Befooling and Misleading the People
THERE was printed in London in 1653 a book with the title “A Christian Caveat to the Old and New Sabbatarians,” in which the author discussed, among other things, the claim even then being made “that the Lord’s day, or first day of the week, namely Sunday, may be called the Sabbath.” While defending the observance of Sunday according to the custom of the church and on the authority of the church, he showed that Sunday was not the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. His indictment against those who attempted to establish the Sunday sabbath upon a Scripture foundation is clear and forcible. In the following paragraphs he charges them with befooling and misleading the people:— In vain, therefore, it is, and most absurd, for you our opponents to charge us with befooling and misleading the people. Your own practise, your own doctrines, shall bear witness betwixt us. You who say one while, that God did not appoint the seventh day, the day on which he rested, to be kept holy, but a seventh day, and so one day in seven be observed, no matter which of them; another while, that by this commandment God enjoins us to keep holy the first day of the week on which he began his work of creation—do you not befool and mislead the people? You who (forgetting your own doctrine of the fourth commandment) do teach that the keeping holy the first day of the week, or Lord’s day, was appointed and practised by Christ and his apostles, yet can not produce so much as one example for it, much less a precept—do you not befool and mislead the people? You who infer, because St. Paul, and the disciples at Troas, spent the whole night of the first day of the week in praying, preaching, and heavenly conference, in regard he was to leave them and depart on the morrow; therefore, St. Paul and the disciples at Troas met that night to keep holy the day past; therefore the disciples at Troas met every first day of the week, to keep that day holy; therefore the church at Philippi, the church in Cilicia, and all Christian churches, did then keep holy the first day of the week; therefore all the apostles did constantly keep holy that day; therefore Christ and his apostles appointed the first day of the week to be forever celebrated, instead of the Sabbath—is not this pitiful logic? Do you not befool and mislead the people? You who tell stories of an old sabbath and a new sabbath, a Jewish sabbath and a Christian sabbath, a sabbath of the seventh day and a sabbath of the first day of the week; that so you may slyly fix the name sabbath on the Lord’s day, and then persuade the simple and ignorant that all those texts of Scripture wherein mention is made of the Sabbath day, are intended for the Lord’s day; when indeed to call the Lord’s day the Sabbath, is as senseless as to call Sunday Saturday, or the first day the last day of the week; when throughout the Old and New Testaments we have not the least intimation of any other weekly Sabbath, save the old, Jewish, seventh-day Sabbath; when you yourselves confess that the name Lord’s day is more proper and particular, and less obvious to exception, than the name Sabbath; and that the name Sabbath is in dignity inferior to both Lord’s day and Sunday—do you not befool and mislead the people? You that condemn the yearly observance of Christ’s birthday as heathenish, yet acknowledge this feast to be a constitution of the ancient primitive church—do you not befool and mislead the people? Take ye heed; these are not small matters; consider well with yourselves what it is to stand guilty before God of belying Christ and his apostles and wilfully wrestling the Holy Scriptures. Be advised; take time while time is to repent of those notorious slanders wherewith you have aspersed the ancient approved ways of God’s worship; and let the sincerity of your repentance appear by the speedy abandoning of your unchristian practises and principles; lest the heavy judgment of seducers, to wax worse and worse, fall upon you, and God in the end deliver you up to such strong delusions that you should believe your own lies. The practise of befooling and misleading the people concerning the Sabbath is not yet obsolete, and the methods are much the same now as in the seventeenth century. There is no call for such juggling with the Scriptures when we are willing to accept and obey the plain teaching of the Word.