Untitled article by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 28, 1865

"God is not the Author of Confusion." No. 2.

By R. F. Cottrell

THOSE who ardently desire to judge between truth and error, will be glad to find the true balances in which to weigh the testimony by which each claim is supported. The motto which I have chosen is a just balance. Confusion is not of God. The testimonies of his witnesses agree. Those who have the truth can tell a straight story in its support. But the advocates of error will be found in confusion, each conflicting with the others, and in most cases with himself. Truth needs no subterfuge in its support. It firmly rests upon its single foundation. Therefore its advocates all speak the same thing; the reason of their faith is one.

Sabbath-keepers are unanimous in their reasons for their faith and practice. It is a plain simple story and a child can tell it. God blessed and sanctified the seventh-day for man, commanded him to keep it, and has never taken it back.

But let us look at some of the reasons offered to prove that we ought not to keep the seventh day. 1. The Sabbath has been changed to the first day of the week. 2. Sunday is the true seventh day and should be kept. 3. We cannot tell what day the seventh day is. 4. We are only required to keep one seventh part of time. 5. The commandment to keep the Sabbath has been abolished. 6. Those who keep the Sabbath are fallen from grace. 7. Every one should be fully persuaded in his own mind whether to keep the Sabbath or not.

These seven positions, which eat up each other so completely that nothing is left, are frequently advocated by the same individual. But if we examine the witnesses separately we shall find them testifying that the Sabbath was made for all mankind, and that it was made only for the Jews. That it was instituted at the creation, in the wilderness of Sin, and at mount Sinai. That it was abolished by the teaching of Christ, and again at his death, and again that he slept the last Sabbath in the tomb, and consequently it was not abolished till the resurrection. That the ten commandments have been abolished, and that they have not; that that form of the law, written upon the tables of stone is abolished, and that every jot and tittle of it is still binding. That the fourth commandment of that law has been abolished, and that it has not; that it binds us to keep the first day, and it binds us to keep no day. That Christ instituted a Sabbath for the gospel dispensation, and that he did not; that the first day is a Sabbath, and that it is not, but an entirely different institution, and that it is no institution at all. And so forth, &c., &c., ad infinitum.

But all these witnesses are agreed in one thing, i. e., that the seventh day should not be regarded as a Sabbath at all; and most of them are agreed in giving some little tribute of respect to the first day.

Now we inquire concerning the weight of the testimony. Should not the remarkable and almost miraculous agreement of these multifarious, heterogeneous and contradictory witnesses, on the one point that the seventh day of the fourth commandment ought to be trampled under foot, be esteemed the best evidence that in this one thing they are certainly right? Or should we insist that the witnesses should be agreed how, when, and by whom, the seventh day was stripped of its sacredness? What matters it, how or when the Sabbath was killed, since all are agreed that it is dead? If it has been killed so many times, it certainly must be dead! Yet some skeptical minds will insist, that as the witnesses are not agreed in the time and manner of its death, it is full as likely to be alive as dead. But, laying irony aside, who would risk a dollar upon such testimony? No one; and yet men will risk their everlasting salvation upon testimony which contradicts and refutes itself. If men would use the reasoning faculties which God has given them, they would see that all these contradictory positions, used to prove the same thing, are mere inventions and lame excuses to evade the force of the truth. And yet the same person will attempt to maintain several positions, perfectly destructive of each other. "A deceived heart has turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?" Isa. xliv, 20.

I have written thus to help the reader to weigh testimony, and arrive at truth. Never forget to use the true balances, sealed by the highest authority: "God is not the author of confusion, but of peace."

R. F. COTTRILL.