The Sabbath Through the Ages
By Charles L. Taylor
XII. The Change of the Sabbath as Proved by History
An Indictment and Confession
[Our issue of November 17 contained the article on the Sabbath entitled “The Change of the Sabbath as Indicated by Prophecy.” In that article were given fourteen different reasons for regarding the seventh day as still the Sabbath. It was also shown that prophecy predicted that an apostate power would arise, which would think to change the times and laws of God (See Dan. 7:25), and that this change was wrought by the Papacy according to its own acknowledgment. This article notes some of the testimony of history.—Ed. S. of T.] By an indictment of Heaven, returned several centuries ago, the defendant, Rev. Mr. Papacy, is charged with having wilfully, deliberately, maliciously, and premeditatedly made erasures and changes in the fundamental law of the kingdom of God, all such erasures and changes having been absolutely contrary to the well-known and expressed will of the Lawmaker. It is also further charged that said defendant has had traitorous designs upon said kingdom, planning both to overthrow and supplant it by subtle, ingenious reasoning and covert attack. Is the defendant guilty, or not guilty?” “If it please your Honor, I, the Rev. Mr. Papacy, do hereby plead guilty to said indictment, affirming that in whole and in part said charge is absolutely correct. And I further plead that which the court and community ought to know to be true; namely, that I consider myself highly honored in thus attacking the vital laws of Jehovah, and especially do I claim it an honor to have completely nullified the commandment requiring the observance of the seventh day.” The foregoing charge and accompanying confession of guilt are both plain and to the point. It would scarcely seem necessary, therefore, to continue the trial, and by introduction of testimony seek to prove the confession of the culprit. But in this Sabbath matter that is exactly what conditions require. It is a case where the jury of mankind seeks to repudiate the voluntary confession of the criminal, and to place the responsibility of the artful and destructive changes in God’s law upon the shoulders of the Lawmaker Himself. In other words, men are unwilling to accept the claim that the Papacy changed the Sabbath, and are arguing that somewhere, at some time, somehow Jesus Christ made the change from Sabbath to Sunday. The question is most serious; so let us call for the proof that the Papacy does tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” when it solemnly tho boastfully affirms that “the Catholic Church changed the day from Saturday to Sunday.” History, bring your witnesses. In order to a real understanding of the history of the Sabbath change, to see clearly the why and the how of that which was actually done, the attention is again called to the rapid degeneration of the church of Christ from the days of the apostles onward. Surrounded as they were by a great heathen, sun-worshiping world, the people of God early allowed themselves to be influenced by the spirit and customs of the age; the bars were let down, pagan philosophers came in and substituted Platonism for the Bible, and in harmony with that philosophy all manner of pagan beliefs and practices ere long came into vogue. Speaking of this very matter and of those very times, Mosheim says, “WHEN ONCE THIS PASSION FOR PHILOSOPHIZING had taken possession of the minds of the Egyptian teachers and certain others, and HAD BEEN GRADUALLY DIFFUSED by them in various directions THROUGHOUT THE CHURCH, THE HOLY AND BEAUTIFUL SIMPLICITY OF EARLY TIMES VERY QUICKLY DISAPPEARED, AND WAS FOLLOWED BY A MOST REMARKABLE AND DISASTROUS ALTERATION IN NEARLY THE WHOLE SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLINE.”—Commentaries, Cent. 2, Sec. 33. Dr. Killen, a Presbyterian theologian and teacher of church history, speaks to the same point, as follows: “In the interval between the days of the apostles and Constantine the Christian commonwealth changed its aspect. The bishop of Rome—a personage unknown to the writers of the New Testament—meanwhile rose into prominence, and at length took precedence of all other churchmen. RITES AND CEREMONIES OF WHICH NEITHER PAUL NOR PETER EVER HEARD, CREPT SILENTLY INTO USE, AND THEN CLAIMED THE RANK OF DIVINE INSTITUTIONS.”—“The Ancient Church.” This testimony is most striking and important, because it puts into a nutshell the whole question of the Papacy and the Sunday. Notice again how it is stated. First came the decline in the church; next, the rise of the bishop of Rome and his exaltation over all other ministers; and third, the creeping in of pagan customs, of which, as we shall see, Sunday was the all-important one. And do not forget that the bishop of Rome was, from the first, THE ONE who put the Sunday forward. With a fallen church and an ambitious ministry, it was found an easy matter to adopt the observance of the first day; because, so many being pagan at heart, the pagan day and its festivities appealed strongly to their natures. Moreover, a desire for large membership and greater popularity led the bishops to consider the propriety of adopting the Sunday as a day for religious service, that by so doing they might get into closer touch with those whom, tho pagans, they sought to bring into the church. Thus we read: “The Lord’s day [Sunday] had no command that it should be sanctified, but it was left to God’s people to pitch on this or that day for the public worship. And being taken up and made a day of meeting for religious exercises, yet for three hundred years there was no law to bind them to it.”—Morer. Indeed, it is preeminently true that there was no law either human or divine for more than three centuries to bind men to the observance of Sunday. “Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or His apostles.”—Domville. The first actual law in favor of the Sunday was issued by the emperor Constantine in the year 321 A.D., and was as follows: “Let all judges and townspeople, and all artisans, REST ON THE VENERABLE DAY OF THE SUN. But let those who are situated in the country freely and at full liberty attend to the cultivation of their fields; because it often happens that no other day is so fit for sowing corn or planting vines; lest by neglecting the proper occasion, they should lose the benefits granted by divine bounty.” At the time Constantine made this Sunday decree, he was closely associated with the church and its religious teachers, and particularly with the bishop of Rome, who at this time had come to occupy the leading place among his fellow bishops, and to be a prominent political factor in the workings of the state. And as the bishop, so was the church. She had become so paganized in belief and practise that she actually divorced herself from God, and formed an idolatrous and adulterous connection with the empire. Church and state were united. Constantine himself presided at church councils, and, under the bishops, largely directed the church work, tho it is a notorious fact that he was a heathen sun-worshiper until the day of his death. See Hawes’s “Church History.” That first Sunday law, of 321 A.D., was made by the emperor to satisfy the demands of the clergy, who were now insisting that “the wild solar holiday of all pagan times” should be made a permanent part of the church practise. And it should be noticed that this was exactly what the law called for,—rest upon “THE VENERABLE DAY OF THE SUN.” And Gibbon, the great historian, observes that “Constantine styles the Lord’s day dies solis (day of the sun), a name which could not offend the ears of his pagan subjects.”—“Decline and Fall,” chapter 20. The law was passed to please the heathen within and without the church. Sunday-Sacredness Obtaining Credence
From the time of Constantine forward the church and state combination, with the bishop of Rome always in the lead, began urgently to put forth the idea of Sunday sacredness. Heylyn, a noted English scholar, testifies, “We shall find both emperors and councils very frequent in ordering things about this day and the service of it.” One of the first and most striking things in the exaltation of the day, was accomplished by Sylvester, bishop or pope of Rome during Constantine’s reign, who, by virtue of his “apostolical authority,” bestowed upon Sunday the title of “Lord’s day.” Sunday was thus for the first time, and BY OFFICIAL ACT OF ROME, given a Sabbatical character, given the name which truly belonged only to the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. “To Constantine and Sylvester, therefore, the advocates of first-day observance are greatly indebted. The one elevated it as a heathen festival to the throne of the empire; . . . the other changed it into a Christian institution, giving it the dignified appellation of ‘Lord’s day.’”—“History of the Sabbath,” by Andrews. The Change Wrought by Bishops
In close connection with the acts of Constantine and the pope, there was advanced by Eusebius, another bishop, the argument that Christ changed the day! Never before had such a doctrine been heard from any writer or teacher; and certainly Eusebius gave no scripture to support HIS claim. The closing words of his sophistical production deny the claim and show the real authors of the change: “All things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these WE HAVE TRANSFERRED TO THE LORD’S DAY [meaning Sunday], as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has a precedence and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath.” The church, through both emperor and pope, had now spoken, and Sunday was established. True, there were those all along who protested mightily against the whole wicked thing; but they were only a small minority, and the movement to dethrone completely the true Sabbath was continually accelerated. Church councils framed aggressive measures; and “by a law of the year 386, those older changes effected by the emperor Constantine were more vigorously enforced, and in general, CIVIL TRANSACTIONS OF EVERY KIND on Sunday were strictly forbidden. Whoever transgressed was to be considered, in fact, as guilty of sacrilege.”—“Neander’s Church History,” Volume 2. If any statement of man ever made regarding THE TIME when the Sabbath was changed, is absolutely correct, that of Domville is certainly the one. Note particularly what he says: “CENTURIES of the Christian era PASSED AWAY BEFORE THE SUNDAY WAS OBSERVED BY THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AS A SABBATH. HISTORY DOES NOT FURNISH US WITH A SINGLE PROOF or indication that it was at any time so observed PREVIOUS TO THE SABBATICAL EDICT OF CONSTANTINE.” The confession of the criminal is conclusively proved. The so-called church of Christ, fallen and spiritually debauched, under the leadership of the bishop of Rome and in league with the pagan empire of Constantine, did transfer the Sabbath to Sunday. This is the concurrent testimony of a large number of most reliable witnesses. And every candid person who has made a careful study of the church history of those early centuries, now knows that the change of the Sabbath took place just as has been indicated. The claim that Christ or His apostles changed the law of the Sabbath, has long since been abandoned by all real scholars. As the “Christian at Work,” in its issue of January, 1884, has said, “We hear less than we used to about the apostolic origin of the present Sunday observance, and for the reason that while the Sabbath and Sabbath rest are woven into the warp and woof of Scripture, IT IS NOW SEEN, AS IT IS ADMITTED, THAT WE MUST GO TO LATER THAN APOSTOLIC TIMES FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.” Sunday is certainly one of those pagan things, spoken of by Dr. Killen, which crept into the church and “then claimed the rank of divine institutions.” Dear friend, if it be true—and it is—that “the selection of Sunday, thus changing the particular day designated in the fourth commandment, was brought about by the GRADUAL CONCURRENCE of the early Christian church, and [rests] ON THIS BASIS, AND NONE OTHER” (“Christian at Work”); if it be true—and it is—that “NO LAW OR PRECEPT appears to have been given BY CHRIST OR THE APOSTLES, either for the ABROGATION of the Jewish Sabbath, or the INSTITUTION OF THE LORD’S DAY [Sunday], or the SUBSTITUTION of the FIRST for the SEVENTH day of the week” (Lyman Coleman, in “Ancient Christianity Exemplified”); if it be true—and it is—that the PAPACY WAS the power that made the substitution, is it not your duty and mine resolutely to assert our Protestant principles and stand true to the Bible? Shall we follow the example of our Lord (Luke 4:16), or anti-Christ? “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”