Some Historical Facts Worth Remembering
THE SABBATH AND THE SUNDAY. NO. 2.
Some Historical Facts Worth Remembering.
Last week we gave twenty-five important facts relative to the Sabbath and the Sunday, with approximate dates during the time covered by sacred history. In this list we wish to recall two great facts and continue the list during the Christian era. The facts which we wish our readers to recall are these: (1) At the time when our Lord came to earth all the faithful people of God were seventh-day Sabbath-keepers; (2) all the heathen world were sun-worshipers, honoring the sun and observing times and seasons connected with it. 26. Jesus instructed his disciples to regard the Sabbath as late as the destruction of Jerusalem. They were to pray that at that time they should not be forced to flee on the Sabbath day. Matt. 24:20. A.D. 70. 27. The apostle to the gentiles observed the Sabbath day. He “committed nothing against the people, or customs of our fathers.” Acts 28:17. A.D. 62. 28. The early Christians in Judea observed the seventh-day Sabbath.—Chambers’ Encyclopedia, Lippincott & Co., 1876, vol. 8, article “Sabbath,” p. 400. 29. This was true not only of Jewish but of Greek converts, who followed the customs of the Judean Christians. Acts 17:1-4; 1 Thes. 2:14. A.D. 54. 30. This was not strange, for in all the cities of the Roman Empire were Jews who observed the Sabbath. To these James refers when he gives instruction to gentile Christians. Acts 15:21. A.D. 52. 31. Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, an early “father,” asserts in his work on “Heresies” (book 4, chap. 15, sec. 1), that the Ten Commandments are “natural precepts, which from the beginning He [God] had implanted in mankind, . . . which if any one does not observe he has no salvation.” In the same book (chap. 16, sec. 4) he says that “the words of the Decalogue remain permanently with us, receiving, by means of His [Christ’s] advent in the flesh, extension and increase, but not abrogation.” This author lived A.D. 115–202. 32. Tertullian, another “father,” in his work De Anima (chapter 37), calls the Ten Commandments “the rules of our regenerate life.” In speaking of Christ’s regard of the Sabbath, the same author says in the same chapter, that Christ imparted to “the Sabbath day itself, which from the beginning had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father, an additional sanctity by his own beneficent action.” A.D. 200. The same writer says of Christ: “He was called ‘Lord of the Sabbath,’ because he maintained the Sabbath as his own institution.” “Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath; he kept the law thereof.”—Against Marcion, book 4, chapter 12. A.D. 200. 33. Origen, in Homily 23, condemns the Jewish or Pharisaical mode of Sabbath observance and declares how Christians should keep the Sabbath. “On the Sabbath day all worldly labor ought to be abstained from, . . . give yourself up to spiritual exercises, repairing to church, attending to sacred reading and instruction, thinking of celestial things, . . . looking to things . . . future and invisible; this is the observance of the Christian Sabbath.” This is the first instance where the expression “Christian Sabbath” is used, and that refers to a proper observance of the only day known as the Sabbath, the seventh day. About A.D. 250. 34. Archelaus, bishop of Carrha in Mesopotamia, in his “Disputation with Manes,” says: “Again, as to the assertion that the Sabbath has been abolished, we deny that He has abolished it plainly; for he was himself also Lord of the Sabbath.” A.D. 278. 35. The Apostolical Constitutions (book 2, sec. 4, par. 36) says: “Thou shalt observe the Sabbath, on account of Him who ceased from His work of creation, but ceased not from His work of providence; it is a rest for meditation of the law, not of idleness of the hands.” This shows that the Sabbath was then generally observed. The time covered by the Constitutions was from A.D. 200–350. 36. The learned Giesler (Eccl. History, vol. 1, chapter 2, sec. 30), says that “while the Jewish Christians of Palestine retained the whole Mosaic law, and consequently the Jewish festivals, the gentile Christians observed also the Sabbath and the Passover [See 1 Cor. 5:6–8], with reference to the last scenes of Jesus’ life, but without Jewish superstition.” This is in harmony with Origen’s instruction. See No. 33. 37. In speaking of the first day, Lyman Coleman (Ancient Christianity Exemplified, chap. 26, sec. 2) says: “During the early ages of the church it [the Sunday3] was never entitled ‘the Sabbath,’ this word being confined to the seventh day of the week, the Jewish Sabbath, which, as we have already said, continued to be observed for several centuries [In the same section he says, ‘Down even to the fifth century.’], by the converts to Christianity.” 38. “The Sabbath of the seventh day . . . was religiously observed in the East church three hundred years and more after our Saviour’s passion. That church being the great part of Christendom, and having the apostles’ doctrine and example to instruct them, would have restrained it if it had been deadly.” Thus writes Prof. Edward Brerewood, of Gresham College, London, a member of the Church of England, in a work entitled, “Learned Treatise of the Sabbath,” p. 77, Oxford, 1631. 39. But the leaven of apostasy was rapidly corrupting the whole mass. It had proceeded so far that the Council of Laodicea (canon 29) pronounced a curse upon those who continued to rest on that day. “The Council of Laodicea,” says Prynne (Dissertation on the Lord’s day Sabbath, pp. 44, 1633), “prohibited the keeping of the Sabbath under an anathema.” This council was held in A.D. 364. 40. Says Peter Heylyn, D.D. (Hist. of the Sabbath, part 2, chap. 2, sec. 12, London, 1636): “The Saturday is called amongst them [the writers of the Christ-Church] by no other name than that which formerly it had, the Sabbath. So that whenever, for a thousand years and upwards, we meet with Sabbatum in any writer of what name soever, it must be understood of no day but Saturday.” These testimonies show conclusively that the Sabbath was observed in the early church down to the fourth and fifth centuries. In our next we will give some historical facts with reference to Sunday and the apostasy.