Reiterating the Charge by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 4, 1915

Reiterating the Charge

By F. M. W.

CATHOLIC writers never weary of charging Protestants with inconsistency in their religious faith and practice, and indeed they have just grounds for this charge. While the Protestantism of the sixteenth century did much to free itself from the traditions and practices of the Roman Church, there still remained much to be accomplished after Luther and his colaborers passed away. It evidently was God's design that the church of the Reformation should walk in increasing light, and go on from strength to strength and from glory to glory in its experience. But it became satisfied with little truth; it took that truth with more or less admixture of error, and coined it into a creed, and said, “Thus far will we go, but no farther.” In consequence God had to raise up others to carry forward the work so well begun by Luther and his colaborers.

The Christian church today, while rejecting some of the errors of Romanism, holds to so many of the errors of the mother church as to enable Romanists to justly charge Protestants with inconsistency. Romanists seem to take particular delight in doing this regarding

the question of the day of the week which Protestants in common with Catholics observe as the Sabbath. A writer in Truth for December, 1914, a representative Catholic magazine, reiterates this charge in the form of a dialogue between a Protestant and a Catholic. The Catholic charges that while the Protestant holds to what he considers the infallible Word as a guide, yet after all, he does not follow the Word in his religious practice, but rather follows the precepts of the Catholic Church. The Catholic is represented as saying:—

You said that you had your precept for worshiping God on Sunday from the Bible, and quoted the fourth commandment to substantiate your statement. This fourth commandment tells you to keep holy the Sabbath day; but the Sabbath day, as we all know, is simply the Hebrew term for Saturday, on which day only Jews worship God. . . . Now, listen! I intend to demonstrate how you implicitly acknowledge the Catholic Church, whose teachings you affect to despise; deny the Bible, which you ignorantly—no, no, don't protest, ignorantly is the word—profess to uphold; and if these two things be proved, I honestly think that “fool” is a very easy name for you—and proved they can be, very briefly. Now, in the first place, the Bible does not breathe a single word anywhere between its two covers, about worshiping God on Sunday. If you can find it there, you will lighten the heart of many a Lutheran Biblicist. Secondly, the obligation to worship God on Sunday comes from the Catholic Church. She, and she alone, by her unquestioned authority, changed the day of worship from Saturday, the Sabbath of the Jews, the last day in the week, to Sunday, the first, in honor of the resurrection of Christ. Search history from now until doomsday, and you will never find any other tangible reason or authority.

We find this same charge made in a little sixteen-page brochure entitled “Bible Christians,” recently issued by “Rt. Rev. William T. Russell, D. D.,” pastor of St. Patrick's Church, Washington, D. C. He says:—

I shall give one other example of how the Protestant does not follow the Bible. The Bible says, Keep holy the Sabbath day. Now the Sabbath of the Jews, of which the Bible speaks, was Saturday, not Sunday. I defy any one to show me any command in the Bible that warrants a change from Saturday to Sunday. Yet all Protestants observe Sunday; and while breaking the literal law of the Bible, with sublime inconsistency they claim that they take the Bible for their guide.

Church history attests the truthfulness of these statements, and no intelligent Protestant will attempt to deny them. To parry the force of the argument that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord many ingenious and absurd arguments have been made. How much better it would be if all who claim to take the Word of God as the man of their counsel, would cease their quibbling over the plain, positive statements of the divine Word, and fully accept what God says, freed from the rubbish of human tradition and the dross of philosophical reasoning.

After all, it is not the taunts of Romanism which should drive Protestants to change their course. By the Word of God men will stand or fall in the last great day. By the law of liberty they are to be judged, and no juggling with truth, no specious reasoning, will change the words of the Most High when men are brought face to face with that Word in the judgment hour. Let us live with the Word of God as our standard, and through the merits and mercy of the Lord Jesus we shall not fail when judged by that Word at last.

F. M. W.