Position of the Reformers Concerning the Sabbath and First Day.
By John Nevins Andrews
THE great Reformation of the sixteenth century arose from the bosom of the Catholic Church itself. From that church the Sabbath had long been extirpated; and instead of that merciful institution ordained by the divine Lawgiver for the rest and refreshment of mankind, and that man might acknowledge God as his Creator, the papacy had ordained innumerable festivals, which, as a terrible burden, crushed the people to the earth. These festivals are thus enumerated by Dr. Heylyn:-- "These holy days as they were named particularly in Pope Gregory's decretal, so was a perfect list made of them in the Synod of Lyons, A. D. 1244, which being celebrated with a great concourse of people from all parts of Christendom, the canons and decrees thereof began forthwith to find a general admittance. The holy days allowed of there, were these that follow: viz. the feast of Christ's nativity, St. Stephen, St. John the evangelist, the Innocents, St. Sylvester, the circumcision of our Lord, the Epiphany, Easter, together with the week precedent and the week succeeding, the three days in rogation week, the day of Christ's ascension, Whitsunday, with the two days after, St. John the Baptist, the feasts of all the twelve apostles, all the festivities of our Lady St. Lawrence, ALL THE LORD'S DAYS IN THE YEAR, St. Michael the Archangel, All Saints, St. Martin's, the wakes, or dedication of particular churches, together with the feasts of such topical or local saints which some particular people had been pleased to honor with a day particular amongst themselves. On these and every one of them, the people were restrained as before was said from many several kinds of work, on pain of ecclesiastical censures to be laid on them which did offend, unless on some emergent causes, either of charity or necessity they were dispensed with for so doing. . . . Peter de Aliaco, Cardinal of Cambray, in a discourse by him exhibited to the council of Constance [A. D. 1416] made public suit unto the fathers there assembled, that there might [be] a stop in that kind hereafter; as also that excepting Sundays and the greater festivals it might be lawful for the people, after the end of divine service, to attend their business; the poor especially, as having little time enough on the working days to get their living. But these were only the expressions of well-wishing men. The popes were otherwise resolved, and did not only keep the holy days which they found established, in the same state in which they found them, but added others daily as they saw occasion. . . . Thus stood it as before I said, both for the doctrine and the practice, till men began to look into the errors and abuses in the Roman Church with a more serious eye than before they did." Such was the state of things when the reformers began their labors. That they should give up these festivals and return to the observance of the ancient Sabbath, would be expecting too much of men educated in the bosom of the Romish Church. Indeed, it ought not to surprise us that, while they were constrained to strike down the authority of these festivals, they should nevertheless retain the most important of them in their observance. The reformers spoke on this matter as follows: The Confession of the Swiss churches declares that,463"The observance of the Lord's day is founded not on any commandment of God, but on the authority of the church; and, that the church may alter the day at pleasure." We further learn that,
"In the Augsburg Confession which was drawn up by Melancthon [and approved by Luther], to the question 'What ought we to think of the Lord's day?' it is answered that the Lord's day, Easter, Whitsuntide, and other such holy days, ought to be kept because they are appointed by the church, that all things may be done in order; but that the observance of them is not to be thought necessary to salvation, nor the violation of them, if it be done without offense to others, to be regarded as a sin." Zwingle declared "that it was lawful on the Lord's day, after divine service, for any man to pursue his labors." Beza taught that "no cessation of work on the Lord's day is required of Christians." Bucer goes further yet, "and doth not only call it a superstition, but an apostasy from Christ to think that working on the Lord's day, in itself considered, is a sinful thing." And Cranmer, in his Catechism, published in 1548, says:--
"We now keep no more the Sabbath on Saturday as the Jews do; but we observe the Sunday, and certain other days as the magistrates do judge convenient, whom in this thing we ought to obey." Tyndale said:--
"As for the Sabbath, we be lords over the Sabbath, and may yet change it into Monday, or into any other day as we see need, or may make every tenth day a holy day, only if we see cause why." It is plain that both Cranmer and Tyndale believed that the ancient Sabbath was abolished, and that Sunday was only a human ordinance which it was in the power of the magistrates and the church lawfully to change whenever they saw cause for so doing. And Dr. Hessey gives the opinion of Zwingle respecting the present power of each individual church to transfer the so-called Lord's day to another day, whenever necessity urges, as for example, in harvest time. Thus Zwingle says:--
"If we would have the Lord's day so bound to time that it shall be wickedness to transfer it to another time, in which resting from our labors equally as in that, we may hear the word of God, if necessity haply shall so require, this day so solicitously observed, would obtrude on us a ceremony. For we are no way bound to time, but time ought so to serve us, that it is lawful, and permitted to each church, when necessity urges (as is usual to be done in harvest time), to transfer the solemnity and rest of the Lord's day, or Sabbath, to some other day." Zwingle could not, therefore, have considered Sunday as a divinely appointed memorial of the resurrection, or, indeed, anything but a church festival.