English Sabbath-keepers.
By John Nevins Andrews
CHAMBERS speaks thus of Sabbath-keepers in the sixteenth century:— “In the reign of Elizabeth, it occurred to many conscientious and independent thinkers (as it had previously done to some Protestants in Bohemia), that the fourth commandment required of them the observance, not of the first, but of the specified seventh day of the week, and a strict bodily rest, as a service then due to God; while others, though convinced that the day had been altered by divine authority, took up the same opinion as to the scriptural obligation to refrain from work. The former class became numerous enough to make a considerable figure for more than a century in England, under the title of ‘Sabbatarians’—a word now exchanged for the less ambiguous appellation of ‘Seventh-day Baptists.’” Gilfillan quotes an English writer of the year 1584, John Stockwood, who says that there was then “A great diversity of opinion among the vulgar people and simple sort concerning the Sabbath day, and the right use of the same.” And Gilfillan states one of the grounds of controversy thus:— “Some maintaining the unchanged and unchangeable obligation of the seventh-day Sabbath.” In 1607, an English first-day writer, John Sprint, gave the views of the Sabbath-keepers of that time, which in truth have been substantially the same in all ages:— “They allege reasons drawn, 1. From the precedence of the Sabbath before the law, and before the fall; the laws of which nature are immutable. 2. From the perpetuity of the moral law. 3. And from the large extent thereof appertaining to [the Sabbath above] all [the other precepts]. 4. . . . And of the cause of [this precept of] the law which maketh it perpetual, which is the memorial and meditation of the work of God; which belongs unto the Christians as well as to the Jews.” John Trask began to speak and write in favor of the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord, about the time that King James I. and the archbishop of Canterbury, published the famous “Book of Sports for Sunday,” in 1618. His field of labor was London, and being a very zealous man, he was soon called to account by the persecuting authority of the Church of England. He took high ground as to the sufficiency of the Scriptures to direct in all religious services, and that the civil authorities ought not to constrain men’s consciences in matters of religion. He was brought before the infamous Star Chamber, where a long discussion was held respecting the Sabbath. It was on this occasion that Bishop Andrews first brought forward that now famous first-day argument, that the early martyrs were tested by the question, “Hast thou kept the Lord’s day?” Gilfillan, quoting the words of cotemporary writers, says of Trask’s trial that, “For ‘making of conventicles and factions, by that means which may tend to sedition and commotion, and for scandalizing the king, the bishops, and the clergy,’ he was censured in the Star Chamber to be set upon the pillory at Westminster, and from thence to be whipt to the fleet, there to remain a prisoner.” This cruel sentence was carried into execution, and finally broke his spirit. After enduring the misery of his prison for one year, he recanted his doctrine. The559case of his wife is worthy of particular mention. Pagitt gives her character thus:— “She was a woman endued with many particular virtues, well worthy the imitation of all good Christians, had not error in other things, especially a spirit of strange, unparalleled opinionativeness and obstinacy in her private conceits, spoiled her.” Pagitt says that she was a school-teacher of superior excellence. She was particularly careful in her dealings with the poor. He gives her reasons thus:— “This she professed to do out of conscience, as believing she must one day come to be judged for all things done in the flesh. Therefore she resolved to go by the safest rule, rather against than for her private interest.” Pagitt gives her crime in the following words:— “At last for teaching only five days in the week, and resting upon Saturday, it being known upon what account she did it, 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.” Observe the crime: it was not what she did, for a first-day person might have done the same, but because she did it to obey the fourth commandment. Her motive exposed her to the vengeance of the authorities. She was a woman of indomitable courage, and would not purchase her liberty by renouncing the Lord’s Sabbath. During her long imprisonment, Pagitt says that some one wrote her thus:— “Your constant suffering would be praiseworthy, were it for truth; but being for error, your recantation will be both more acceptable to God, and laudable before men.” But her faith and patience held out till she was released by death. “Mrs. Trask lay fifteen or sixteen years a prisoner for her opinion about the Saturday Sabbath; in all which time she would receive no relief from anybody, notwithstanding she wanted much: alleging that it was written, ‘It is more blessed . . . to give than to receive.’ Neither would she borrow, because it was written, ‘Thou shalt lend to many nations, and shalt not borrow.’ So she deemed it a dishonor to her head, Christ, either to beg or borrow. Her diet for the most part during her imprisonment, that is, till a little before her death, was bread and water, roots and herbs; no flesh, nor wine, nor brewed drink. All her means was an annuity of forty shillings a year; what she lacked more to live upon she had of such prisoners as did employ her sometimes to do business for them.” Pagitt, who was the cotemporary of Trask, thus states the principles of the Sabbatarians of that time, whom he calls Traskites:— “The positions concerning the Sabbath by them maintained were these:— “1. That the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy’ [Ex. 20] is a divine precept, simply and entirely moral, containing nothing legally ceremonial in whole or in part, and therefore the weekly observation thereof ought to be perpetual, and to continue in force and virtue to the world’s end. “2. That the Saturday, or seventh day in every week, ought to be an everlasting holy day in the Christian church, and the religious observation of this day obligeth Christians under the gospel, as it did the Jews before the coming of Christ. “3. That the Sunday, or Lord’s day, is an ordinary working day, and it is superstition and will-worship to make the same the Sabbath of the fourth commandment.” It was for this noble confession of faith that Mrs. Trask was shut up in prison till the day of her death. For the same, Mr. Trask was compelled to stand at the pillory, and was whipped from thence to the fleet, and then shut up in a wretched prison, from which he escaped by recantation after enduring its miseries for more than a year. (To be Continued.)
J. N. A.