Untitled article by Robert F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · July 23, 1867

BY WHAT AUTHORITY DO YOU CALL SUNDAY THE SABBATH?

By Robert F. Cottrell

Those who would speak the truth should call things by their right names. If this rule is neglected, falsehood, and not the truth will be the result. If I assert that Columbus was the first President of the United States; that after leading successfully the American armies through the revolutionary struggle, he was unanimously chosen to the highest office in the gift of a grateful people, I utter a falsehood, only because I have used the wrong name. In like manner when you say that this or that took place on the Sabbath, though the circumstances mentioned really took place, but on another day, the assertion is false for the same reason.

Now the seventh day, or Saturday, is the only weekly Sabbath of the whole Bible—the New Testament as well as the Old. Those who claim that the first day of the week, or Sunday, is called the Sabbath in the New Testament, proclaim either their ignorance or dishonesty. The writer of the "Acts of the Apostles," writing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, repeatedly calls the seventh day, the day on which the Jews assembled in their synagogues, the Sabbath without any explanation or qualification. This was many years after the introduction of the gospel dispensation. If the Holy Spirit called the seventh day of the week the Sabbath in recording the events of Paul's missions to the Gentiles, what ought Christians to call it now? If we give the title of Sabbath to a day to which the Scriptures never gave it, do we not contradict that Record which always gave it to the seventh, and to no other? Can we do this and speak in harmony with that Record? As far from it as it would be from the facts of American history to call Benedict Arnold the father of our country, “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Besides the fact that the Bible knows nothing of the first day as the Sabbath, no writer whatever, for the first thousand years of the Christian era, ever applied the title to the Sunday. Heylyn says of the term Sabbath in the ancient church: “The Saturday is called amongst them by no other name than that which formerly it had, the Sabbath. So that whenever for a thousand years and upward, we meet with Sabbatum in any writer of what name soever, it must be understood of no other day but Saturday.”

This testimony is corroborated by other witnesses, and cannot be successfully gainsayed. Thus there is no evidence that Sunday was ever called the Sabbath for the first thousand years of the history of the Christian church. When did it become the Sabbath? Are you satisfied with a Sabbath that cannot be traced back to within a thousand years before Christ? a Sabbath that can be traced into the “dark ages” of the reign of popery, but no further? Would it not be better to honor that day with the title of Sabbath which all inspiration and the Christian church for a thousand years called by that sacred name?

Amid all the controversy concerning the observance of days in the Christian church for the first ten centuries, no advocate of the first day ever thought of calling it the Sabbath. Is not this strange seeing it was destined to become the “Christian Sabbath?” But its early advocates never claimed it was the Sabbath, any more than secessionists, in the late rebellion, claimed that Jefferson Davis was the President of the United States. Had the rebellion succeeded as well as did the apostasy foretold by the prophets and apostles, Davis might have assumed the title of President of the United States, as Sunday in the midnight of the dark ages assumed the title of Sabbath, a title which it never claimed before. By slow degrees the usurper advanced his pretensions, but never thought of claiming rank with the “ten words” of the Decalogue till the great papal apostasy, the power that thought to “change times and laws,” had prepared men's minds by darkening counsel and perverting the right ways of the Lord, to accept a human tradition for divine truth.

Now, dear friend, when you are tempted to call the first day of the week the Sabbath (as some seem to do in order to make it such,), please stop and reflect concerning the authority by which you do it. And remember too that as it is wrong to bear false witness against your neighbor, by denying him his real virtues and meritorious character, and giving them to another that is utterly unworthy, so it is a crime to bear false witness against the day which God blessed and sanctified, by taking the sacred title with which he adorned it, and giving it to another which has no just claim to it. Never abuse the sacred term Sabbath by applying it to that to which it never was applied by its divine Author. If you would tell the truth, you must call things by their right names.

R. F. COTTRELL.