FIFTY REASONS FOR SABBATH OBSERVANCE.
By D. T. Bourdeau
FIFTIETH. We observe the holy Sabbath because the Catholic Church tells the truth when she certifies that it is the only Biblical weekly Sabbath; that there is no Bible proof that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week by divine authority; and that the Sunday-sabbath rests on tradition. And we are thankful that the leaders of the Catholic Church have furnished us such testimonies as the following, which have led many of us to study the Sabbath question thoroughly and decide in favor of the ancient Sabbath: Testimony of a Catholic Priest.
You pretend to be a Protestant and desire to follow the Bible as your only rule of faith, so far as religious doctrines and practises are concerned, and still you observe Sunday, which is without Biblical foundation, and rests on the tradition and authority of the Catholic Church. You ought to completely renounce our tradition and Sunday and observe the ancient Sabbath, or adopt our tradition and our doctrines founded on it, and continue to observe Sunday and return to the Catholic Church. These pointed words were addressed to the writer at St. Régis, Lower Canada, in 1856, and led him to search the Scriptures for light on the subject of the Sabbath and to pronounce himself for the seventh-day Sabbath. Testimony of Father Enright.
Show me one [of the sects] that claims or possesses the power to make laws binding on the conscience. There is but one on the face of the earth—the Catholic Church—that has power to make laws binding upon the conscience, binding before God, binding under pain of hell fire. Take, for instance, the day we celebrate—Sunday. What right have the Protestant churches to observe that day?—None whatever. You say it is to obey the commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." But Sunday is not the Sabbath according to the Bible and the record of time. Every one knows that Sunday is the first day of the week, while Saturday is the seventh day and the Sabbath, the day consecrated as a day of rest. It is so recognized in all civilized nations. I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to any one who will furnish any proof from the Bible that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep, and no one has called for the money. If any person in this town will show me any scripture for it, I will, to-morrow evening, publicly acknowledge it and thank him for it. It was the Holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday to Sunday, the first day of the week. . . . By their solemn act of keeping Sunday, they [the Protestants] acknowledge the power of the Catholic Church. The Bible says, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," but the Catholic Church says, "No, keep the first day of the week," and the whole world bows in obedience.—Extract from a lecture delivered at Harlan, Iowa, Dec. 15, 1889, and reported by the "Harlan American." Another work entitled, "Why We Are Catholics and Not Protestants," translated from the English by a priest of the clergy of Paris, bears this testimony: Ques. When Protestants do servile work on Saturday, the seventh day of the week, do they follow the Holy Scriptures as the only rule of faith? Ans. On the contrary, they have to justify the manner of acting only on the authority of tradition. In working on Saturday they violate a commandment that God has never clearly abrogated: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Q. Is the sanctification of Sunday as a day of rest clearly expressed in Scripture? A. Certainly not; and yet Protestants regard the sanctification of that particular day as essential to salvation. To say that we sanctify Sunday because Jesus Christ rose from the dead on that day, is to say that we act without scriptural foundation, and we might as well say that we ought to sanctify Thursday because it was on that day that Jesus Christ ascended to heaven and entered into His rest after the work of redemption. In a work entitled, "Abridgment of Christian Doctrine," we find these words: Ques. How prove you that the church hath power to command feasts and holy days? Ans. 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 to command them under sin; and by not keeping the rest by her commanded they again deny, in fact, the same power. Seeing that the Holy Scriptures are sufficient to make us "wise unto salvation" and "perfect for every good work;" that it is by them we have eternal life (2 Tim. 2:15-17; John 5:39, etc.); that God only has the right to create religious institutions and to enjoin them upon mankind; seeing that it is nowhere said in the Bible that God has changed the Sabbath, and that the Bible never calls the first day of the week the Sabbath or the Christian Sabbath, and never gives us to understand that that day is the Lord's day, and that Jesus Christ and the primitive church kept that day as a day of rest, or as a memorial of the resurrection of our Lord; and seeing that there is not in the Bible a law commanding us to observe the first day of the week, and that it is a Biblical fact that where no law is, there is no sin or transgression (Rom. 4:15, etc.); we do not think that we are guilty before God if we do not observe the day in which God commenced creating our world, and that He gave to man as one of "the six working days." Eze. 46:1; Ex. 20:8-11. Will God condemn us in the day of judgment for not having done what He has never told us to do, and what Jesus Christ and the primitive church have never done? Will He in that great day enter into judgment against us because we observe the holy Sabbath that He Himself kept in the beginning, and when He was on our earth, that His holy prophets and early Christians observed, and that His immutable law commands us to keep holy or sanctify?11The fact that our Lord was raised from the dead on the first day of the week has nothing to do with this question, seeing the Bible does not make of this fact the foundation of a new Sabbath. And the fact that the Christians of Troas met once to break bread on the first day of the week (Acts 20) does not annul the law enjoining the observance of the seventh day, nor the irrefutable truth that the primitive church observed the ancient Sabbath. Nor does this or any other Biblical fact make of the first day a new sabbath or Lord's day. If the act of breaking bread on a day makes it a sabbath or Lord's day, then we should also keep Thursday, for it was on Thursday night that our Lord brake bread in instituting the eucharist. Is it for man to multiply sabbaths at his will and call them divine institutions?