SUNDAY NO SABBATH

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 14, 1860

SUNDAY NO SABBATH

From the Sabbath Recorder.

SUNDAY NO SABBATH.

Anti-Sunday-Sabbatarian testimonies compiled from the writings of the most distinguished Protestant reformers and confessors of the 16th century.

If it be granted that the law of the fourth commandment is binding on Christians, then it follows necessarily that the seventh-day, or Saturday must be kept holy; that particular day being specified in the commandment, and no other day having ever been, by divine command, substituted in its place; wherefore Sunday is not the Sabbath; and the observance of the first day of the week as a day of rest, is no keeping of the fourth commandment. To the establishing of this plain proposition, it will be observed all the following testimonies tend:—

TESTIMONY OF MARTIN LUTHER.

Concerning the observance of the first day of the week as a day of rest and worship, Luther says: "There is no necessity for keeping it, but if we do, it ought not to be on account of Moses' commandment. . . . If anywhere any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation (i. e., upon the authority of the law given by Moses, the fourth commandment), I direct you to work on it, ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty."—Quoted in "Michelet's Life of Luther," Bk. iv, Cap. 2, and Coleridge's "Table Talk," May 19, 1834.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN CALVIN.

"The Lord's day is not observed by us upon the principles of Judaism (i. e., as a Sabbath, and as required by the law of Moses in the fourth commandment). For we celebrated it not with scrupulous rigor, as a ceremony which we conceive to be a figure of some spiritual mystery, but only use it as a remedy necessary to the preservation of order in the church. . . . And indeed we see what advantages have arisen from such a sentiment (viz., that the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh to the first day of the week). For those who adhere to it far exceed the Jews in a gross, carnal and superstitious observance of the Sabbath (or that which they call Sabbath), so that the reproofs of Isaiah i, 10–15; lviii, 3–7; lxv, 2–7, are equally applicable to them in the present age (i. e., the Papists who were then the most strict Sunday-keepers), as to those whom the prophet reproved in his time."—Calvin's Institutes, Lib. ii, Cap. 8, § 34.

TESTIMONY OF PHILIP MELANCTHON.

In the "Augsburg Confession," prepared by Melancthon, it is thus written, concerning festivals which, as he says, "it may be well to observe," but the neglect of which is in itself considered "not sinful." "Such are the observance of the Lord's day, the passover, the pentecost, and other similar feasts and rites. For those who judge that by the authority of the church the observance of the Lord's day has been substituted for that of the Sabbath, as if necessary, greatly err.

There yet exist prodigious disputes about the change of the law, of the Sabbath &c., which all sprung from the false persuasion that Christ committed to the Apostles and Bishops, the charge of inventing new ceremonies which should be essential to salvation. These errors crept into the church at a time (viz., "the dark ages"), when the righteousness of faith was not taught with sufficient clearness. Some maintained that the observance of the Lord's day was not divinely appointed, but as if it had been, they prescribed respecting holidays, how far it was lawful to work (i. e., what were cases of necessity and mercy). What are controversies of this sort but snares for consciences? For, however they may attempt to harmonize their traditions, truth can never be attained while the opinion of their necessity (or binding obligation) remains."—Confession, Wittenburg Edition, p. 28.

TESTIMONY OF THEODORE BEZA.

Concerning the manner in which the Lord's day was observed by the early Christian church, Beza says, that though it was made by them, "a day for assembling together," there was no cessation from all work required, as was observed among the Jews (on the seventh day and enjoined by the fourth commandment). This cessation (from labor on the first day of the week) was first brought in by Constantine (A. D. 321), and afterward confirmed with more and more restraints by the following emperors."—Beza on the Apocalypse, ch. i, verse 10. (Quoted in Heylin's History, p. 173).

TESTIMONY OF ULRIC ZUINGLE.

This great leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, in enumerating some ways in which the observance of the Lord's day as a day of Christian worship may be made a vain and empty ceremony, mentions this: "If we think the Lord's day so affixed unto any time that we conceive it an impiety to change it unto another (than that now celebrated, the first day of the week), . . . this would indeed make it become a ceremony. . . . It is lawful on the Lord's day, after the end of divine service, for any man to follow and pursue his ordinary labors, as commonly we do in time of harvest."—Ad Valentine Gent., Tom. i, p. 234.

TESTIMONY OF HENRY BULLINGER.

This eminent Swiss reformer, the friend and co-laborer of Zuingle, thus expresses himself in his commentaries respecting the appointment of the Lord's day: "In memorial of our Lord's resurrection, the churches set apart this day. . . . By their own authority, and of their own accord they made choice thereof, it being nowhere to be found that it was commanded."—Comment on Apocalypse, ch. i, v. 10.

TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM TYNDALE.

The opinion of this zealous English reformer and martyr, respecting the mere human appointment of the Lord's day, coincides exactly with that of Beza, Zuingle, and Bullinger, and is thus expressed: "We be lords over it (the first-day festival), and may change it to Monday or any other day as we see need, or we may make two (such festivals) every week if it were expedient."—Tyndale's Works, Bk. i, ch. 25.

TESTIMONY OF MARTIN BUCER.

This distinguished reformer expresses himself very clearly and strongly against the Sunday superstition. In his Commentary, after declaring that the Lord's day was appointed "by the common consent of Christian people, and not by divine authority," he adds: "To hold that working on the Lord's day is, in itself, considered a sinful thing, is a superstition, an apostasy from Christ. . . . I do indeed well approve of the Lord's day meetings, if there be excluded from men's minds all opinion that the day is necessary to be observed; that it is holier, in itself, than other days; and that to work upon that day is, in itself, sinful."—Comment in Apocalypse, ch. i, v. 10.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN HOOPER.

Bishop Hooper, who was burned at Smithfield by queen Mary for his bold and persistent advocacy of Protestant doctrines, compares the day of Christ's crucifixion, Friday, with that of his resurrection, Sunday; and declares that we are under no more obligation to celebrate the latter than the former, and that "The one is no more holy than

the other;" nor as he plainly indicates, than any other day, Monday or Thursday.—Treatise on Decalogue, p. 193.

TESTIMONY OF THOMAS CARTRIGHT, AND THE FIRST PURITANS.

Neal, in his "History of the Puritans," sets down Thomas Cartwright as "the father of the Puritans," (Dugdale calls him "the standard bearer of the Puritans,") and says that he was "the great antagonist of Archbishop Whitgift, 'the persecutor of the Puritans,' and the author of the Second Admonition to Parliament in behalf of the Puritans." His testimony, together with that of John Field (author of the First Admonition), Edward Deering and others of "the chief Puritans about London," is given in the "Confession" of faith which they put forth to testify "against the uncharitable surmises of Dr. Whitgift, uttered in his answer to their Admonition." In this Confession they utterly deny the first day of the week to be "more holy than another."

. . . "We keep the Lord's day," they say, "as we are commanded (i. e., by the civil and ecclesiastical laws of England, which did not require it to be observed as Sabbath), but without all Jewish superstition (i. e., all notion of basing it on the fourth commandment), we think that those feast days of Christ, as of his birth (Christmas), resurrection, (easter and Lord's day), &c., may by Christian liberty be kept because they are only devoted to Christ, to whom all days and times belong; but days dedicated to saints, with fasts on their eves we utterly dislike," &c.—Neal, Vol. i, p. 122.

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT BROWN, AND THE FIRST CONGREGATIONALISTS.

This earnest reformer, the first to advocate the principles of Independent or Congregational church government (and who, as Neal tells us, was thrown into thirty-two different prisons for his persistent efforts to expose the corruptions of the hierarchy), has left on record his testimony to the same effect with Thomas Cartwright and John Field, viz.: That Sunday is not the Sabbath, nor of divine appointment. It is given in his subscription with them to the confession put forth in reply to the aspersions of Dr. Whitgift, quoted before, where it is expressly avowed that "the Lord's day" is but a humanly appointed "holy-day," which, like Christmas and other festivals of our Lord, "may, by Christian liberty, be kept." Further testimony is found in his life and practice in Northamptonshire, which, as Fuller tells us (B. x, p. 263), was "far from that Sabbatarian (he means Sunday-Sabbatarian) strictness, that his followers aspired after."

It may be added that the ministers of the town of Northampton formed themselves into an "independent" association in 1571, and adopted "regulations" and a "confession of faith," in the latter of which they declared the distinguishing of the Lord's day and other festivals as holy, to be in common with distinction of meats and apparel, "a tyrannous yoke" imposed by the "Papistry;" "set up of their own invention;" "a devilish confusion" established, as it were, in spite of God and to the reproach of religion." This "well-minded" association, (as Mr. Strype calls it) and others of the same sort were suppressed by the queen in 1577, as "nurseries of Puritanism" and their members were "silenced," so that the following year there was not a single acting minister in the large and populous town of Northampton. The same views are entertained by Smith and Barrows, who, next to Brown, took the lead in establishing church independency.—Neal's Hist., Vol. i, pp. 118–122.