Modern ‘Presbyterian’: “When God touches earth, the place is holy. When God appears in history, the time is holy. There was never a more holy place than the city of Bethlehem, where the Word became flesh. There was never a more holy time than Christmas morning when Emmanuel was born. Christmas is a holiday. It is the holiest of holy days.” R. C. Sproul, “Don’t Be a Scrooge This Christmas”.
This is different than the other two:
Real Presbyterian: “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. 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; 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. 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. George Gillespie, Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies (2013), 141.
*Gillespie's term is formalist; The term Anglo-Catholicism, was coined by the nineteenth century Oxford movement which claimed a continuum of ideas with the Jacobean and Caroline divines. Whether that anachronism is fair or not, the term (or one like it) is appropriate given these seventeenth century divines used the same arguments for their ceremonies, as Roman Catholics did for theirs (hence the “popish” in English Popish Ceremonies).
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