Canon 64. “Every parson, vicar, or curate shall, in his several charge, declare to the people every Sunday, at the time appointed in the communion book, whether there be any holy-days or fasting days the week following. And if any do hereafter wittingly offend herein, and being once admonished thereof by his ordinary, shall again omit that duty, let him be censured according to law, until he submit himself to the due performance of it.”
Canon 13. “All manner of persons within the Church of England shall from henceforth celebrate and keep the Lord’s day, commonly called Sunday, and other holy-days, according to God’s will and pleasure, and the orders of the Church of England prescribed on that behalf; that is, in hearing the word of God read and taught, in private and public prayers, in acknowledging their offences to God and amendment of the same, in reconciling themselves charitably to their neighbours where displeasure hath been, in oftentimes receiving the communion of the body and blood of Christ, in visiting of the poor and sick, using all godly and sober conversation.”
Canon 14. “The Common Prayer shall be said or sung, distinctly and reverently, upon such days as are appointed to be kept holy by the Book of Common Prayer, and their eves.”
Time is a circumstance no less inseparable from religious actions and place; for man, consisting of a soul and body, cannot always be actually engaged in the service of God: that’s the privilege of angels, and souls freed from the fetters of mortality. So long as we are here, we must worship God with respect to our present state, and consequently of necessity have some definite and particular time to do it in. Now, that man might not be left to a floating uncertainty, in a matter of so great importance, in all ages and nations, men have been guided by the very dictates of nature, to pitch upon some certain seasons, wherein to assemble, and meet together, to perform the public offices of religion.—Cave’s Prim. Christianity; and see this same sentiment, and the subject excellently treated, in Nelson’s Festivals and Fasts,—the Preliminary Instructions concerning Festivals.
This sanctification, or setting apart, of festival days, is a token of that thankfulness, and a part of that public honour, which we owe to God, for his admirable benefits; and these days or feasts set apart are of excellent use, being, as learned Hooker observes, the 1. Splendour and outward dignity of our religion; 2. Forcible witnesses of ancient truth; 3. Provocations to the exercise of all piety; 4. Shadows of our endless felicity in heaven; 5. On earth, everlasting records, teaching by the eye in a manner whatsoever we believe.
And concerning particulars: as, that the Jews had the sabbath, which did continually bring to mind the former world finished by creation; so the Christian Church hath her Lord’s days, or Sundays, to keep us in perpetual remembrance of a far better world, begun by him who came to restore all things, to make heaven and earth new. The rest of the holy festivals which we celebrate, have relation all to one head, Christ. We begin therefore our ecclesiastical year (as to some accounts, though not as to the order of our services) with the glorious annunciation of his birth by angelical message. Hereunto are added his blessed nativity itself, the mystery of his legal circumcision, the testification of his true incarnation by the purification of his blessed mother the Virgin Mary; his glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven; the admirable sending down of his Spirit upon his chosen.
Again, forasmuch as we know that Christ hath not only been manifested great in himself, but great in other, his saints also; the days of whose departure out of this world are to the Church of Christ as the birth and coronation days of kings or emperors; therefore, special choice being made of the very flower of all occasions in this kind, there are annual selected times to meditate of Christ glorified in them, which had the honour to suffer for his sake, before they had age and ability to know him, namely, the blessed Innocents;—glorified in them which, knowing him, as St. Stephen, had the sight of that before death, whereinto such acceptable death doth lead;—glorified in those sages of the East, that came from far to adore him, and were conducted by strange light;—glorified in the second Elias of the world, sent before him to prepare his way;—glorified in every of those apostles, whom it pleased him to use as founders of his kingdom here;—glorified in the angels, as in St. Michael;—glorified in all those happy souls already possessed of bliss.—Sparrow’s Rationale.
In the injunctions of King Henry VIII., and the convocation of the clergy, A. D. 1536, it was ordered, that all the people might freely go to their work upon all holidays usually before kept, which fell either in the time of harvest, (counted from the 1st day of July to the 29th of September,) or in any time of the four terms, when the king’s judges sat at Westminster. But these holidays (in our book mentioned) are specially excepted, and commanded to be kept holy by every man.—Cosin’s Notes.
By statute 5 & 6 Edward VI. ch. 3, it was provided, that it should be “lawful for every husbandman, labourer, fisherman, and every other person of what estate, degree, or condition they be, upon the holidays aforesaid, in harvest, or at any other time in the year when necessity shall require, to labour, ride, fish, or work any kind of work, at their free wills and pleasure.” This was repealed by Queen Mary, but revived by James I. Queen Elizabeth, in the mean while, however, declared in her “injunctions,” that the people might “with a safe and quiet conscience, after their common prayer,” (which was then at an early hour,) “in the time of harvest, labour upon the holy and festival days, and save that thing which God hath sent.”
The moveable feasts are those which depend upon Easter, and consequently do not occur on the same day every year. There are, besides Easter, the Sundays after the Epiphany, Septuagesima Sunday, the first day of Lent, Rogation Sunday, (i. e. the Sunday before the Ascension,) Ascension Day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, the Sundays after Trinity, and Advent Sunday.