SABBATH HISTORY | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 5, 1880

SABBATH HISTORY.

Reader, have you ever reflected that you are not keeping the day which Christ, his apostles, and the primitive Christians observed? There is no evidence that the first day, or Sunday, was observed even as a festival, until some time in the second century. The first law for Sunday was that of Constantine, in A. D. 321; from that time forward ecclesiastical and state influences were used with rigor to turn the people from the observance of the Sabbath, and oblige them to keep Sunday. Christians generally continued to keep the Sabbath until the fifth century, as is evident from the oldest authorities on the subject, of whom are Morer and Geisler. To this effect Dr. Twisse quotes Baronius, Gomaris, and Rivet. The same testimony is given by Dr. Lyman Coleman of Philadelphia, in his Ancient Christianity, chap. xxvi. sec. 2: "The last day of the week was strictly kept for a long time after the overthrow of the temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church. During the early ages it was entitled 'the Sabbath,' this word being confined to the seventh day of the week, which, as we have already said, continued to be observed for several centuries by the converts to Christianity. No law or precept appears to have been given by Christ, or the apostles, either for the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, or the institution of the Lord's day, or the substitution of the first for the seventh day of the week."

The Abyssinians have always observed the Sabbath. Traces of Sabbath-keeping in Europe are found from the sixth century to the sixteenth. In the year 600 there was a class of Sabbath-keepers in Rome who were denounced by the pope. Erasmus speaks of Sabbatarians in Bohemia. Many of the Waldenses were called Sabbatatti, because, as Benedict says, "they met for worship on the seventh day, and did not regard the first-day Sabbath." From references by old authors, it appears that in the beginning of the sixteenth century there were Christian Sabbath-keepers in Germany, Holland, and England. The Sabbath controversy in England waxed great from 1585 to 1685. It has been continued in England and America ever since, but at no period has it assumed such proportions as within the past forty years. The present number of Christian Sabbath-keepers in Western Europe and America is supposed to be about 40,000, with an increase of more than a thousand annually. This does not include the Russian Sabbath-keepers, who are reported to number more than a million. Thus, from the time of the apostles until the present day, there have existed Gentile Christians who have faithfully adhered to and observed the seventh day,—the true Sabbath of the fourth commandment.—Sabbath Memorial.