The doctrine of Christian liberty was one of the principal achievements of the Protestant Reformation. The medieval church had come to think that there are two streams of authority, Scripture and an alleged unwritten apostolic tradition curated by the church. Over time the authority of the church, via the supposed unwritten apostolic tradition,  came to trump the authority of Holy Scripture. The Reformation rejected authority of the alleged unwritten apostolic tradition in favor of the clarity and authority of Scripture, which alone, which is received and confessed by the church as the final authoritative rule of the Christian faith and the Christian life. This is the formal principle of the Reformation: sola scriptura. From this principle, all the magisterial Protestants affirmed that the church may not bind the conscience of the Christian beyond what is required by the Word of God. We are free from the opinions and good intentions of men (Col 2:20–23). The Reformed churches applied sola scriptura to the worship and authority of the church in a way that the Lutherans and Anglicans did not. The church, confessed the Reformed, may not institute days or elements of worship that God himself has not instituted. Here are some resources on this most important topic.

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