Sunday Lord's Day, Papal.
By Uriah Smith
1. The whole theological world are assiduously taught that the first day of the week has been called the Lord's day, and unanimously observed as the Sabbath by Christians ever since the days of Christ. This claim is not sustained by either the Bible or history. Rev. 1:10, is the only scripture that is brought forward to prove that the term "Lord's day" had become the familiar title of the first day of the week in the days of the apostles. There are a number of objections to such an application of this scripture:— First. John does not say that it was the first day of the week which he here calls the Lord's day, nor does he make the least statement from which such a conclusion can be inferred. That point has to be wholly assumed. Secondly. As we look back of the times of John's vision on Patmos, into the history of Sunday with Christ and the apostles, we find no intimation that they regarded it as the Lord's day; for Christ never took the day into his lips, and the apostles speak of it only eight times, and uniformly call it the first day of the week. Thirdly. John wrote his gospel two years after his Revelation (see Thoughts on Revelation, p. 28); and in his gospel he twice speaks of the first day of the week, and calls it, not Lord's day, as he would have done if it had come to be the general name for that day when his Revelation was given, but simply "first day of the week." Fourthly. The seventh day of the week is in the most express manner called God's holy day. It is the one day of the seven which he has reserved to himself. And the Son of man, through whom the worlds were made, John 1:3; Heb. 1:2, and who was consequently associated with his Father in the institution of the Sabbath at the beginning, expressly styles himself the Lord of the Sabbath day. Mark 2:28. Therefore we say that the Lord's day of Rev. 1:10, is the seventh day of the week, not the first. No ecclesiastical writer previous to A. D. 194 gives the title of Lord's day to the first day of the week. The so-called epistle of Barnabas is spurious. The letter of Pliny to Trajan speaks of a stated day, but does not specify which day of the week it was. The epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians is itself a forgery; and the passage which is made to speak of Sunday as the Lord's day has been interpolated into that forgery. Justin Martyr, A. D. 140, does not use the term Lord's day, as is so often asserted. Clement of Alexandria, A. D. 194, uses the term ambiguously, perhaps referring to the first day of the week. Victor, bishop of Rome, A. D. 196, attempted to honor the day by an effort to have Easter uniformly celebrated on that day. Tertullian, A. D. 200, furnishes the first evidence of abstinence from labor on that day. In A. D. 321, Constantine made a law in behalf of the "venerable day of the sun," which was the first Sunday law. But this was a pagan edict, Constantine not yet having become even nominally Christian. At his so-called conversion, two years later, in A. D. 323, this law for Sunday as a heathen festival, being unrepealed, was made use of by Sylvester, bishop of Rome, now reckoned in the line of popes, to enforce Sunday observance as a Christian institution. These are the indubitable facts of history, authenticated by a reference to the original authorities in the History of the Sabbath, by J. N. Andrews, to which the reader is particularly referred. 2. An objection. The papacy was not fully established till A. D. 538, more than two hundred years after Constantine's law. How, then, can Sunday be called an institution of popery, and the change be attributed to the little horn, according to the prophecy of Daniel, which is a symbol of the papal power? Let it be remembered that Sunday, as a subject of prophecy, is Sunday as a Christian institution. The question, then, is, What power or influence established this observance in the Christian church? Not Constantine; for his legislation referred to it as a heathen festival; although he furnished a means which was shrewdly manipulated by pope Sylvester in enforcing it among Christians. But it was brought in by the working of that influence which finally resulted in the establishment of the papacy. The papacy existed in embryo long before Constantine's time. The mystery of iniquity worked even in Paul's day, 2 Thess. 2:7, waiting only the removal of the restraining influence of paganism, to reveal, in its full strength, the papacy before the world. The root of this monstrous system of evil runs back far into the centuries before its open development, like the tree which sends its tap-root far down into the earth beyond the sight of the observer. Through that root the Sunday has found its way into the professed church of Christ; and on that tree it appears as one of the most characteristic fruits. As an institution, Sunday is both pagan and papal; as a rival of the Sabbath of the Lord, it is wholly papal.