Worldly Wisdom on the Sabbath.
The opinions and practices of learned men are often presented as an argument in favor of anything popular, and especially Sunday-keeping. But they should certainly never be urged upon a point where the testimony of the Bible is so direct and explicit as it is upon the subject of the Sabbath; nor indeed, upon any point, as the word is directly opposed to any human dependence. God has chosen the weak to confound the mighty, and the foolish to confound the wise. That which is hidden from the wise is revealed unto babes. The Lord says, "Ye have ploughed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies; because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men." Hosea 10: 13. It is perfectly safe to follow only that which is certainly right. But the great and wise of earth are not certainly right, inasmuch as there is no agreement among them. On examining their positions, we are struck with their contradictions and confusion. Were the subject really intricate, we should look for much light to be elicited by so great efforts of so much learning; but where so much confusion exists, while the truth itself is clear and plain, it is to be feared that the effort with many is to evade, rather than to learn, the truth. WM. TYNDALE.—"We be the lords of the Sabbath, and may change it into Monday, or any other day, as we see need; or, we may make every tenth day holy day, only if we see cause why; we may make two every week if it were expedient, or one not enough to teach the people. Neither was there any cause to change it from the Saturday, other than to put a difference between us and the Jews, and lest we should become servants to the day, after their superstition." BISHOP CRANMER.—"The Jews were commanded in the Old Testament to keep the Sabbath-day, and they observed it every seventh day, called the Sabbath, or Saturday; but we Christian men are not bound to such commandments in Moses' law, and therefore we now keep no more the Sabbath or Saturday, as the Jews did, but we observe the Sunday, and some other days, as the magistrates do judge convenient."—Catechism. JOHN BROWN, in his Bible Dictionary, contradicts the above, as follows:— "In honor of his own resurrection, Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. The first day was observed by Christians, as their Sabbath, for almost sixteen hundred years without having their practice so much questioned; nor have any arguments against its observance been since adduced which are worthy of notice." That the following is reasonable and just, all will admit:— W. NEVINS, D. D.—"It is very true that the Sabbath is done away in the practice of many, but I know of no precept doing it away. The subject may have done it away, but the Lawgiver has not. Now I very much question the right of a subject to do away a law. I can show any one who wishes to see it the enactment of the law of the Sabbath. I can tell him when it was enacted, under what circumstances, and in what language. But can any point to the repeal of the law? When was it repealed? Where is the account of it?" Now for repeal, let us substitute change, and apply the above test of a "D. D." to the following from a "LL. D." THOS. DICK, LL. D.—"The celebration of the work of creation is not the only, nor the principal, exercise to which we are called on the Christian Sabbath. Had man continued in primeval innocence, this would probably have constituted his chief employment. But he is now called to celebrate, in conjunction with this exercise, a most glorious deliverance from sin and misery effected by the Redeemer of mankind. And, for this reason, the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh to the first day of the week." DR. DWIGHT, who advocated a change, wrote as follows:— "It could be altered only by divine appointment. The same authority which instituted the Sabbath, appointed, also, the day on which it was to be holden; and no other authority is competent to change either in any degree. If, then, we cannot find in the Scriptures plain and ample proof of the abrogation of the original day, or the substitution of a new one, the day undoubtedly remains in full force and obligation; and is now religiously to be observed by all the race of Adam." Compare this with the following admission:— PROT. EPIS. CHURCH.—"The day is now changed from the seventh to the first day, in commemoration of our Lord's resurrection; but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the church, under the guidance of the apostles."—Explanation of Catechism. Another D. D. writes as follows:— DAVID BOGUE, D. D.—"The fourth commandment does not determine the particular day. That was determined, under the law, by another precept." But a Bishop meets him with the following contradiction:— BISHOP HOPKINS.—"On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it." Now, that there cannot, in these words, be understood any prolepsis, or anticipation, declaring that as done then which was done many ages after, appears plainly, because God is said to sanctify the Sabbath then when he rested; but he rested precisely on the seventh day after the creation; therefore, that very seventh day did God sanctify, and so made it the beginning of all ensuing Sabbaths. No one, who reads the commandment with any care, and respects its authority, can make the following statement:— ENCYCLOPEDIA OF REL. KNOWLEDGE.—"It cannot reasonably be disputed that the command is truly obeyed by the separation of every seventh day from common to sacred purposes, at whatever given time the cycle may commence. The first Sabbath kept in the wilderness was calculated from the first day in which the manna fell, and with no apparent reference to the creation of the world." The following is from equally high authority; and as the Israelites were not required to keep two weekly Sabbaths, and therefore the Sabbath pointed out by the falling of the manna was the same that was enforced by the commandment, the Union contradicts the Encyclopedia. AM. S. S. UNION.—"The commandment which stands fourth in the order of the decalogue is founded on the fact that the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God himself, and that he requires his creatures to keep it holy to him. The commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation."—Bible Dictionary. The following is an acknowledgment that there is no Scripture authority for the change. ADAM CLARKE, D. D.—"It seems to have been by an especial providence that this change has been made and acknowledged all over the Christian world."—On Matt. 12: 8. But a "Pres." meets the "Dr." with the following rebuke:— PRES. HUMPHREY.—"No human authority may expunge a single word from the statutes of Jehovah. It were infinitely less daring for the meanest subject of the mightiest earthly potentate to declare the fundamental laws of the empire null and void, than for man, a worm, to set aside the institutions of his Maker. And yet, Pres. H. dared to expunge the "seventh day" from the law of Jehovah, and insert the "first day" in its stead; thus setting aside the institution of the rest-day of God. Let the following statement of a great historian also be brought to the above test of Pres. H.:— EUSEBIUS.—"All things whatsoever that it was the duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord's day, as more appropriately belonging to the Lord's, because it had a precedence, and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath." DR. SCOTT.—"The change from the seventh [day] to the first appears to have been gradually and silently introduced." Only among the Catholics there is unity of faith of all who teach the observance of first-day. The following testimonies will show their teachings:— DR. TUBERVILLE.—"It (Sunday) is a day dedicated by the apostles to the honor of the Most Holy Trinity, and in memory that Christ our Lord arose from the dead upon Sunday, sent down the Holy Ghost on a Sunday, etc., and therefore is called the Lord's day. It is also called Sunday from the old Roman denomination of Dies Solis, the day of the sun, to which it was sacred."—Douay Catechism. DR. CHALLONER.—"The Scripture does not in particular mention this change of the Sabbath. John speaks of the Lord's day (Rev. 1: 10); but he does not tell us what day of the week this was, much less does he tell us that this day was to take the place of the Sabbath ordained in the commandment. Luke also speaks of the disciples' meeting together to break bread on the first day of the week. Acts 20: 7. And Paul (1 Cor. 16: 2) orders that on the first day of the week the Corinthians should lay by in store what they designed to bestow in charity on the faithful in Judea, but neither the one nor the other tells us that this first day of the week was to be, henceforth, the day of rest, and the Christian Sabbath; so that truly the best authority we have for this is the testimony and ordinance of the church; and therefore, those who pretend to be so religious of the Sunday, whilst they take no notice of other festivals ordained by the same church authority, show that they act by humor and not by reason and religion, since Sunday and holy days all stand upon the same foundation; viz., the ordinance of the church."—Cath. Chris. Instructed. As many reverence the name "Sunday," it may gratify their feelings to learn its origin from the following high authority:— AM. S. S. UNION.—"Sunday was a name given by the heathen to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshiped the sun."—Bible Dictionary. The following is intended as a decisive strike against the Sabbath of the commandment—the seventh day:— PRES. BOARD OF PUBLICATION.—"It is perfectly plain from the several passages we have collated, that the apostle enjoined and observed the first day of the week as sacred to religious assemblies for Christians; and as plain that he reproved as sinful the observance of Jewish times. The term "days," therefore, in the epistle to the Galatians, and "holy day," and "Sabbath days," in that to the Colossians," cannot be understood in any other light than as embracing, if they did not exclusively signify, the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath, which, as the servant of God, he disowned and forbade."—Tract No. 128. But a D. D. meets it with a still more decided rejoinder:— DR. EDWARDS.—"So in the second chapter of Colossians. . . . The sabbaths spoken of are not "the Sabbath" associated with, Thou shalt not commit murder, or adultery, or theft; but the sabbaths associated with meats and drinks, and new moons, which were, indeed, shadows of things to come. But to take what he said of those sabbaths, which were associated by God with ceremonial laws, and which the apostle himself, in this very discourse, associates with them, and apply it, as some have done, to "THE SABBATH" which God associated with moral laws, is wrong."—Sab. Man., pp. 135, 136. But the climax of contradictions is the following:— DR. DWIGHT.—"The blessing, also, and the sanctification were annexed to the Sabbath day, and not to the seventh." GEN. 2: 3.—"And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Comment is needless. Against learning or learned men, as such, I have nothing to say. But if education served men no better purpose on other points than it has many of the writers here quoted on the Sabbath question, it would truly be a vain and useless thing. Their learning, no one will question; of their honesty, I shall say nothing. But I shall leave it for their friends and admirers to decide whether Dr. Bogue was more learned than Bishop Hopkins; or the "Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge" is more reliable than the American Sunday-school Union; or Dr. Brown more reliable than Bishop Cranmer; and whether Dr. Dwight ever read the second chapter of Genesis and the twentieth chapter of Exodus!—Truth Found.