Untitled article by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 42.

THE SABBATH AND THE SUNDAY. NO. 6.

By Editor

IN our issue of October 8 we had traced the Sunday down to the year 1201. We have found in these historic quotations and citations, both sacred and profane, that it has no Biblical foundation for sacredness, the Bible in that respect, at the most, being entirely silent. Not only is it silent in respect to Sunday sacredness, but it absolutely prohibits the observance of the times of the heathen, among which the Sunday had a prominent place, even as did sun-worship. We have also learned from reliable historians and the "fathers" of the Catholic Church that Sunday was not considered a sacred day or a holy day in the early church. It stood on a par with Thursday, the day of the betrayal, and Friday, of the crucifixion. It is only when apostasy is becoming full-grown that Sunday is considered sacred; but its first law is built upon the "Christian" emperor Constantine and the bishops and councils following.

The Sabbath we have traced from creation to the sixth century. It is confirmed, not only by God's command and word and the example of Christ, but by the efforts of the enemy of righteousness to destroy it, even down to the anathemas of the Council of Laodicea, A.D. 538, upon its faithful observers still left. More than this, we referred to the fact that the day had been kept by the Abyssinian Church to the present. Yet in the Church of Rome, and, later, throughout Christendom, as the apostasy came in, even as of old in Israel, the Sabbath was crushed out.

69. Among the early sects of Christians were the Nazarenes. Of these Morer says that they (Dialogues on the Lord's Day, p. 66) "retained the Sabbath; and tho they pretended to believe as Christians, yet they practiced as Jews," a common charge brought against Sabbath-keeping Christians even in these days. The Nazarenes seem to have been of the early church at Jerusalem, which fled at the command of the Lord (Matt. 24: 15-20) when the city was taken by the Romans. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 15.) They appear to have kept the Sabbath down to the fourth century.

70. Morer (Dialogues on the Lord's Day, p. 67) and Bingham (Antiquities of the Christian Church, book 16, chap. 6, sec. 2) give us accounts of another church, the Hypsistarii, who observed the Sabbath, regarded distinction between clean and unclean meats, but rejected circumcision. These by the Catholic Church were adjudged heretics.

In fact, all that we know of the true people of God during the great apostasy must be learned from their enemies, who were interested in blackening their fame in order to justify their persecutions.

71. Dr. Twisse (Morality of the Fourth Commandment, pp. 19, 20) speaks of a class of people in the city of Rome itself who kept the Sabbath, and were condemned by Pope Gregory in strong language. This was about A.D. 600

72. The early Christians of Great Britain, previous to Augustine's visit to that island, in A.D. 596, were better Christians than those of Rome. The leader of these Christians, Columba, was evidently a Sabbath-keeper. He died, according to Dr. Alvan Butler (Lives of Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints, St. Columba), on "Saturday, the ninth of June," 597. That day he said to one of his disciples, Diermit: "This day is called the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me; for it will put an end to my labors."

73. The Waldenses, whom their enemies admit to be an "ancient" sect, and to "live justly before men," retaining "the utmost show of piety," classing among them the Toulousians and the Albigenses, were, or at least some of them, Sabbath-keepers. Some of them were, doubtless because of this, called the Sabbati, Sabbatati, or Insabbati. (See Benedict's General History of the Baptist Denomination, vol. 2, pp. 413, 414; also Andrews' History of the Sabbath, chap. 21.) The Waldenses existed, as Sabbath-keepers doubtless, to a greater or less extent, from apostolic times nearly to the persecutions of the Dark Ages.

74. The Petrobruysians were of a sect of Christians condemned by Rome for the "heresy" of Sabbath-keeping. Peter de Bruys, one of the prominent leaders, was burned a martyr in 1130

75. Peter Heylyn (Hist. Sabbath, part 2, chap. 5, sec. 1) says that "some did [prohibit working on the seventh day]; who thereupon were censured and condemned by another Gregory, of that name the seventh, as the law informs us. But this was not till 1074." This shows that Sabbatarians were then in existence.

But we have not time or space, nor need we take them, to trace the matter further now. Suffice to say the Sabbath of the Lord had its witnesses, even as did its Lord, all through the Dark Ages. Rome could not wholly extirpate them. In our next we will notice the Sabbath-keepers of England, closing with our own day.