The difference between the WCF and the HC is pedagogical rather than substantial. The difference is also contextual (there’s that word again). The WCF was written in the midst of the English Civil War and the divines felt greatly threatened theologically and practically by antinomianism and so they reacted by nailing down all the loose ends.
E.g., they said what they said about recreation not because they were kill joys but against the a political background, against the King’s Book of Sports. Remember that the assembly was called by Parliament and worked for Parliament. They were fulfilling a civil as well as theological function.
Some of that is true of the committee that revised and presented the HC to Frederick but the situation was rather different. It was 80 years earlier. There was not 8 decades of resistance, practical issues, pastoral problems and no civil war with viral antinomianism to address.
The reason that the Dutch Reformed have been better on the Sabbath has more to do with the way they have historically related to their confession. The American Presbyterians abandoned quia (because it’s biblical) subscription for quatenus (to the degree it’s biblical) very early on and so the discussion has largely been about the degree to which one can disagree with the confession and remain within its bounds. That was never going to be a recipe for Sabbath observance. When the culture began pushing back in light of Modernism and now, in a context of radical subjectivism (late modernism) a quatenus approach (of which, in my view, “strict subscription” and “good faith” are just boundaries or subsets) is ill-suited.
If our goal is to be an inclusive “national” church (e.g., Charles Hodge) then the church is to a significant degree an expression of the culture. If our goal is first of all to be faithful, that is a different orientation altogether. On the Hodge model, Sabbath observance is bound to suffer.
