17th Century Sabbath Observance
ENGLAND-1618
"At last for
teaching only five days in the week, and resting upon Saturday she
was carried to the new prison in Maiden Lane, a place then appointed
for the restraint of several other persons of different opinions
from the Church of England. Mrs. Traske lay fifteen or sixteen years
a prisoner for her opinion about the Saturday Sabbath." Pagitt's
"Heresiography." p.196
ENGLAND-1668
"Here in England are about none or ten churches that
keep the Sabbath, besides many scattered disciples, who have
eminently preserved." Stennet's
letters, 1668 and 1670. Cox, Sab.,1, 268
HUNGARY, RUMANIA
"But as they rejected Sunday and rested on the Sabbath,
Prince Sigmond Bathory ordered their persecution. Pechi advanced to
position of chancellor of state and next in line to throne of
Transylvania. He studied his Bible, and composed a number of hymns,
mostly in honour of the Sabbath. Pechi was arrested and died in
1640.
SWEDEN AND FINLAND
"We can trace these opinions over almost the whole
extent of Sweden of that day-from Finland and northern Sweden.
"In the district of Upsala the farmers kept Saturday in place
of Sunday. "About the year 1625 this religious tendency became
so pronounced in these countries that not only large numbers of the
common people began to keep Saturday as the rest day, but even many
priests did the same." History
of the Swedish Church, Vol.I, p.256
MUSCOVIT RUSSIAN CHURCH
"They solemnize Saturday (the old Sabbath). Samuel
Purchase- "His Pilgrims." Vol. I, p. 350
INDIA (Jacobites)-1625
"They kept Saturday holy. They have solemn service on
Saturdays." Pilgrimmes, Part 2,
p.1269
AMERICA-1664
"Stephen Mumford, the first Sabbath-keeper in America
come from London in 1664." History
of the Seventh-day Baptist Gen. Conf. by Jas. Bailey, pp. 237, 238
AMERICA-1671 (Seventh-day Baptists)
"Broke from Baptist Church in order to keep
Sabbath." See Bailey's History,
pp. 9,10
ENGLAND
Charles I,1647 (when querying the Parliament Commissioners)
"For it will not be found in Scripture where Saturday is no
longer to be kept, or turned into the Sunday wherefore it must be
the Church's authority that changed the one and instituted the
other." Cox, "Sabbath
Laws," p.333
ENGLAND-John Milton
"It will surely be far safer to observe the seventh day,
according to express commandment of God, than on the authority of
mere human conjecture to adopt the first." Sab.
Lit. 2, 46-54
ENGLAND
"Upon the publication of the 'Book of Sports' in 1618 a
violent controversy arose among English divines on two points:
first, whether the Sabbath of the fourth commandment was in force;
and, secondly, on what ground the first day of the week was entitled
to be observed as 'the Sabbath.'" Haydn's
Dictionary of Dates, art. "Sabbatarians." p.602
ETHIOPIA-1604
Jesuits tried to induce the Abyssinian church to accept Roman
Catholicism. They influenced King Zadenghel to propose to submit to
the Papacy (A.D.1604). "Prohibiting all his subjects, upon
severe penalties, to observe Saturday any longer." Gedde's
"Church History of Ethiopia." p.311, also Gibbon's
"Decline and Fall," ch. 47
BOHEMIA, MORAVIA, SWITZERLAND, GERMANY
"one of the counsellors and lords of the court was John
Gerendi, head of the Sabbatarians, a people who did not keep Sunday,
but Saturday." Lamy, "The
History of Socinianism." p. 60
TELEGRAPH PRINT, NAPIER
The inscription on the monument over the grave of Dr. Peter
Chamberlain, physician to King James and Queen Anne, King Charles I
and Queen Katherine says that Dr. Chamberlain was "a Christian
keeping the commandment of God and the faith of Jesus, being
baptised about the year 1648, and keeping the seventh day for the
Sabbath above thirty-two years."
