The Change of the Sabbath.
By C. P. Bollman
THAT the Sabbath has been changed, at least so far as it is possible for men to change what God has established, all are agreed; but when we come to the reason and manner of the change there is not the same unanimity of sentiment. Many Protestants hold that the Sabbath was given only to the Jews, and was never binding upon any but the Jews; and that now there is, properly speaking, no Sabbath. Of course this view involves the abrogation of the decalogue and contradicts the Saviour, who said: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” Others, however, claim that the decalogue is still in full force, but they aver that Christ and his apostles changed the Sabbath; and that whereas the fourth commandment did formerly enjoin the sacred observance of the seventh day, that it now performs the same office for the first day! It was no doubt the utter absurdity of this view which drove the antinomians into the still worse error (if indeed all errors are not equally bad) of holding that the moral law is abolished. But then assaults upon the law of God are sufficiently accounted for by Paul in Romans 8:7, and until men come under the new covenant and have the law of God written in their hearts (Jer. 31:31-34), we must expect to see the carnality of which the apostle speaks cropping out in various ways. But there is another position (the most absurd of all) taken by a few who claim that the first day of the week, as we now have it, is the true seventh day, and that the day anciently observed is really the sixth day of the true week. Of course every fact of history, both sacred and profane, as well as every principle of logic and common sense, is against this view, but that makes no difference to those whose minds are so peculiarly constructed as to be able to entertain such an absurdity. In fact, one who can believe that theory is capable, with a very little effort, of believing almost anything except the truths of God’s word. But still others believe that the change from the seventh to the first day of the week was made this side of Christ and the apostles, but in harmony with the will of God! This position is thus set forth by one of its adherents: “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 on this basis, and on none other, does the Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week, rightly rest.”—Christian at Work, Jan. 8, 1885. In order that none may misunderstand what is meant by “the early Christian church,” we supplement this quotation with another from the same paper under date of Feb. 18, 1886, as follows: “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.” This latter quotation shows clearly that the editors of the Christian at Work do not think that the apostles, nor the church in the days of the apostles, had anything whatever to do with the change; and in this they are manifestly correct, as can be demonstrated by the most reliable historians. We have room in this connection for only a single extract, and until that is controverted (and it never can be), it will not be necessary to cite any other proof. Neander, of whom “McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia” says that he is “universally conceded to be by far the greatest of ecclesiastical historians,” gives this pointed and candid testimony:— “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions 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.”—Rose’s Neander, page 186. This is a plain statement of an undeniable fact; but as truth on this point is not in much demand, an effort has been made to suppress Neander’s testimony, and so it appears only in the first edition of his history. Let no one think that such a historian as Neander, and such a paper as the Christian at Work would make such statements if the facts of history did not compel them to do so. The truth is that the claim made by some that the apostles observed the first day of the week, is so utterly groundless that men of learning do not care to hazard their reputation on statements which even a tyro in history can readily disprove; and so all, except those polemic divines who care more for their particular creeds than they do for the truth, refuse to longer peddle the pious frauds by which Sunday sanctity has so long been sustained. But the fact remains that the change has been made; and if Christ and the apostles did not make it, how was it accomplished? If there is no divine authority for the change what authority is there for it? And if it is not introduced in the days of the apostolic church, when was it brought in? Surely these are proper questions,—questions which history will answer. Yes, history does answer them; and that just as definitely as it answers similar inquiries in regard to other papal festivals and customs, such as Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, prayers for the dead, the worship of saints and images, the adoration of pictures, etc., etc. In reference to the introduction of some of these things, Dowling, in his “History of Romanism,” says:— “There is scarcely anything which strikes the mind of the careful student of ancient ecclesiastical history with greater surprise than the comparatively early period at which many of the corruptions of Christianity, which are embodied in the Romish system, took their rise; yet it is not to be supposed that when the first originators of many of these unscriptural notions and practices planted those germs of corruption,387they anticipated or even imagined they would ever grow into such a vast and hideous system of superstition and error, as is that of popery. . . . Each of the great corruptions of the latter ages took its rise in a manner which it would be harsh to say was deserving of strong reprehension. . . . The worship of images, the invocation of saints, and the superstition of relics, were but expansions of the natural feelings of veneration and affection cherished toward the memory of those who had suffered and died for the truth.”—Book 2, chap. 1, sec. 1. The same might be said of the observance of Sunday, that it was but natural that those who had before regarded it as a day holy to the sun, should, upon becoming Christians, retain some of that reverence; nor is it strange that they should seek to connect the observance of the first day with their new religion, especially as the fact of the resurrection of Christ on that day afforded them an excellent pretext for so doing. And that is just what they did; and it is a significant fact that the practice of keeping Sunday as a Christian festival originated among Gentile Christians—those who had as pagans worshiped the sun upon that day. Recognizing this fact, the North British Review, Vol. 13, p. 409, thus defends the charge:— “That very day was the Sunday of their heathen neighbors and respective countrymen; and patriotism gladly united with expediency in making it at once their Lord's day and their Sabbath. . . . If the authority of the church is to be ignored altogether by Protestants, there is no matter; because opportunity and common expediency are surely argument enough for so ceremonial a change as the mere day of the week for the observance of the rest and holy convocation of the Jewish Sabbath. That primitive church, in fact, was shut up to the adoption of the Sunday, until it became established and supreme, when it was too late to make another alteration; and it was no irreverent nor undelightful thing to adopt it, inasmuch as the first day of the week was their own high day at any rate; so that their compliance and civility were rewarded by the redoubled sanctity of their quiet festival.” But what especially marks the Sunday sabbath as the work of the Roman Church is the fact that it was a Roman Catholic Council that first decreed that it should be kept instead of the ancient Sabbath. Upon this point Rev. Mr. James, in addressing the University of Oxford, says:— “When the practice of keeping Saturday Sabbaths, which had become so general at the close of this [the third] century, was evidently gaining ground in the Eastern church, a decree was passed in the council held at Laodicea [A. D. 364] ‘that members of the church should not rest from work on the Sabbath like Jews, but should labor on that day, and preferring in honor the Lord's day, then if it be in their power should rest from work as Christians.’” William Prynne, famous in the history of English Puritanism, also says: “It is certain that Christ himself, his apostles, and the primitive Christians, for some good space of time, did constantly observe the seventh-day Sabbath, . . . the evangelists and St. Luke in the Acts ever styling it the Sabbath day, . . . and making mention of its . . . solemnization by the apostles and other Christians, . . . It being still solemnized by many Christians after the apostles' times, even till the Council of Laodicea [A. D. 364], as ecclesiastical writers and the twenty-ninth canon of that council testify, which runs thus: ‘Because Christians ought not to Judaize, and to rest in the Sabbath, but to work in that day [which many did refuse at that time to do]. But preferring in honor the Lord's day [there being then a great controversy among Christians which of these two days . . . should have precedence]; if they desired to rest they should do this as Christians. Wherefore if they shall be found to Judaize, let them be accursed from Christ.’ . . . The seventh-day Sabbath was . . . solemnized by Christ, the apostles, and primitive Christians till the Laodicean Council did in a manner quite abolish the observation of it. . . . The Council of Laodicea . . . first settled the observation of the Lord's day, and prohibited . . . the keeping of the Jewish Sabbath under an anathema.” Of the effects of the decree of this council, John Ley, another old English writer, speaks thus: “From the apostles' time until the Council of Laodicea, which was about the year 364, the holy observation of the Jews' Sabbath continued, as may be proved out of many authors; yea, notwithstanding the decree of that council against it.” About the year 468 or 469 A. D., Pope Leo issued the following decree: “WE ORDAIN, according to the true meaning of the Holy Ghost, and of the apostles as thereby directed, that on the sacred day [Sunday] wherein our own integrity was restored, all do rest and cease from labor.”