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The True Bible Sabbath

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 4, 1876

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 2, No. 21.

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The True Bible Sabbath.

“And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” Gen. 2:3.
“The Lord hath given you the Sabbath.” Ex. 16:29.
“The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Ex. 20:10.
“The Sabbath was made for man.” Mark 2:27.
“And rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56.

THE SEVENTH DAY OBSERVED BY CHRISTIANS SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS AFTER CHRIST.

Coleman says: “Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigor and solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued.”—Ancient Chris. Eccl., chap. 26, sect. 2.
Edward Brerewood, professor in Gresham College, London, says: “It is commonly believed that the Jewish Sabbath was changed into the Lord’s day by Christian emperors, and they know little who do not know that the Ancient Sabbath did remain and was observed by the eastern churches three hundred years after our Saviour’s passion.”—Treatise on the Sabbath, p. 77.
The American Presbyterian Board of Publication, in tract No. 118, states that “The observance of the seventh-day Sabbath did not cease till it was abolished after the empire became Christian.”
Socrates, A. D. 440, says: “There are various customs concerning assembling; for though all the churches throughout the whole world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath day, yet the Alexandrians and the Romans, from an ancient tradition, refuse to do this.”—Eccl. Hist., p. 289.
M. de la Roque, a French Protestant, says: “It evidently appears that, before any change was introduced, the church religiously observed the Sabbath for many ages; we of consequence are obliged to keep it.”

NO AUTHORITY FOR THE CHANGE.

The National Cyclopedia has the following: “It has been held by many eminent divines that there is not sufficient evidence in the New Testament for such an institution; that the change of day from the seventh to the first day of the week is an insuperable difficulty.”—Nat. Cyc., Art. Sabbath.
Dr. Cox, in his Literature, &c., says: “All who claim any knowledge of the works of the Fathers say that these ancient writers usually, if not invariably, speak of the Lord’s day [Sunday] as an independent institution, of which neither the fourth commandment, nor a primeval Sabbath, is once referred to as the foundation.”—Cox’s Lit., p. 12. See also Heylin, part 2, chap. 2; Taylor’s Life of Jesus, part 2, sec. 12, dis. 10, sec. 24; Baxter’s Practical Works, 13, 386; Cock, 2, 291–303; Holden, p. 334; Bannesman, 130; Neale, 90, 237; Domville, 1, 291–9; Bunsen, Hippolytus, 3, 76.
Alexander Campbell, of the change of the Sabbath, says: “But some say it was changed from the seventh to the first day. Where? when? and by whom? No man can tell. No; it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again; for the reason assigned must be changed before the observance or respect to the reason can be changed! It is old wives’ fables to talk of the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex officio. I think his name is Dr. Antichrist.”—Christian Bap., Vol. 1, p. 44.
The reformers, Luther, Melancthon, and others, speaking of the unwarranted assumptions of the Catholic church, say: “They allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord’s day, contrary to the decalogue, as it appears; neither is there any example more boasted of, than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispenses with one of the ten commandments.”—Augsburg Confession, Art. 28.
Dr. Cox refers to the reformers thus: “They failed to see in the New Testament any of those indications which the puritans were the first to discover, of a transference of the Sabbath to the first day of the week, by Jesus or the apostles.”—Literature, Vol. 1, p. 127.
Dr. Cox says: “The early fathers give no support, direct or indirect, to the notion that the Sabbath had been transferred at all; but it is not surprising that those who wrote after the enactment by Constantine that Sunday should be kept as a Sabbath, were more apt to discover reasons for such observance of it.”—Lit., Vol. 1, p. 257. [Note.]
Dr. Neander says: “Opposition to Judaism introduced the particular festival of Sunday, very early, indeed, into the place of the Sabbath……The festival Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance; and it was far from the intention of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect—far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second century, a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a sin.”—Church Hist., p. 168.

—Valuable Extracts from Eminent Authors.