., cap. 10. eo quod nascens consecrarit {præsepe, moriens crucem, resurgens, sepulchrum}. The bracketed text was omitted from 1993 edition. [Cf. Opera Omnia (1870) 3.304. Bellarmine: “Christus nascens consecrarit locum, id est, præsepe moriens consecravit crucem, resurgens consecravit tumulum….”]
From EPC, part three, chapter one, sections 5, 9.
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English Popish Ceremonies on ‘Holy Days’.
“The celebration of set anniversary days is no necessary mean for conserving the commemoration of the benefits of redemption, because we have occasion, not only every Sabbath day, but every other day, to call to mind these benefits, either in hearing, or reading, or meditating upon God’s word. I esteem and judge that the days consecrated to Christ must be lifted, says Danæus: Christ is born, is circumcised, dies, rises again for us every day in the preaching of the Gospel. George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies, Book 1, chapter 7, section 6.
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EPC on unauthorized sacred ceremonies.
“2. What can be answered to that which the Abridgement propounds touching this matter? It is much less lawful (say those ministers) for man to bring significant ceremonies into God’s worship now than it was under the law. For God has abrogated his own (not only such as prefigured Christ, but such also as served by their signification to teach moral duties), so as now (without great sin) none of them can be continued in the church, no, not for signification.1 Whereupon they infer: If those ceremonies which God himself ordained to teach his church by their signification may not now be used, much less may those which man has devised.2
“§6. Fourth, sacred significant ceremonies devised by man are to be reckoned among those images forbidden in the second commandment. Polanus says, that omnis figura illicita [every forbidden figure] is forbidden in the second commandment.3 The Professors of Leyden call it any image at all, whether conceived in the mind or made by the hand.”4
I have shown elsewhere,5 that both in the writings of the fathers, and of formalists themselves, sacraments get the name of images; and why, then, are not all significant and holy ceremonies to be accounted images? Now, the second commandment forbids images made by the lust of man (that I may use Dr. Burges’s phrase);6 therefore it forbids also all religious similitudes, which are homogeneal [congruous] unto them. This is the inference of the Abridgement….” (George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies, Part Three, Chapter Five, section 6, p. 230 in the forthcoming 2013 edition, D.V.).
-----------------
1. Ministers of the Lincoln Diocese, An Abridgement (1617) 43. [An Abridgment of that booke which the Ministers of Lincoln diocess delivered to his Majestie. Being the first of an apologye for themselves and their brethren that refuse the subscription, and conformitie which is required [W. Jones Secret Press, 1605]. Reprint, An Abridgement of that Booke which the Ministers of Lincolne Diocess deliuered to His Maiestie upon the First Of December 1605. Being The first part of An Apologie for themselves and their Brethren that refuse the Subscription and Conformitie which Is required. Leiden: 1617.
2. William Ames, Puritan divine (1576–1644), Fresh Suite, p. 266 [Amsterdam: 1633]. [Gillespie cites the Abridgement from William Ames’ Fresh Suit against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship.]
3. Syntagma Theol., lib. 6, cap. 10, p. 58, 59. [Amandus Polanus, German Reformed theologian (1561–1610). Cf. Syntagma Theologiae Christianae (Hanover, 1609), vol. 2, col. 2284A.
4. Synop. Pur. Theol., disp. 19, thes. 4. imaginem quamlibet, sive mente conceptam, sive manu effictam. [Divinity Professors at Leyden, Antonius Walæus (1573–1639), Andreas Rivetus (1572–1651), Antonius Thysius (1603–1665), John Polyander (1568–1646). Synopsis Purioris Theologiæ. Leyden: 1581. Cf. Edited by Herman Bavinck (Leiden: 1881) 163.]
5. Supra, cap. 4, sect. 9 [See English Popish Ceremonies (2013 forthcoming) 195.]
6. John Burges, Moderate/Conforming Puritan divine (1563–1635), Of the Lawfulness of Kneeling, p. 116 [sic page 115]. [This work is appended to An Answer Rejoined to that much applauded pamphlet A reply to Dr. Morton’s general defense of three nocent ceremonies (1631)].
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The Nassau Confession of 1578 on Monuments of Idolatry.
“It were much to be wished that suitable steps against this evil had been taken in the Protestant churches soon upon the initial purification of doctrine. And moreover, that the idolatrous images, which have been and still are one of the principal abominations under the Papacy, had been everywhere abolished by the Protestant estates for the recovery and preservation of the proper service of worship and for the possible prevention of various disgraces to the Christian religion and to its reputation…
“And even if all the people of this age had their eyes opened so widely that there would now be no more residue of offence or scandal on account of images, nevertheless all manner of injury could be sustained among their descendents no less than formerly as a result of the surviving idols.
“And even if this were not encountered, still it is right in itself. And, as has previously been often stated, it is commanded by God that one should do away with the monuments of idolatry or memorials by means of which great idolatry was being promoted a few years ago. And this accords with the approved example of Holy Scripture.
“For King Hezekiah broke up the brazen serpent after the children of Israel had burned incense to it, though Moses had made it at God’s command as a type of Christ, 2 Kgs. 18[:4]….”
The Nassau Confession of 1578, translated by R. Sherman Isbell, in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation Volume 3 1567-1599. Edited by James T. Dennison (RHB, 2012), under the head “The Christian Magistrate not only has the power to remove Idolatrous Images, but is obliged to do so on account of his office,” 531.
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The Bremer on Ceremonies (1595).
“II. Some ceremonies are devised and established by men are properly called adiaphora, that is, a thing neither evil nor good, or an act which is left free, or an ecclesiastical rule. … They do not take the place of the indispensable worship service, such as the use of the holy sacraments and the hearing of God’s Word. Rather, they are external ordinances of men and thus they serve only for a convenient performance of the worship service. Beyond this, no necessity should be placed in them for conscience sake, nor any confidence or special reverence or sanctity, for as soon as that occurs such ceremonies will be much too highly elevated above their ordinary allowed use and are made into an evident superstition….
5. Fifth and similarly, should the ceremonies ordained by men come to be regarded no longer as something left free, and if one makes them to be a service especially pleasing to God or wants to insist upon them as if they were necessary for conscience sake, or if one wants to persuade the people that it would be meritorious or an action by which one could obtain grace with God, reconciliation, the forgiveness of sins, or satisfaction from some transgression, then on that account and in such circumstances they should be entirely abolished. This should be done regardless of the preceding custom and regardless of its past beneficial use because by this time they have been so greatly altered that they henceforth are a thing repugnant to the truth and liberty of the gospel and rob Christ of His glory.
6. Sixth, if the ordinances of men in the church assume a form that, for the sake of similarity, is closer in these matters to the enemies of the truth than to the orthodox so that the weak are offended by this and kept in error and the enemies would become more stiff-necked, then it is best to remove them, in part to obviate offence and in part to avoid dangers either present or apprehended as future. When there is a form with fasts, days of the deceased saints, vestments, wafers, elevation, images and the like, these are nothing other than papal ensigns and the colors of his court. They should no more be retained than a respectable woman should be accustomed to going thoughtlessly clothed among immodest people or than soldiers should undertake to carry the ensigns of the enemy.”
“The Bremen Consensus (1695),” translated by R. Sherman Isbell, in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. (RHB, 2012) 700–701.
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Calvin on Removing Idolatrous Filth from the Church
“Similarly, what is alleged of an Italian writer, that abuse does not take away good use, will not be true if one holds to it without exception: because it is clearly commanded to us to prudently watch that we would not offend the infirm brothers by our example, and that we should never undertake what would be illicit. For Saint Paul prohibits offending the brothers in eating flesh that was sacrificed to idols [1 Cor. 10:28], and speaking to this particular issue he shows a general rule that we are to keep ourselves from troubling the consciences of the weak by a bad or damaging example. One might speak better and more wholesomely if he were to say that what God himself ordains may not be abolished for wrong use or abuse that is committed against it. But even here, it is necessary to abstain from these things if, by later human ordinance, they have become corrupt with error, and if their use is harmful or scandalizes the brothers.
“Here I marvel how this “Reformer,” after granting that superstitions sometimes have such strong popularity that it is necessary to remove from the realm of man those things once ordained by public authority (as we read of Hezekiah doing with the bronze serpent), finally does not consider even a little that his shrewdness is a horror to the ways of good action: as if in defending supportable rituals, he would oblige that all superstitions should be considered as safe and whole because they are weighty. For what is there in the papacy now that would not resemble the bronze serpent, even if it did not begin that way [Num. 21:9]? Moses had it made and forged by the commandment of God: he had it kept for a sign of recognition. Among the virtues of Hezekiah told to us is that he had it broken and reduced to ash [2 Kings 18:4]. The superstitions for the most part, against which true servants of God battle today, are spreading from here to who knows where as covered pits in the ground. They are filled with detestable errors that can never be erased unless their use is taken away. Why, therefore, do we not confess simply what is true, that this remedy is necessary for taking away filth from the church?” Cf. Raymond V. Bottomly, “Response to a Certain Tricky Middler” (Responsio Ad Versipellem Quendam Mediatorem, [French] “Response a Un Certain Moyenneur Rusé,”), The Confessional Presbyterian 8 (2012) 264.]
*****************
*****************
EPC on Superstition.
§5. 5. The ceremonies are not free of superstition, inasmuch as they give to God an external service, and grace-defacing worship, which he cares not for, and make fleshly observations to step into the room of God’s most spiritual worship. Augustine alleges that which is said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17[:21]), against superstitious persons who devote their primary concern to externals.1 The Christian worship ought to be in spirit, without the carnal ceremonies and rites, says one of our divines.2 Yea, the kingdom of God cometh not with splendor and worldly ostentation, so that a time or place can be noticed, says a papist.3 Carnal worship, therefore, and ceremonial observations, are (to say the least) superfluous in religion, and by consequence superstitious.
….
As of places, so of times, our opposites think most superstitiously. For of holy days Hooker says thus, No doubt as God’s extraordinary presence has hallowed and sanctified certain places, so they are his extraordinary works that have truly and worthily advanced certain times, for which cause they ought to be with all men that honor God more holy than other days.4 What is this but popish superstition? For just so the Rhemists think that the times and places of Christ’s nativity, passion, burial, resurrection, and ascension, were made holy;5 and just so Bellarmine holds, that Christ did consecrate the days of his nativity, passion, and resurrection, being born in that stable he consecrated it; dying, the cross; rising again, the tomb.6 Hooker has been of opinion, that the holy days were so advanced above other days, by God’s great and extraordinary work done upon them, that they should have been holier than other days, even albeit the church had not appointed them to be kept holy. Yet Bishop Lindsay would have us believe that they think them holy, only because of the church’s consecration of them to holy political uses.
1. Apud Aquinas, 2a 2æ quest. 93, art. 2. exterioribus principalem curam impendunt. [Cf. Augustine, De Vera Religione, PL 34.125, ¶4.]
2. John Rainold’s Confer. with J. Hart, cap. 8, divis. 4, p. 489 [1609 ed.].
3. Com. in Luke 17:20. cum apparatu aut pompa mundana, ita ut observari possit tempus vel locus. [Didacus Stella (Diego de Estella), In sanctum Jesu Christi evangelium secundum Lucam (1599) page 194.]
4. Eccl. Polity, lib. 5, sect. 69 [cf. Works (1821) 2.281].
5. Annot. on 1 Tim. 4:5 [Cartwright, Confutation, 559; sect. 10].
6. De Cult. Sanct., cap. 10. eo quod nascens consecrarit {præsepe, moriens crucem, resurgens, sepulchrum}. The bracketed text was omitted from 1993 edition. [Cf. Opera Omnia (1870) 3.304. Bellarmine: “Christus nascens consecrarit locum, id est, præsepe moriens consecravit crucem, resurgens consecravit tumulum….”]
From EPC, part three, chapter one, sections 5, 9.
*****************
English Popish Ceremonies on ‘Holy Days’.
“The celebration of set anniversary days is no necessary mean for conserving the commemoration of the benefits of redemption, because we have occasion, not only every Sabbath day, but every other day, to call to mind these benefits, either in hearing, or reading, or meditating upon God’s word. I esteem and judge that the days consecrated to Christ must be lifted, says Danæus: Christ is born, is circumcised, dies, rises again for us every day in the preaching of the Gospel. George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies, Book 1, chapter 7, section 6.
*****************
EPC on unauthorized sacred ceremonies.
“2. What can be answered to that which the Abridgement propounds touching this matter? It is much less lawful (say those ministers) for man to bring significant ceremonies into God’s worship now than it was under the law. For God has abrogated his own (not only such as prefigured Christ, but such also as served by their signification to teach moral duties), so as now (without great sin) none of them can be continued in the church, no, not for signification.1 Whereupon they infer: If those ceremonies which God himself ordained to teach his church by their signification may not now be used, much less may those which man has devised.2
“§6. Fourth, sacred significant ceremonies devised by man are to be reckoned among those images forbidden in the second commandment. Polanus says, that omnis figura illicita [every forbidden figure] is forbidden in the second commandment.3 The Professors of Leyden call it any image at all, whether conceived in the mind or made by the hand.”4
I have shown elsewhere,5 that both in the writings of the fathers, and of formalists themselves, sacraments get the name of images; and why, then, are not all significant and holy ceremonies to be accounted images? Now, the second commandment forbids images made by the lust of man (that I may use Dr. Burges’s phrase);6 therefore it forbids also all religious similitudes, which are homogeneal [congruous] unto them. This is the inference of the Abridgement….” (George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies, Part Three, Chapter Five, section 6, p. 230 in the forthcoming 2013 edition, D.V.).
-----------------
1. Ministers of the Lincoln Diocese, An Abridgement (1617) 43. [An Abridgment of that booke which the Ministers of Lincoln diocess delivered to his Majestie. Being the first of an apologye for themselves and their brethren that refuse the subscription, and conformitie which is required [W. Jones Secret Press, 1605]. Reprint, An Abridgement of that Booke which the Ministers of Lincolne Diocess deliuered to His Maiestie upon the First Of December 1605. Being The first part of An Apologie for themselves and their Brethren that refuse the Subscription and Conformitie which Is required. Leiden: 1617.
2. William Ames, Puritan divine (1576–1644), Fresh Suite, p. 266 [Amsterdam: 1633]. [Gillespie cites the Abridgement from William Ames’ Fresh Suit against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship.]
3. Syntagma Theol., lib. 6, cap. 10, p. 58, 59. [Amandus Polanus, German Reformed theologian (1561–1610). Cf. Syntagma Theologiae Christianae (Hanover, 1609), vol. 2, col. 2284A.
4. Synop. Pur. Theol., disp. 19, thes. 4. imaginem quamlibet, sive mente conceptam, sive manu effictam. [Divinity Professors at Leyden, Antonius Walæus (1573–1639), Andreas Rivetus (1572–1651), Antonius Thysius (1603–1665), John Polyander (1568–1646). Synopsis Purioris Theologiæ. Leyden: 1581. Cf. Edited by Herman Bavinck (Leiden: 1881) 163.]
5. Supra, cap. 4, sect. 9 [See English Popish Ceremonies (2013 forthcoming) 195.]
6. John Burges, Moderate/Conforming Puritan divine (1563–1635), Of the Lawfulness of Kneeling, p. 116 [sic page 115]. [This work is appended to An Answer Rejoined to that much applauded pamphlet A reply to Dr. Morton’s general defense of three nocent ceremonies (1631)].
*****************
The Nassau Confession of 1578 on Monuments of Idolatry.
“It were much to be wished that suitable steps against this evil had been taken in the Protestant churches soon upon the initial purification of doctrine. And moreover, that the idolatrous images, which have been and still are one of the principal abominations under the Papacy, had been everywhere abolished by the Protestant estates for the recovery and preservation of the proper service of worship and for the possible prevention of various disgraces to the Christian religion and to its reputation…
“And even if all the people of this age had their eyes opened so widely that there would now be no more residue of offence or scandal on account of images, nevertheless all manner of injury could be sustained among their descendents no less than formerly as a result of the surviving idols.
“And even if this were not encountered, still it is right in itself. And, as has previously been often stated, it is commanded by God that one should do away with the monuments of idolatry or memorials by means of which great idolatry was being promoted a few years ago. And this accords with the approved example of Holy Scripture.
“For King Hezekiah broke up the brazen serpent after the children of Israel had burned incense to it, though Moses had made it at God’s command as a type of Christ, 2 Kgs. 18[:4]….”
The Nassau Confession of 1578, translated by R. Sherman Isbell, in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation Volume 3 1567-1599. Edited by James T. Dennison (RHB, 2012), under the head “The Christian Magistrate not only has the power to remove Idolatrous Images, but is obliged to do so on account of his office,” 531.
*****************
The Bremer on Ceremonies (1595).
“II. Some ceremonies are devised and established by men are properly called adiaphora, that is, a thing neither evil nor good, or an act which is left free, or an ecclesiastical rule. … They do not take the place of the indispensable worship service, such as the use of the holy sacraments and the hearing of God’s Word. Rather, they are external ordinances of men and thus they serve only for a convenient performance of the worship service. Beyond this, no necessity should be placed in them for conscience sake, nor any confidence or special reverence or sanctity, for as soon as that occurs such ceremonies will be much too highly elevated above their ordinary allowed use and are made into an evident superstition….
5. Fifth and similarly, should the ceremonies ordained by men come to be regarded no longer as something left free, and if one makes them to be a service especially pleasing to God or wants to insist upon them as if they were necessary for conscience sake, or if one wants to persuade the people that it would be meritorious or an action by which one could obtain grace with God, reconciliation, the forgiveness of sins, or satisfaction from some transgression, then on that account and in such circumstances they should be entirely abolished. This should be done regardless of the preceding custom and regardless of its past beneficial use because by this time they have been so greatly altered that they henceforth are a thing repugnant to the truth and liberty of the gospel and rob Christ of His glory.
6. Sixth, if the ordinances of men in the church assume a form that, for the sake of similarity, is closer in these matters to the enemies of the truth than to the orthodox so that the weak are offended by this and kept in error and the enemies would become more stiff-necked, then it is best to remove them, in part to obviate offence and in part to avoid dangers either present or apprehended as future. When there is a form with fasts, days of the deceased saints, vestments, wafers, elevation, images and the like, these are nothing other than papal ensigns and the colors of his court. They should no more be retained than a respectable woman should be accustomed to going thoughtlessly clothed among immodest people or than soldiers should undertake to carry the ensigns of the enemy.”
“The Bremen Consensus (1695),” translated by R. Sherman Isbell, in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. (RHB, 2012) 700–701.
*****************
Calvin on Removing Idolatrous Filth from the Church
“Similarly, what is alleged of an Italian writer, that abuse does not take away good use, will not be true if one holds to it without exception: because it is clearly commanded to us to prudently watch that we would not offend the infirm brothers by our example, and that we should never undertake what would be illicit. For Saint Paul prohibits offending the brothers in eating flesh that was sacrificed to idols [1 Cor. 10:28], and speaking to this particular issue he shows a general rule that we are to keep ourselves from troubling the consciences of the weak by a bad or damaging example. One might speak better and more wholesomely if he were to say that what God himself ordains may not be abolished for wrong use or abuse that is committed against it. But even here, it is necessary to abstain from these things if, by later human ordinance, they have become corrupt with error, and if their use is harmful or scandalizes the brothers.
“Here I marvel how this “Reformer,” after granting that superstitions sometimes have such strong popularity that it is necessary to remove from the realm of man those things once ordained by public authority (as we read of Hezekiah doing with the bronze serpent), finally does not consider even a little that his shrewdness is a horror to the ways of good action: as if in defending supportable rituals, he would oblige that all superstitions should be considered as safe and whole because they are weighty. For what is there in the papacy now that would not resemble the bronze serpent, even if it did not begin that way [Num. 21:9]? Moses had it made and forged by the commandment of God: he had it kept for a sign of recognition. Among the virtues of Hezekiah told to us is that he had it broken and reduced to ash [2 Kings 18:4]. The superstitions for the most part, against which true servants of God battle today, are spreading from here to who knows where as covered pits in the ground. They are filled with detestable errors that can never be erased unless their use is taken away. Why, therefore, do we not confess simply what is true, that this remedy is necessary for taking away filth from the church?” Cf. Raymond V. Bottomly, “Response to a Certain Tricky Middler” (Responsio Ad Versipellem Quendam Mediatorem, [French] “Response a Un Certain Moyenneur Rusé,”), The Confessional Presbyterian 8 (2012) 264.]
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