"WHO CHANGED THE SABBATH?"
By C. P. B.
This question has been already answered; for it has been shown that the displacement of the ancient Sabbath, and the introduction of the Sunday in its stead, was the work of the great apostasy now known as the Papacy. But it is objected by some that, as the Sabbath was changed at least as early as the fourth century, whereas the earliest date assigned by Protestants for the establishment of the Papacy is A. D. 538, it is not possible that the Papacy changed the Sabbath a century before it (the Papacy) had an existence. But let those who make this objection remember that the Papacy was the result of growth. It did not spring into being in a day, nor did it attain full stature in a century. As early as A. D. 54, the apostle Paul wrote:— "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." 2 Thess. 2:7, 8. This, as all Protestants agree, is a reference to the Papacy, or at least to the apostasy which culminated in the Papacy. The fact is, that instead of being established in A. D. 538, the papal power attained its majority at that time. Its infancy and youth were far back of that date, and not a little of its work was done before that time. In his history of the "Early Church," p. 591, Killen says of the bishop of Rome:— "In the third century the chief pastor of the Western metropolis must have been known to the great officers of government, and perhaps to the emperor himself. Decius must have regarded the Roman bishop as a somewhat formidable personage when he declared that he would sooner tolerate a rival candidate for the throne, and when he proclaimed his determination to annihilate the very office." At this time the bishop, or pope, of Rome exercised power over only a part of the church, but his power was the same in kind, if not in extent, that was exercised by his successors two centuries later. Those who deny that the Papacy changed the Sabbath, on the ground that the change was effected before that power had an existence, only show how limited is their knowledge of the history of the first great apostasy, and the development of the papal power. Protestants all agree that the papal system has in it many features borrowed from paganism; and just so surely as it has, Sunday-keeping is one of583them. Every Bible student knows that the Scriptures contain no hint of a change of the Sabbath by divine authority; scores of first-day writers have acknowledged the fact; ecclesiastical historians of note have repeatedly said that "the festival of Sunday was always a human ordinance." Do we not justly accuse "the mystery of iniquity," which even in Paul's day was working for the corruption of the church, with the crime of thinking to change the law of God, especially the fourth commandment, as foretold by the prophet Daniel (Dan. 7:25)?