CHURCH AND STATE by John Norton Loughborough

The Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 20, 1879

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 54, No. 21

CHURCH AND STATE.

By John Norton Loughborough

While an effort is being made in the United States to unite church and state, and to enforce, as an entering wedge in that effort, a more strict observance of Sunday, here in Great Britain the people have had a religion supported by law till a strong tide of reaction has set in. One of the points of attack is to get some modification of the strict Sunday law. Quite a contest on this subject is going on in various parts of the kingdom, and in Southampton in particular.

In the interest of the temperance cause, cocoa-rooms were opened, where the working class could get refreshments, rest, and the privilege of a reading-room, without being continually exposed to the stare of liquor bottles. Sermons were preached and scores of articles written against opening these rooms on Sunday, even at the same hours that the publicans had the privilege of selling their liquors.

Next a tramway was completed to various parts of the town, and there was a stir again as to whether the tramcars should be allowed to run on Sunday. Finally the company decided to run their cars from and after two o’clock on Sundays.

No sooner was this matter quieted than Canon Wilberforce, rector of St. Mary’s church, opened the deanery gardens on Sunday afternoons from three o’clock to half-past four, for the Hampshire band to play religious airs. Six or seven thousand people come together in the gardens each Sunday, and “behaved with the greatest decorum,” said witnesses sent to view; yet the Canon has been denounced as anything but good in consequence of this effort, on seven consecutive Sundays, to get up something to draw the people from the public houses and drinking saloons.

Two pamphlets have been published to bolster up the Sunday institution, and these were thoroughly exposed in the Mid-Weekly Hampshire Independent of this week. In this article the writer shows that if they wish to urge a Sabbath on the ground of the fourth commandment, they should take the very day enforced by that commandment, and not try to transfer that law to another day. He quotes two English authorities on this subject which are so good that I copy them. The first is from the learned Dr. Arnold, and the second from Archbishop Whately, both of the established church. Dr. Arnold’s conclusion on the Sunday question was this:—

“I believe that it is generally agreed among Christians that the Jewish law, so far as it was Jewish and not moral, is at an end; and it is assuming the whole point at issue to assume that the ten commandments are all moral. If that were so, it seems to me quite certain that the Sabbath would have been kept on its own proper day; for, if the commandment were still binding, I do not see where would be the power to make any alteration in its enactments. But it is also true, no doubt, that the Lord’s day was kept from time immemorial in the church as a day of festival, and, connected with the notion of festival, the abstinence from worldly business naturally followed. A weekly religious festival, in which worldly business was suspended, bore such a resemblance to the Sabbath, that the analogy of the Jewish law was often urged as a reason for its observance; but, as it was not considered to be the Sabbath, but only a day in some respects like it, so the manner of its observance varied from time to time, and was made more or less strict on grounds of religious expediency, without reference in either case to the authority of the fourth commandment. An ordinance of Constantine prohibits other work, but leaves agricultural labor free. An ordinance of Leo I. forbids agricultural labor also. On the other hand, our own reformers (see Cranmer’s ‘Visitation Articles’) required the clergy to teach the people that they grievously offended God if they abstained from working on Sundays in harvest time; and the statute of Edward VI., 5th and 6th, chap. iii., expressly allows all persons to work, ride, or follow their calling, whatever it may be, in case of need. And the preamble of this statute, which was undoubtedly drawn up with the full concurrence of the principal Reformers, if not actually written by them, declares in the most express terms that the observance of all religious festivals is left to the discretion of the church, and therefore it proceeds to order that all Sundays, with many other days named, should be kept holy. And the clear language of this statute—together with the total omission of the duty of keeping the Sabbath in the Catechism, although it professes to collect our duty toward God from the first four commandments—proves to my mind that in using the fourth commandment in the church service, the Reformers meant it to be understood as enforcing on us simply the duty of worshiping God and devoting some portion of time to his honor; the particular portion so devoted, and the manner of observing it, being points to be fixed by the church.—Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D. D., vol. ii. 5th edition.”

Archbishop Whately, in his “Remains of Bishop Copleston,” after remarking that on the question of the Sabbath there was nothing of Copleston’s views extant in print, but he had had much conversation with him on the subject, in which their views coincided, adds (page 52, et seq., edition of 1854):—

“All persons, indeed, even tolerably acquainted with the Bible and Prayer Book, are aware that in neither is the Lord’s day ever called the Sabbath. But many are not aware of the extremely recent origin of what Calvin called the ‘Anglican figment,’—the tradition (nearly unknown for the first fifteen centuries or more) of the commandment respecting the Sabbath having been transferred by the authority of the apostles from the seventh day of the week to the first; though, even now, in all Latin documents (such as the Parliamentary proceedings) Dies Sabbati always means Saturday (as also Sabbato in Italian and Sabbado in Spanish). This is not the place for entering on a discussion of the questions which I have fully treated of elsewhere. I will only remark, therefore, that though I do not differ from those who maintain what is called the Sabbatarian view as to the duty of observing the Lord’s day, but only as to the grounds of it, it is no difficult matter for an unscrupulous disputant to confound these two questions together. . . .

“If any one when asserting the binding authority on Christians of the fourth commandment means only (which is the explanation given in the book commonly called Cranmer’s Catechism) to assert the duty generally of observing Christian festivals, and that the Lord’s day may be called the Sabbath figuratively by the same sort of analogy by which the eucharist may be called the passover, this is a doctrine in itself unobjectionable. But it is surely dangerous to hold or to teach as something expedient for the influencing of the vulgar that a (supposed) tradition may be allowed to supersede Scripture, or that we are strictly obeying an injunction to observe the seventh day of the week as the seventh, and in memory of the creation, by observing instead the first day as the first in memory of the resurrection. There is no greater or more unwarrantable liberty taken with a divine command, than in any unauthorized modification of precepts acknowledged to be binding. Some, again, will not be unlikely to feel a general suspicion of the sincerity of teachers who they will have reason to think are practicing a kind of pious fraud for the supposed benefit of ignorant hearers by inducing these to think, when they themselves know better, that the fourth commandment is binding on Christians, and that its obligation was transferred by apostolic authority to the first day of the week and to the commemoration of a different event. For he who is reasonably suspected of a pious fraud must not wonder nor complain if he finds himself doubted on points where he is really sincere. The only rational and the only safe alternative is either to observe the fourth commandment exactly as it was given, or else to acknowledge that this as well as the rest of the ceremonial law is not binding on Christians.”

Last week the common council of Manchester decided to open their reading room on Sunday afternoon, while London, by a strong vote, decided to keep the Guild Hall library closed. They leave the dram-shops open at the same hours. They feared opening the library to have promiscuous reading upon Sunday would not be proper. The query in my mind is, Are liquor-selling and dram-drinking at the same hours proper? So the contest goes on. Candid persons are thinking. Truth will reach some minds as the result of all this.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.