THE CHANGE OF THE SABBATH.
By G. E. Fifield
Prophecy—History—The Admissions of the Roman Church.
IT has, we think, already been made clear that Christ and His apostles did not change the Sabbath, and that the Bible gives no hint that any such change ever would be made by divine authority. Christ, the apostles, and the early Christians all observed the creation—the Christian—Sabbath, and showed no honor to the day of the sun. Still, the majority of those who believe in Christ to-day are found disregarding His Sabbath, and observing more or less strictly the Sunday. How and where did this change come about? The paper just published on the “Great Apostasy” shows plainly that this change was the result of that paganization of Christianity which Paul calls the “falling away,” or the working of the “mystery of iniquity.” It is as strange that the church should deny this to-day, and assert instead that the change was made by Christ and the apostles, as it would be for the historical world to deny that Columbus discovered America, and assert instead that the discovery was made by John the Baptist. In both cases the falsification of history would be the same. That the “mystery of iniquity,” the “man of sin,” or the apostate Roman Church, made this change is proven, first, by the prophecy that they would do this; secondly, by the plain history that they have done it; and, thirdly, by the fact that they themselves confess and even boast of their guilt in this matter, and thus glory in their shame. Paul prophetically described this corrupt, the imperial, world-ruling church as the man of sin, “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” 2 Thess. 2:4. How could this prediction that a man should show himself in the temple (that is, the church) as God, and even exalt himself above God, be fulfilled? There is only one conceivable way. God is the sole, supreme Lord, Commander, and Judge of the conscience of mankind. Each individual is accountable for his religious life to God, and to God alone. God in Christ is thus the head of the church. Now, if a man shall assume this headship which belongs to God alone, and in the temple (the church) exalt himself above all other men, and claim the right and the power to command the consciences and dictate the religious observances of all, in this that man would be making himself equal to God, and showing himself that he is God. If, in addition to this, he should promulgate decrees contrary to God’s laws, and demand obedience to his decrees instead of to the law of God, thus assuming the right to change that law, he would in this be exalting himself above all that is called God. The highest function that even the religious imagination can credit to Deity is to own Him as the Lawgiver of the universe, and of the individual conscience as well. We have seen that the Sabbath is a sign of the soul’s submission to God’s will, or law. Now if any human authority should assume the blasphemous right to legislate in opposition to God, and should establish a false sabbath as a sign of its authority, demanding obedience to it instead of to God, this, and this only, would fulfil this prophecy that a man should not only show himself equal to God, but exalt himself above all that is called God. All this the Roman Church has done, as we shall see. All Protestant commentators agree that the little horn of the seventh chapter of Daniel is a prophecy of the papal or Roman Church. It is said of this little horn, “He shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws [“the law,” Revised Version, “of the Most High,” understood].” Dan. 7:25. Here is a plain prophecy that this same blasphemous power that has made of God’s children millions of martyrs, that has changed the laws of men, and kinged and unkinged men at its pleasure, should think to change God’s law, and especially that portion of it relating to time. The Sabbath is the only time mentioned in the divine law, and to this the prophecy must refer. The eleventh chapter of Daniel refers to this same power as doing “wickedly against the covenant.” This could mean nothing else than that that power should seek to change that covenant of the soul’s submission to God alone, after it had been sealed by the blood of Christ. Here, then, are three prophecies that the apostate church should think thus to change God’s law. We have already quoted history plainly stating that “a pagan flood, flowing into the church, carried with it its customs, practises, and idols,” until “almost every ceremony of the church had the aspect of pagan mysteries,” and until the Christians were “celebrating the solemn festivals of the Gentiles, their calends, and their solstices.” To show how this came about, let us use a simple illustration. If you pour a flood of pure water into the center of a muddy pool, there will be a time when that pool is divided thereby into three parts. In the very center, where the stream is falling from above, there will be a circle of pure water. All around this there will be a circle where the pure water and foul water is mixed, the proportions of this mixture being determined by the proximity to or remoteness from this center, where the water is pure. Outside of this circle, on the margin of the lake, the muddy water will still be untouched and unimproved. Christ poured the pure life water from above into this world, which was as a pool every idea and every thought of which was corrupted by selfishness and by sin. For a time His church remained pure; but all around this church was a circle where paganism was being affected by Christian thought. Thus a “new paganism” was created. Outside of this still, the old pagan ideas remained untouched. As long as the church organizations remained pure, excluding all pagan thought, this “new paganism” could not injure Christianity, while, on the other hand, Christian thought did, to some degree, permeate and purify this paganism. But all too soon the church itself was caught by the glamour of the worldly philosophy of this “new paganism.” As shown in the last article, the New Platonic school was founded, and spread over the whole world. Origen, the so-called church father, was one of the leaders of this school. This school brought in this “new paganism,” with its theories and practises, into the church. Thus among some of those who professed to believe in Christ some honor began to be given to the sun festival of the pagans. The historian Milman tells us that “the believer in the ‘new paganism’ of which the solar worship was the characteristic, would acquiesce without scruple in the sanctity of the first day of the week,” and that therefore “it is the oracle of Apollo of Miletus [the sun] which is to decide the fate of Christianity.” “The metamorphic language of Christianity had unconsciously lent strength to this new adversary, and, in adoring the visible orb, some, no doubt, supposed they were not departing far from the worship of the ‘sun of righteousness.’”—History of Christianity, book 3, chapter 1, and book 2, chapter 9. This strange blending of paganism with Christianity, in the church, had so far advanced in the early part of the fourth century as to make it necessary for services to be held in the churches on both Saturday and Sunday. In speaking of the reception of Arius back into the church of Constantinople, Neander says: “It happened to be on a Sabbath (Saturday), on which day, as well as on Sunday, public worship was held at Constantinople.” “The Sabbath was celebrated nearly after the same manner as Sunday. Church assemblies were held, sermons delivered, and the communion celebrated on this day.”—Torrey’s Neander, vol. 2, pages 298, 385. We have now reached the era of Constantine. Constantine was an enthusiastic devotee of this “new pagan” sun-worship. Gibbon says of him:— The devotion of Constantine was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun, the Apollo of the Greek and Roman mythology. . . . The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine. . . . The sun was universally celebrated as his invincible guide and protector.—Chapter 20, par. 3. For political reasons alone, this sun-worshiper declared himself a convert to Christianity. After his political conversion, as might be supposed, the “Britannica” says of him:— At best he was but half Christian, half pagan, a man who sought to combine the worship of Christ with the worship of Apollo, the sun, having the name of the one and the image of the other engraved on the opposite sides of his coins.—Article Constantine. Of this combination Dean Stanley speaks thus:— The retention of the old pagan name “Sunday” for the weekly Christian[?] festival is in great measure owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiments with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects, pagan and Christian alike, as “the venerable day of the sun.” . . . It was his mode of harmonizing the discordant religion of his empire (pagan and Christian) under one common institution.—History of the Eastern Church, page 291. This union, or harmony, of the two discordant religions was helped along in this way: while Constantine was yet openly a pagan he made this law:— Let all the judges and townspeople and the occupation of all trades rest on the venerable day of the sun; but let those who are situated in the country freely and at full liberty attend to the duties of agriculture; because it often happens that no other day is so fit for sowing corn and planting vines. The date of this pagan edict, which is the father of all Christian[?] Sunday laws, is A.D. 321.7At a later period, carried away by the current of opinion (or rather by the current of his own political ambition), he declared himself a convert to the church. Christianity then, or what he was pleased to call by that name, became the law of the land, and the edict of A.D. 321, being unrevoked, was enforced as a Christian ordinance.—Sunday and the Mosaic Sabbath, page 4. Could history possibly more plainly state the origin of Sunday in the church? A pagan prince makes a decree regulating the observance of the sun festival. Afterward, for political reasons, he professes Christianity, and then enforces this same decree as a Christian ordinance—not that this changed the Sabbath. Not so easily nor so quickly could the change be brought about. We have seen that the change began before the time of Constantine, by the “new paganism” coming into the church. It was not completed for many centuries after Constantine. But by the influence and legislation of Constantine the “new paganism,” now in the church, and constituting a large majority of its members, entrenched itself behind the civil law, and gained the power to persecute the true Christians. And yet in the fastnesses of the Piedmontese Alps, along with the simple Gospel of the Saviour, the true Christians persisted yet a thousand years in keeping the Sabbath and in disregarding the Sunday. Not until, by the crusades of the Papacy against them, they were driven from their homes and scattered as strangers in all the papal lands, did they lose the Sabbath of the Lord. As might be expected, after the time of Constantine, we find this imperial, paganized church anathematizing Sabbath-keeping, and stigmatizing it as Jewish. The Council of Laodicea, A.D. 364, said:— Because Christians ought not to Judaize, and to rest on the Sabbath, but to work on that day, wherefore if they shall be found to Judaize, let them be accursed from Christ. This same council by its twenty-ninth canon, recommended “that Christians should abstain from all worldly business on Sunday if they were able.” It will be remembered that the law of Constantine only referred to the people residing in the towns. “But it was not until the year 536 A.D. that abstinence from agricultural labor on Sunday was recommended rather than enjoined, by an ecclesiastical authority (the third Council of Orleans), and this expressly that the people might have more leisure to go to church and say their prayers.”—Chambers’ Encyclopedia, article Sabbath. Up to this time, even when the people in the country did attend church on Sunday, it was the common practise of the pastor, after they had listened to his sermon, to dismiss them to “their respective occupations.” Even now, in the middle of the sixth century, they are only recommended to cease Sunday work, and that not because of any claim of divine authority for the observance of the day. “Nor was it until about the end of the ninth century that the emperor Leo, the philosopher, repealed the exemption of the edict of Constantine.”—Chambers, article Sabbath. The exemption was that country people might work. So it was not until nearly the close of the ninth century that the apostate church required Christians in the country to abstain from Sunday work. Even then they had no idea that it was wrong to play on Sunday. The Puritans of England, in the seventeenth century, were the first to give the day a strictly Sabbatical character, by forbidding all amusements on Sunday. This they did in direct opposition to the teachings of the English Church. To thwart this purpose of the Puritans, James I. enacted his law of “field sports on Sunday,” enjoining that after attending the church on Sunday forenoon, the people in the afternoon should be free to enjoy such sports as dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May games, morris-dances, etc. This law was re-enacted by Charles I., and a copy of the law was ordered to be read in all the churches. The historian Hume says that this was one of the reasons why the Puritans under Cromwell uprose and beheaded the king. Thus this Sunday sabbath came from paganism, through the Papacy, and the institution was so vigorously opposed by the true Christian spirit, and came in so gradually, that it took seventeen hundred years of the Christian era to obtain its present form. Thirdly, the Admissions of the Roman Church.
Q.—How prove you that the church hath power to command feasts and holy days? A.—By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church. A.—Because, by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the church’s power to ordain feasts and command them under sin.—Abridgment of Christian Doctrine (Roman Catholic). Q.—Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept? A.—Had she not such power she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her, she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority.—Doctrinal Catechism (Roman Catholic). These admissions may be multiplied indefinitely. Before me lies a tract of thirty-two pages, published by the Catholic Mirror, under the eye of Cardinal Gibbons. The title of the tract is “The Christian Sabbath.” The tract shows just what we have shown in these papers, that the seventh day of the week is the only Bible Sabbath, and that Sunday is the offspring of the Roman Catholic Church. Then it concludes with a most energetic challenge to the Protestant ministers the world over to prove to the contrary. Not one of them has ever accepted this challenge. Commenting on the tract the Mirror shows that Protestants have accepted Sunday from the Catholic Church alone, and if they still cling to Sunday after this fact is made plain to them, they can not justly claim to be Protestants, but ought to accept the other teachings of the church as well. The paper concludes thus: “Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping of Sunday. Compromise is impossible.”