Authoritative Quotations On
THE SABBATH AND SUNDAY.
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This little volume has been compiled for the benefit of those who really
desire to know what prominent churchmen, Catholic and Protestant, as well as
secular writers, have said regarding immutability of the law of God and the
attempted change of the seventh-day Sabbath of creation week. Testimony from the
leading denominations is here compiled, along with evidence gathered from
dependable secular sources. All unitedly testify that it was the church in
apostasy that tampered with the holy law of an unchangeable God. Centuries
before the Christian Era the prophet of the Lord had prophesied:--
"He shall speak great words against the most High, . . . and think to
change times and laws." Daniel 7: 25.
To the Christian church, God entrusted great authority, but no man nor
organization of men has ever been given divine authority to, tamper with the ten
foundation pillars of the government of God. And He Himself has made it plain
that they are for ever established by His everlasting covenant whereby He
promises to write His laws in the minds and hearts of men. (Hebrews 8: lo.)
"According to Catholic teaching, the only 'bondage' to which humans
are subject is the moral law which emanates from God Almighty Himself. The
Church, as God's agent, may not tamper with that law."--Our Sunday
Visitor, July 13, 1947, page 129.
"Man is a creature. As a creature, he is subject to his Creator in all
that he does. God's will has . . . a bearing on everything that touches human
rights and duties. No state, no group of educators, may reject a truth of the
moral order to suit the claim of convenience. --Pronouncement of Roman
Catholic bishops as reported in Time, Nov. 23, 1961, page 21.
But the so-called Christian world has tampered with God's law and rejected a
truth of the ten great moral principles enunciated in the eternal jaw reiterated
on Sinai by the voice of God and written by His finger.
"For up to this day mankind has absolutely trifled with the original and
most specific revelation of the holy God, the ten words written upon the tables
of the law from Sinai."--"Crown Theological Library," page
178. (Lutheran).
The world unrest, the disregard for law and order, and the immorality of our
day may be charged directly to the brazen attempts of the created to meddle with
the government of the Creator. This is the testimony of Holy Scripture: "The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have
transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore loath the curse devoured the earth." Isaiah 24: 5, 6.
Friend, please read the testimony of the following pages with an open mind
and in the light of God's Word "To the law and to the testimony: if they
speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."
Isaiah 8: 20.
Will you not read and reread this booklet prayerfully? And as you do so, bare
your own soul before God while you make your decision with the apostles of the
early church to "obey God rather than men." Acts 5: 29. May God lead
you to loving obedience, your token of love and the outward sign of inward
sanctification. Remember that Jesus declared: "Think not that I am come
to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
Matthew 5: 17.
His earthly mission was to save men from the transgression of the law, not to
change it. Concerning Christ's first advent, the prophet had declared:--
"He will magnify the law, and make it honourable." Isaiah 42:21.
Will you not "walk even as He walked"? 1 John 2: 6. Our Savior said, "I have kept My Father's commandments." John 15: 10.
May God bless you as you consider this vital doctrine of the Bible.
"There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that
Sabbath day was not Sunday.... It will be said, however, and with some show of
triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of
the week.... Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New
Testament, absolutely not. There is no Scriptural evidence of the change of the
Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.
"To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years'
intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath
question . . . never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during
forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated.
"Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early
Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and
other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism,
and christened with the name of the sun god, when adopted and sanctioned by the
papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism !
"--DR. Edward T. Hiscox, author of "The Baptist Manual," in a
paper read before a New York ministers' conference held Nov. 13, 1893.
"We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule
of His moral government."--"Baptist Church Manual," Art. 12.
"The first four commandments set forth man's obligations directly toward
God.... But when we keep the first four commandments, we are likely to keep
the other six.... The fourth commandment sets forth God's claim on man's time
and thought.... The six days of labour and the rest on the Sabbath are to be
maintained as a witness to God's toil and rest in the creation.... No
"From this same Catholic Church you have accepted your Sunday, and that
Sunday, as the Lord's day, she has handed down as a tradition; and the entire
Protestant world has accepted it a tradition, for you have not an iota of
Scripture to establish it Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of
faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday, you have accepted
on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church."--D. B. Ray, "The Papal
Controversy," 1892, page 179. "I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the
Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy There is no such law in the
Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholics Church alone. The Bible says, 'Remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says: 'No. By my divine
power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of
the week.' And lo! the entire civilized world bows down in a reverent obedience
to the command of the holy Catholic Church."--T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a
lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb. 18, 1884.
"The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of
a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to
Sunday."--The Catholic Mirror, Sept. 23, 1893.
"You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not
find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures
enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we [Catholicsl never
sanctify." --James Cardinal Gibbons, "The Faith of Our Fathers,"
page 111. "There is but one church on the face of the earth which has the power,
or claims power, to make laws binding on the conscience, binding before God,
binding under penalty of hell-fire. For instance, the institution of Sunday.
What right has any other church to keep this day? You answer by virtue of the
third commandment [the Papacy changed the fourth commandment and called it the
third], which says, 'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.' But Sunday
is not the Sabbath. Any schoolboy knows that Sunday is the first day of the
week. I have repeatedly offered one thousand dollars to anyone who will prove
by the Bible alone that Sunday is the day we are hound to keep, and no one has
called for the money. It was the holy Catholic Church that changed the day of
rest from Saturday, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the
week."--T. Enright, C. S. S. R., in a lecture delivered in 1893. "Reason and sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these
alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday or
Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible." --James
Cardinal Gibbons, Catholic Mirror, Dec. 23, 1983. "QUESTION: What Bible authority is there for changing the Sabbath from
the seventh to the first day of the week? Who gave the pope the authority to
change a command of God?
"ANSWER: if the Bible is the only guide for the Christian, then the
Seventh-day Adventist is right in observing the Saturday with the Jew. But
Catholics learn what to believe and do from the divine, infallible authority
established by Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church.... Is it not strange that
those who make the Bible their only teacher should inconsistently follow in this
matter the tradition of the Church?"--"Question Box " by Conway, 1903 Edition, pages 254, 255.
"QUESTION: Which is the Sabbath day?
"ANSWER: Saturday is the Sabbath day.
"QUESTION: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
"ANSWER: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church,
in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday
to Sunday." --Peter Geiermann, "The Convert's Catechism of Catholic
Doctrine," Second Edition, 1910, page 50.
"It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ has
transferred this rest to the Sunday in remembrance of the resurrection of our
Lord. Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in
spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] church." --MGR.
Segur, "Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today," page 213. "QUESTION: Have you any other way of proving that the Church has power
to institute festivals of precept?
"ANSWER: Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all
modern religionists agree with her; she could not have substituted the
observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday
the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority." --Stephen
Keenan, "A Doctrinal Catechism," page 174.
"QUESTION: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts
and holydays?
"ANSWER: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which
Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by
keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same
Church. "QUESTION: How prove you that?
"ANSWER: Because by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the Church's power to
ordain feasts, and to command them under sin and by not keeping the rest [of the
feasts] by her commanded, they again deny, in fact, the same power."--Henry
Tuberville, D. D., "An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine" (R. C.),
page 58.
"Nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the apostles ordered
that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of
God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the seventh day of the
week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed
to us by the church [Roman] outside the Bible."--Catholic Virginian, Oct.
3, 1947.
"Our Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week," said
Father Hourigan of the Jesuit Seminary. "That is why the Church changed the
day of obligation from the seventh day to the first day of the week. The
Anglican and other Protestant denominations retained that tradition when the
Reformation came along." --Toronto Daily Star, Oct. 26,1949.
"Catholic: Is the Bible the rule or guide of Protestants for observing
Sunday?
"Protestant: No, I believe the Seventh-day Adventists are the only ones
who know the Bible in the matter of Sabbath observ- ance."--"The Bible
an Authority Only in Catholic Hands," pages 25, 26.
"Practically everything that Protestants regard as essential or
important they have received from the Catholic Church. They accepted Sunday
rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church
made that change.
"But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the
Bible, in observing the Sunday, in keeping Christmas and Easter, they are
accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the pope."--Our
Sunday Visitor, Feb. 5, 1950.
"Only gradually did Christians begin to observe Sunday as a day of
rest.... In the third century, as we learn from Tertullian, many Christians
had begun to keep Sunday as a day of rest to some extent....
"The real need of Sunday as a day of rest as well as worship came much
later, in the sixth century."--"Yes, I Condemned the Catholic
Church" (Supreme Council. Knights of Columbus), page 4.
"When St. Paul repudiated the works of the law, he was not thinking of
the Ten Commandments, which are as unchangeable as God Himself is, which God
could not change and still remain the infinitely holy God."--Our Sunday
Visitor, Oct. 7, 1951.
"There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day
the Lord's day."--DR. D. H. LUCAS, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890.
"The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a
mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of
the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the
entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath.
There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not
in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a
change."--"First-Day Observance," pages 17, 19.
"It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath
of God's Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." DR. N. Summerbell,
"History of the Christian Church," Third Edition, page 415.
"To command...men...to observe...the Lord's day...is contrary to
the gospel."--"Memoirs of Alexander Campbell," Vol. I, page 528. "It is clearly proved that the pastors of the churches have struck out
one of God's ten words, which, not only in the Old Testament, but in all
revelation, are the most emphatically regarded as the synopsis of all religion
and morality." --Alexander Campbell, "Debate With Purcell," page
214.
"I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish
Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for
this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there
is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath was changed, or
that the Lord's day came in the room of it." -- Alexander Campbell,
Washington Reporter, Oct.8, 1821.
"Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed
the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles."--Sir
William Domville, Examination of the Six Texts," pages 6, 7. (Supplement). "There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from
work on Sunday. . . into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters. . . The
observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the
observance of Sunday." --Canon Eyton, "The Ten Commandments,"
pages 52, 63, 65
"Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly
rest from Saturday to Sunday? None."--"Manual of Christian
Doctrine," page 127.
"The Lord's day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath....The
Lord's day was merely an ecclesiastical institution It was not introduced by
virtue of the fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred years
together they kept that day which was in that commandment....The primitive
Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord's day even in times of
persecution when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none."--Bishop
Jeremy Taylor, "Ductor Dubitantium," Part 1, Book II, Chap. 2, Rule 6 Sec.51,59. "Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet
and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and
partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), the Christians
thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not
appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the
Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against
the gospel."--T. M. Morer, "Dialogues on the Lord's Day," pages
22,23. "Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at
all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep
the first day.... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead
of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not
because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it."--Isaac Williams,
B.D., "Plain Sermons on the Catechism," Vol. 1, pages
334-336. "Dear Madam:
"In reply to your letter of May 7th, I am asked by the Archbishop of
Canterbury to say that from the first century onward the Christian church has
observed the first day of the week as the weekly commemoration of the
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the early Christians . . .
deliberately substituted the first day of the week for the seventh on the ground
that it was on the first day that our Lord rose from the dead. [Itatics ours.]
"Yours faithfully,
"Alan C. Don" "The Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made
Sunday into the
Sabbath day. Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even clergymen do. But, unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts
twenty-four hours from six o'clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore,
before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he ought to
observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once
replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom?
There is no injunction in the whole of the New Testament to Christians to change
the Sabbath into Sunday." --D. Morse-Boycott, Davy Herald, London, Feb.
26, 1931. "The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost
unconscious transference of the one day to the other."-- F. W. Farrar, D.D.,
"The Voice From Sinai," page 167. "Take which you will, either of the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall
find no Lord's day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath set on
foot by them upon the first day of the week." --Peter Heylyn, History of
the Sabbath, page 410. "Merely to denounce the tendency to secularize Sunday is as futile as it
is easy. What we want is to find some principle, to which as Christians we can
appeal, and on which we can base both our conduct and our advice. We turn to the
New Testament, and we look in vain for any authoritative rule. There is no
recorded word of Christ, there is no word of any of the apostles, which tells
how we should keep Sunday, or indeed that we should keep it at all. It is
disappointing, for it would make our task much easier if we could point to a
definite rule, which left us no option but simple obedience or disobedience....
There is no rule for Sunday observ- ance, either in Scripture or history."
--Dr. Stephen, Bishop of Newcastle, N.S.W., in an address reported in the
Newcastle Morning Herald, May 14, 1924.
"It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament
concerning the first day."--Buck's Theological Dictionary, page 403.
"There is no command in the Bible requiring us to observe the first day of
the week as the Christian Sabbath."--Orin Fowler, A. M., "Mode and
Subjects of Baptism." "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively
substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority
in the New Testament."--DR. Lyman Abbott, Christian Union, Jan. 19, 1882.
"It is quite clear that, however rigidly or devoutly we may spend
Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath.... The Sabbath was founded on a
specific, divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of
Sunday.... There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that
we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of
Sunday."--"The Ten Commandments," R. W. Dale, D.D., pages 106,
107.
"I wonder exceedingly how it came to be imputed to me that I should
reject the law of Ten Commandments.... Whosoever abrogates the law must of
necessity abrogate sin also."--Martin Luther, Spiritual Antichrist,"
pages 71, 72.
"The observance of the Lord's day [Sunday] is founded not on any command
of God, but on the authority of the church."-- Augsburg Confession of
Faith, quoted in "Catholic Sabbath Manual," Part 2, Chap. 1, Sec.10.
"For up to this day mankind has absolutely trifled with the original and
most special revelation of the Holy God, the ten words written upon the tables
of the Law from Sinai."--"Crown Theological library," page 178. "The Christians in the ancient church very soon distinguished the first
day of the week, Sunday; however, not as a Sabbath, but as an assembly day of
the church, to study the Word of God together, and to celebrate the ordinances
one with another: with- out a shadow of doubt, this took place as early as the
first part of the second century."--Bishop Grimelund, History of the Sabbath," page 60.
"They [the Catholics] allege the Sabbath changed into Sun- day, the
Lord's day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any
example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they,
is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten
Commandments."--Augsburg Confession of Faith, Art. 28, par. 9. "The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a
human ordinance."--Augustus Neander, History of the Christian Religion and
Church," Vol. I, page 186.
"This 'handwriting of ordinances' our Lord did blot out, take away, and
nail to His cross. (Colossians 2: 14.) But the moral law contained in the Ten
Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He did not take away.... The moral
law stands on an entirely different foundation from the ceremonial or ritual
law. ... Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all
ages."--John Wesley, "Sermons on Several Occasions," 2-Vol
Edition, Vol. I, pages 221, 222.
"No Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments
which are called moral."--"Methodist Church Dis- cipline,"
(1904), page 23.
"Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament
as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of
worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to
transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day."--Harris Franklin Rall, Christian
Advocate, July 2, 1942.
"The Sabbath was made for MAN; not for the Hebrews, but for all
men."--E. O. Haven, "Pillars of Truth, page 88.
"The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh based on no
positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for
changing from the seventh day to the first. The early Christians began to
worship on the first day of the week because Jesus rose from the dead on that
day. By and by, this day of worship was made also a day of rest, a legal holiday
This took place in the year 321.
"Our Christian Sabbath, therefore, is not a matter of positive command.
It is a gift of the church."--Clovis G. Chappell, "Ten Rules For
Living," page 61.
"In the days of very long ago the people of the world began to give
names to everything, and they turned the sounds of the lips into words, so that
the lips could speak a thought. In those days the people worshipped the sun
because many words were made to tell of many thoughts about many things. The
people became Christians and were ruled by an emperor whose name was Constantine. This emperor made Sun-day the Christian Sabbath, because of the
blessing of light and heat which came from the sun. So our Sunday is a sun-day,
isn't it?"--Sunday School Advocates Dec. 31, 1921. "The moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the
prophets, He [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of His coming to
revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can he broken.... Every part
of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages; as not
depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change
but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable
relation to each other."--John Wesley, "Sermons an Several
Occasions," Vol. I, Sermon XXV.
"The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since.
This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the
Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai.
How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they
will admit that the other nine are still binding?"--D. L. Moody,
"Weighed and Wanting," page 47.
"I honestly believe that this commandment [the fourth, or Sabbath
commandment] is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who
have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to
any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did
nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and
Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. 'The Sabbath was made for man,
and not man for the Sabbath.' It is just as practicable and as necessary for men
today as it ever was—in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense
age."--Id., page 46.
" 'Sabbath' means rest, and the meaning of the word gives a hint as to
the true way to observe the day. God rested after creation, and ordained the
Sabbath as a rest for man."--Id., pages 46, 47.
"Saturday is my day of rest because I generally preach on Sunday, and I
look forward to it as a boy does to a holiday. God knows what we
need."--Id., page 48.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
"In this, a new dispensation, and verily the last dispensation of
the fullness of times, the law of the Sabbath has been reaffirmed unto the
church.... We believe that a weekly day of rest is no less truly a necessity for
the physical well-being of man than for his spiritual growth; but primarily and
essentially, we regard the Sabbath as divinely established, and its observance a
commandment of Him who was and is and ever shall be, Lord of the
Sabbath."--James E. Talmage, "Articles of Faith," 25th Edition,
Art. 13, Chap. 24, pages 449, 451, 452,
"The Sabbath was to be a perpetual covenant between the Lord and the
children of Israel. 'Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to
observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant'
(verse 16). In verse 17 they are commanded to observe it as a sign that they
remember that the Lord made heaven and earth, and rested on the seventh day. "In these quotations from Exodus 31, and in the Decalogue the most
positive and weighty reasons are given by the Lord to the fathers of the house
of Israel, for keeping the Sabbath day. The obligation is evidently as binding
upon the Latter-day Saints as it was upon their fathers, and they in like manner
will reap the reward of obedience."--Franklin D. Richards and James A. Little, "A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel," page 226.
"The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments. This
alone for ever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution....
Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the
Sabbath will stand....The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the
Sabbath."-- T. C. Blake, D.D., "Theology Condensed," pages 414,
475. "We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the
authority of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and
must therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is
constant and uniform."--John Calvin, "Commentary on a Harmony of the
Gospels," Vol. I, page 277
"The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as
others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard to the matter
contained in it, hut also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who
gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but much
strengthen this obligation."-- "Westminster Confession of Faith,"
Chap. 19, Art. 5.
"God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the
seventh day for the purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and
perpetual moral obligation upon the race."-- American Presbyterian Board of
Publication, Tract No. 175.
"The observance of the seventh-day Sabbath did not cease till it was
abolished after the [Roman] empire became Christian."-- American
Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 118.
"As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so it is to be kept holy unto
the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious services;
but these are not binding, because of human institution. Not so the Sabbath.
Hence the fourth com- mandment is ushered in with a peculiar emphasis-'Remember
that thou keep holy the sabbath day.' ... The abolition of it would be
unreasonable." Charles Buck, “A Theological Dictionary,” 1830 Edition,
page 537.
"But although it [Sunday] was in the primitive times indiffer- ently
called the Lord's day, or Sunday, yet it was never denomin- ated the Sabbath; a
name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the seventh day, both by sacred and
ecclesiastical writers."-Id., page 572.
"The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the
Lord's day [meaning Sunday] for the Jewish Sabbath [or the first for the seventh
day]... and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the
sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the fourth commandment,
has no basis what- ever, either in Holy Scripture or in Christian
antiquity."--Sir William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, A Dictionary of
Christian Antiquities," Vol. II, page I82, Article "Sabbath."
"Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week,
because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, ... the seventh day was
blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and ... He requires His creatures to keep
it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation. ...
The Creator 'blessed the seventh day' declared it to be a day above all days, a
day on which His favour should assuredly rest. ... So long, then, as man exists,
and the world around him endures, does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It
cannot be set aside, so long as its foundations last.... It is not the Jewish
Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the
whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in
the third commandment, or the sixth."-- Eadie's Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872
Edition, page 561.
"Thus we learn from Socrates (H.E., vi.c.8) that in his time public
worship was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days. The view that
the Christian's Lord's day or Sunday is but the Christian Sabbath deliberately
transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week does not indeed find
categorical expression till a much later period.... The earliest recognition
of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine
in A.D. 321, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and
workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception
in favour of those engaged in agricultural labour.... The Council of Laodicea
(363) ... forbids Christians from Judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day,
preferring the Lord's day, and so far as possible resting as Christians."--Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1899 Edition, Vol.
XXIII, page 654.
"Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which
the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the
sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321. Chambers' Encyclopeedia, Article
"Sunday.
"It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament
concerning the first day."--M'Clintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical,
Thedogical, and Ecclesiastical literature, Vol. IX, page 196. "Sunday (Dies
Sotis, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because
dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early
Christians as a day of worship. The 'sun' of Latin adoration they interpreted as
the 'Sun of Righteousness.' ... No regulations for its observance are laid down
in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined."--Schaff
Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol. IV, Art.
"Sunday."
"During this indefinite time a considerable amount of a sort of
theokrasia seems to have gone on between the Christian cult and the almost
equally popular and widely diffused Mithraic cult, and the cult of
Serapis-Isis-Horus. From the former it would seem the Christians adopted Sunday
as their chief day of worship instead of the Jewish Sabbath."--H. G. Wells, "The Outline of History" (New and Revised), page 543. "The first who ever used it [the Sabbathl to denote the Lord's day (the
first that I have met with in all this search) is one Petrus Alfonsus—he lived
about the time that Repurtus did (which was the beginning of the twelfth
century)—who calls the Lord's day by the name of Christian Sabbath."--Peter
Heylyn, "History of the Sabbath," Part 2, Chap. 2, Sec. 12. "Bear in mind that the substitution [of the first for the seventh day]
was not a coerced happening; it could not be a sudden, but only a very slow
development, probably never anticipated, never even designed or put into shape
by those chiefly interested, but creeping almost unconsciously into
being."--William B. Dana, "A Day of Rest and Worship," page 174. The first direct reference to Sunday as a day of rest from physical toil we
find in Tertullian, in about A.D. 200 in his Liber de Oratione, chapter 23.
"We, however ( just as we have received ), only on the day of the Lord's
resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and
office of solicitude; deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to
the devil." --Tertullian, "Ante-Nicene Fathers," Vol. 111, page
689. "The early Christians had at first adopted the Jewish seven-day week
with its numbered week days, but by the close of the third century A.D. this
began to give way to the planetary week; and in the fourth and fifth centuries
the pagan designations became generally accepted in the western half of
Christendom. The use of the planetary names by Christians attests the growing
influence of astrological speculations introduced by converts from paganism. ...
During these same centuries the spread of Oriental solar worships, especially
that of Mithra (Persian sun worship) in the Roman world, had already led to the
substitution by pagans of dies Solis for dies Saturni, as the first day of the
planetary week.... Thus gradually a pagan institution was engrafted on
Christianity." --Hutton Webster, Ph.D., Rest Days, pages 220, 221.
Eusebius, fourth-century bishop and friend of the wicked Emperor Constantine,
whose Sunday law is the first on record, flatly says: "All things,
whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to
the Lord's day [as they had begun to call Sunday]."--"Commentary on
the Psalms."
"Opposition to Judaism introduced the particular festival of Sunday very
early, indeed, into the place of the Sabbath.... The festival of Sunday, like
all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the
intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far
from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the
Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps, at the end of the second century a false application
of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have
considered labouring on Sunday as a sin."--Augustus Neander, General
history of the Christian Religion and Church" (Rose's translation), Vol. 1,
page 186.
"Probably very few Christians are aware of the fact that what they call
the 'Christian Sabbath' (Sunday) is of pagan origin. "The first observance
of Sunday that history records is in the fourth century, when Constantine issued
an edict (not requiring its religious observance, but simply abstinence from
work) reading 'let all the judges and people of the town rest and all the
various trades be suspended on the venerable day of the sun.' At the time of the
issue of this edict, Constantine was a sun-worshipper; therefore it could have
had no relation whatever to Christianity."-- Henry M. Taber, "Faith or
Fact" (preface by Robert G. Ingersoll), page 112.
"I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion to show me
the slightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such
cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about
Sunday as a holy day? ... The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and
that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of
the week holy, therefore the first day of the week should be so kept by
Christians, is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering.... That Paul
habitually observed and preached on the seventh day of the week, is shown in
Acts 18:4--'And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath'
(Saturday)."--Id., pages 114, 116.
"You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the
Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom? Who has
authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has
spoken and said, 'Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day,' who shall dare to say,
'Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of business on the seventh day; but
thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead'? This is a most important
question, which I know not how you can answer.
"You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible
only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as
a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in
the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy
the seventh day is one of the Ten Commandments; you believe that the other nine
are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are
consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the
Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in
which this fourth commandment is expressly altered."--"The Library of
Christian Doctrine," pages 3, 4. "The first precept in the Bible is that of sanctifying the seventh day:
'God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.' Genesis 2:3 This precept was
confirmed by God in the Ten Commandments: 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy. ... The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.' Exodus 20: 8, 10.
On the other hand, Christ declares that He is not come to destroy the law, but
to fulfill it. (Matthew 5: 17.) He Himself observed the Sabbath: 'And, as His
custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.' Luke 4: 16. His
disciples likewise observed it after His death: 'They ... rested the Sabbath day
according to the commandment.' Luke 23: 56. Yet with all this weight of
Scripture authority for keeping the Sabbath or seventh day holy, Protestants of
all denominations make this a profane day and transfer the obligation of it to
the first day of the week, or the Sunday. Now what authority have they for doing
this? None at all but the unwritten word, or tradition of the Catholic Church,
which declares that the apostle made the change in honor of Christ's
resurrection, and the descent of the Holy Ghost on that day of the
week."--John Milner, "The End of Religious Controversy," page
71. "Sabbath means, of course, Saturday, the seventh day of the week, but
the early Christians changed the observance to Sunday, to honour the day on
which Christ arose from the dead."--Fulton Oursler, Cosmopolitan, Sept.
1951, pages 34, 35.
"I do not pretend to be even an amateur scholar of the Scriptures. I
read the Decalogue merely as an average man searching for guidance, and in the
immortal 'Ten Words' I find a blueprint for the good life."--Id., page 33.
"Most certainly the Commandments are needed today, perhaps more than
ever before. Their divine message confronts us with a profound moral challenge
in an epidemic of evil; a unifying message acceptable alike to Jew, Moslem, and
Christian. Who, reading the Ten in the light of history and of current events,
can doubt their identity with the eternal law of nature?"--Id., page 124.
"The Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not be
kept on any other day. To observe the first day of the week or the fourth is not
to observe the Sabbath.... It was the last day of the week, after six days of
work, that was to be kept holy. The observance of no other day would fulfill the
law."--H. J. Flowers, B.A., B.D., "The Permanent Value of the Ten
Commandments," page 131. "The evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the
resurrection of Christ, has varied greatly throughout the cen turies of the
Christian Era. From time to time it has been confused with the seventh day of
the week, the Sabbath. English- speaking peoples have been the most consistent
in perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the obligation of the fourth
commandment has passed over to Sunday. In popular speech, Sunday is
frequently, but erroneously, spoken of as the Sabbath."--F. M. Setzler,
Head Curator, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institute, from a letter
dated Sept. 1, 1949. "He that observes the Sabbath aright holds the history of that which it
celebrates to be authentic, and therefore believes in the creation of the first
man; of the creation of a fair abode for man in the space of six days; in the
primeval and absolute creation of the heavens and the earth, and, as a necessary
antecedent to all this, in the Creator, who at the close of His latest creative
effort, rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath thus becomes a sign by which the
believers in a historical revelation are distinguished from those who have
allowed these great facts to fade from their remembrance."--James G. Murphy, "Commentary on the Book of Exodus," comments on Exodus 20:
8-11.
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