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TWENTY REASONS

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Publishing Committee · Saratoga Springs, N. Y. · Sep 2, 1851

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 2, No. 3.

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TWENTY REASONS

For keeping holy in each week, the Seventh day instead of the First day.
1. Because the Seventh Day was blessed and sanctified for a Sabbath, by God, immediately after the creation of the world, as a perpetual memorial of that wonderful work, and of his own resting from it; and because there is now as much need for man to remember God's creative work, and to enjoy a weekly rest, as ever there was.
2. Because there is evidence that the Seventh Day was observed from Adam to Moses. Gen. xxvi, 3—6; xxix, 27, 28.
3. Because the Seventh Day is a necessary part of the fourth commandment, given at Mount Sinai, graven on stone by the finger of God, and incorporated with the other nine precepts of the Decalogue, which are admitted to be moral in their nature, and perpetually binding. "Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy." "The Seventh Day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the Seventh Day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath Day and hallowed it."
4. Because the Old Testament abounds with declarations of God's blessing upon those who keep holy the Seventh Day, and of his vengeance upon those who profane it.
5. Because our Lord Jesus Christ enforced the claims of the law to the fullest extent, saying in regard to the code to which the Seventh Day belonged, "'Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled;" and because He always kept holy the Seventh Day, in this doubtless "leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps."
6. Because the holy women who had attended Jesus Christ at his death and burial, are expressly said to have "rested the SABBATH DAY according to the commandment," (Luke xxiii, 56;) and because, though the narrative proceeds immediately to record the appearance of Jesus Christ, on the morning of the first day of the week, neither there nor elsewhere is one word said about a change of the Sabbath, or about the sabbatical observance of the First Day of the week.
7. Because the Apostles of our Lord constantly kept the Seventh Day, of which there is abundant evidence in the Acts of the Apostles, and it is declared of Paul, that, "as his manner was," he went into the synagogue frequently on the Sabbath Day. (Compare Luke iv, 16 with Acts xvii, 2; see also Acts xiii, 14, 42, 44, and xvi, 13.)
8. Because Jesus Christ, foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, warned his disciples to pray that their flight might not happen "on the Sabbath Day;" and as that event was to take place almost forty years after the resurrection of our Lord, it appears that the same Sabbath was to be then observed by his disciples.
9. Because there is no other day of the week called by the name of "Sabbath," in all the Holy Scriptures, but the Seventh Day alone; and because, when "the First Day of the Week" is mentioned in the New Testament, it is always clearly distinguished from "the Sabbath."
10. Because not one of those passages which speak of the "First Day of the Week," records an event or transaction peculiar to the Sabbath.
11. Because when God had so carefully committed his Law to writing, had repeated his precepts throughout the prophetic books, and had left so many testimonies and examples of the Seventh Day Sabbath on His sacred records, it is most unreasonable to suppose that He would have repealed or changed one single article thereof, without recording it among the words of our Lord Jesus or His Apostles, in the writings of the New Testament.
12. Because the observance of the Moral Law, (without any exception from it,) is constantly enjoined in the writings of the Apostles; and one of them says that "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all," quoting at the same time the sixth and seventh commandments. (See Rom. xiii, 9; Gal. v, 14; Eph. vi, 2, 3, and James, ii, 8—11.)
13. Because the religious observance of the Seventh Day of the Week as the Sabbath, was constantly practised by the primitive Christians, for three or four hundred years at least; and because, though it gradually fell into disuse, the neglect of the Sabbath was caused only by those corruptions of Christianity, which at length grew up into the grossest idolatry, so that the second commandment was in fact, and the fourth was in effect, abolished by an ignorant, superstitious, and tyrannical priesthood.
14. Because it was only through the superstitious observance of the anniversaries of saints and martyrs, and a multitude of other fasts and feasts, with which the simplicity of revealed religion was encumbered and overwhelmed, that the sabbatical observance of the Seventh Day went out of use; and not (in fact) by any real or pretended command of Christ or His apostles, nor at first by the express authority of any Pope or Council: for it was kept as a strict fast, for ages after it lost every other token of a holy day.
15. Because the leaders of the Reformation never claimed for the First Day the name of the Sabbath, and never enforced the observance of that day by any other authority than that of the Church.
16. Because it is obviously absurd—(and it is an objection often made by irreligious people)—that the observance of the First Day of the Week as the Sabbath, should be grounded on a divine precept which commands the observance, not of the First, but of the Seventh Day.
17. Because, if the fundamental principle of Protestantism be right and true, that "the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants," then the Seventh Day must be the true and only Sabbath of Protestants; for, unless that day of the week be kept, they have no scriptural Sabbath at all.
18. Because the pertinacious observance of the First Day of the Week, in the stead of the Seventh, has actually given occasion of great scandal to the Protestant faith; it has caused the Papists to declare that Protestants admit the authority of human tradition in matters of religion; and it has led to intolerance and persecution.
19. Because the observance of the First Day, and neglect of the Seventh, having been adopted partly in contempt of the Jews, has always laid a burden upon them, and presented an obstacle to their receiving Christianity, which ought to be removed.
20. Because the observance of the Seventh Day obeys God, honors the Protestant principle, rebukes Papacy, removes stumbling-blocks, and secures for us the presence and blessing of "the Lord of the Sabbath."