How the Sabbath Was Changed.
VERY early in the history of the Christian church, those who were converts from among the Gentiles, sought to put down all Jewish rites and customs, including the Sabbath. A letter, written A. D. 325, by Constantine, Emperor of Rome, to the bishops and churches of the world, speaking of the celebration of the Passover, or Easter festival, says:— "It seemed very unsuitable in the celebration of this sacred feast that we should follow the customs of the Jews. . . . Let us have nothing in common with that most hostile people, the Jews. . . . Let us, most honored brethren, withdraw ourselves from that detestable association. . . . It becomes your prudence at all times to take heed, both by diligence and prayer, that the purity of your souls should have nothing in communion, or seem to have accordance with men so utterly depraved."—Socrates, Eccl. Hist., Bohn's edition, pages 37, 38. A hundred years or so before the Christian era, many Jews went into Spain, where they found a home and became prosperous. When James, the son of Zebedee, or some other of the apostles, went there to preach, many of these Jews accepted the gospel. Two or three centuries later, when the Pope of Rome claimed authority over all the churches, and many of the pagans had been brought under her influence, these Jewish converts to Christianity were severely censured for still holding to some of the Jewish customs; and those who continued in them were pronounced heretics and excommunicated from the church. The Jews and Jewish Christians continued to increase in wealth and power till many of the Castilians deemed it a noble alliance to enter into marriage relation with them. This was distasteful to the Church of Rome. The greater the alliance between the Spaniards and Jews, the less the revenues of the Church of Rome. So great did this apostasy from Rome become, and thereby the adoption of Jewish rites and the observance of the Sabbath, that in 1481 she established that terrible organization, the "Inquisition," to compel these people, by the severity of its tortures, to give up those customs and to conform to the Church of Rome. In the "History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century," by Thomas M'Crie, Edinburgh and London, 1856, page 203, may be found the following:— "The tribunal of the Inquisition was first established in the Castle of Triana, at Seville, in 1481. This was commemorated by an inscription over the principal entrance of the castle, which is to be found in Llorente. Another inscription in Spanish records the number of prosecutions which followed, stating that from their commencement against 'Judaizing heretics,' down to the year 1524, more than two thousand had abjured 'the nefarious crime of heresy,' and of the whole more than one thousand had been 'devoted to the fire and burnt.'"—Relacion Historica de Sevilla, Por. D. J. M. M. de E., p. 37. Yes, for the "heresy of Judaizing," keeping the Sabbath instead of Sunday, rejecting from the church all images, and for the simplicity of the apostolic practices; for "this nefarious crime" they were devoted to the fire and death. That we may fully understand what is meant by the term "Judaizing," as used by these inquisitors, we refer to another book, called "Dillon's Account of the Inquisition at Goa," translated from the French; Hull, England, 1812. In seeking to obtain evidence of guilt the Inquisitors by degrees began to urge the victim in this way:— "If thou hast observed the law of Moses, and assembled on the Sabbath day as thou sayest, and thine accusers have seen thee there, as appears to have been the case; to convince us of the sincerity of thy repentance, tell us who are thine accusers, and those who have been with thee at these assemblies."—Page 58. Speaking of one who is condemned to be burned at the Auto da Fe for Judaizing, it is said: . . . "The judges of the holy office might readily ascertain the truth or falsehood of the charge of Judaism, would they take the trouble to investigate the matter without prejudice, and to consider that of an hundred persons condemned to be burnt as Jews there are scarcely four who profess that faith at their death, the rest exclaiming and protesting to their last gasp that they are Christians, and have been so during their whole lives; that they worship our Saviour as their only true God, and that on his mercy and the mercy of his adorable sacrifice alone they repose their hope."—Page 64. Thus we see that the Church of Rome was as much opposed to Sabbath-keeping Christians in the fifteenth century as it was in the time of Constantine, and that it adopted all possible means, even burning at the stake, to get rid of them. No species of heresy was so odious to them as that of Sabbath-keeping.—Light of Home.