CONFESSIONS OF SUNDAY KEEPERS About the Sabbath:Baptists, part 1, Feb. 2, 1824, pp. 44-45 “The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake.The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week.The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entireScriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath fromSaturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation ofsuch a change.” First Day Observance, pp. 17, 19. [(1788-1866) Irish Protestant founded in America the Disciples of Christ Church also founder andpresident of Bethany College] Dr. D. H. Lucas “There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day ‘the Lord’sDay.’ ” Christian Oracle, January 23, 1890. Lutheran: Martin Luther “God blessed the Sabbath and sanctified it to Himself. It is moreover to be remarked that God did this to no other creature. God did not sanctify to Himselfthe heaven nor the earth nor any ether creature. But God did sanctify to Himselfthe seventh day... The Sabbath therefore has, from the beginning of the world,been set apart for the worship of God.” Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1, Comment on Gen. 2:3, pp. 138-139 [(1483-1546) leader of the great Sixteenth Century Reformation] “We have seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish Sabbath faded fromthe mind of the Christian Church, and how completely the newer thoughtunderlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church. Wehave seen that the Christians of the first three centuries never confused one with the other, but for a time celebrated both.” The Sunday Problem, (1923), p. 36, a study book of the United Lutheran Church. Augsburg Confession of Faith “They [Roman Catholics] refer to the Sabbath Day, as having been changed intothe Lord’s Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it seems. Neither is there any example whereof they make more than concerning the changing of the Sabbath Day. Great, say they, is the power of the Church, since it has dispensed with oneof the Ten Commandments.” Article 28 written by Melanchthon, approved by Martin Luther, 1530; The Book of Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Henry Jacobs, editor (1911), p. 63. Also in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christiandom, 4th Edition, vol. 3, p. 64. “They [the Catholics] allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord’s day, as itseemeth, to the Decalogue [the Ten Commandments]; and they have no example more in their mouths than the change of the Sabbath. They will needshave the church’s power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with aprecept of the Decalogue?’ Part 2, Article 7 [written only thirteen years afterLuther nailed up his theses to start the Reformation]. Augustus Neander “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a humanordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divinecommand in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic Church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.” The History of the Christian Religion and Church, Henry John Rose, translator (1843), p. 186. John Theodore Mueller “But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old TestamentSabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by thechildren of Israel... These churches err in their teaching, for Scripture has in noway ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simplyno law in the New Testament to that effect.” Sabbath or Sunday, pp. 15, 16. [(1885-1949) Professor of Saint Louis Seminary.] Andreas Rudolf Karlstadt “When servants have worked six days, they should have the seventh day free.God says without distinction, ‘Remember that you observe the seventh day’...Concerning Sunday it is known that men have instituted it... It is clear however,that you should celebrate the seventh day.” Concerning the Sabbath and Commanded Holidays, 1524, chap. 4, pp. 23-24 [(1480-1541) joined Luther atWittenberg in 1517 when the German Reformation began and taught the BibleSabbath] H. Gunkel “The taking over of Sunday by the early Christians is, to my mind, an exceedingly important symptom that the early church was directly influencedby a spirit which does not originate in the gospel, nor in the Old Testament, but in a religious system foreign to it.” Zum Religions-geschichtl Verständnis des Neuen Testaments, 1903 p. 76. Lutheran Free Church George Sverdrup“For when there could not be produced one solitary place in the Holy Scriptureswhich testified that either the Lord Himself or the apostles had ordered such atransfer of the Sabbath to Sunday, then it was not easy to answer the question.Who has transferred the Sabbath, and who has had the right to do it?” En Ny Dag (A New Day), in Sondagen og dens Halligholdelse (Sunday and its Observance), 1879 [(1848-1907) Norwegian-born founder of the Lutheran FreeChurch and principal of the Augsburg Seminary, Minnesota) Methodist Harris Franklin Rall “Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as tohow the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, butthere is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the JewishSabbath to that day.” Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, p.26. John Wesley “But, the moral law contained in the ten commandments, and enforced by theprophets, he [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of his coming torevoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken... Every part ofthis law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change,but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relationto each other.” The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., John Emory, ed. (New York: Eaton & Mains), Sermon 25, vol. 1, p. 221. Adam Clarke “There is no intimation here that the Sabbath was done away, or that its moral use superseded, by the introduction of Christianity. I have shown elsewhere that, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,’ is a command of perpetual obligation.” The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Vol. 2, p. 524 [(1760-1832) Irish Wesleyan minister, writer, and three times Methodistconference president] Amos Binney “It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there anyfor keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed theSabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose.Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.” Theological Compendium, 1902 edition, pp. 180-181, 171 [(18021878), Methodist minister and presiding elder, also wrote a Methodist NewTestament Commentary] Taylor Lewis “If we had no other passage than of Genesis 2:3, there would be no difficulty indeducing from it a precept for the universal observance of the Sabbath to bedevoted to God, as holy time, by all of that race for whom the earth and its nature were specially prepared. The first men must have known it. The words‘He hallowed it,’ can have no meaning otherwise. They would be a blank unlessin reference to some who were required to keep it holy.” Translator’s note onGen. 2:3, in John Peter Lange’s, A Commentary: Genesis, 1868, p. 197 [(18021877) ancient language and literature professor at Union College and NewYork City University] Harris Franklin Rall “Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the new testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, butthere is no passage telling Christians to keep that day or to transfer the JewishSabbath to that day.” Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, p.26 Dwight L Moody “The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. Thisfourth commandment begins with the word ‘remember,’ showing that theSabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai.How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with whenthey will admit that the other nine are still binding?” “I honestly believe that this commandment [the Sabbath commandment] is just asbinding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has beenabrogated [abolished], but they have never been able to point to any place in theBible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set itaside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it,and gave it its true place. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ [Mark 2:27]. It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was—in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.”Weighed and Wanting (Fleming H. Revell Co.: New York), pp. 47, 48. [(18371899) the most famous evangelist of his time, founder of the Moody Bible Institute] Presbyterian T. C. Blake, D.D. “The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments. This aloneforever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution...Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, theSabbath will stand...The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath,” Theology Condensed, pp. 474, 475. Dr. Archibald Hodge “God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for that purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race.” Tract No. 175, Presbyterian Board of Publication, pp.3-4 Thomas Chalmers “For the permanency of the Sabbath, however, we might argue its place in theDecalogue, where it stands enshrined on a tablet that is immutable and everlasting.” Sermons, 1817, vol. 1, pp. 51-52. William Dool Killen “In the interval between the days of the apostles and the conversion of Constantine, the Christian commonwealth changed its aspect. The Bishop ofRome—a personage unknown to the writers of the New Testament—meanwhilerose into prominence, and at length took precedence of all other churchmen.Rites and ceremonies of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institution.” “The Great Teacher never intimated that the Sabbath was a ceremonial ordinance to cease with the Mosaic ritual. It was instituted when our first parents were in Paradise; and the precept enjoining its remembrance, being aportion of the Decalogue, is of perpetual obligation. Hence, instead of regardingit as a merely Jewish institution, Christ declares that it was made for MAN or,in other words, that it was designed for the benefit of the whole human family.Instead of anticipating its extinction along with the ceremonial law, He speaksof its existence after the downfall of Jerusalem [in A.D. 70, 39 years after thecrucifixion]. When He announces the calamities connected with the ruin of theholy city, He instructs His followers to pray that the urgency of the catastrophemay not deprive them of the comfort of the Sabbath rest. ‘Pray ye,’ said He, ‘that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath-day.’ ” Matt. 24:20 The Ancient Church, 1883, xv-xvi pp. 188-189 [professor of ecclesiastical history in the (Protestant) Irish Assembly’s College in Belfast, Ireland] Others Sir William Dornville “Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed by theChristian church as a sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the sabbatical edict ofConstantine in A.D. 321.” The Sabbath: or an Examination of Six Texts, vol.1, p. 291. Nicholas Summerbell “The Roman Church...reversed the Fourth Commandment by doing away withthe Sabbath of God’s word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday.” History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., 1873, p. 415 [(1816-1889) president of Union Christian College, Indiana] William Prynne “The seventh-day Sabbath was solemnized [i.e. observed] by Christ, theApostles and the primitive Christians—until the Council of Laodicea did, in amanner, quite abolish the observance of it. The Council (AD. 364) first settled the observance of the Lord’s Day.” “It is certain that Christ Himself, His apostles, and the primitive Christians forsome good space of time, did constantly observe the Seventh-day Sabbath.”“Dissertations on the Lord’s Day.” page 33. [17th century Puritan] Charles Buck “Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of theweek…and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.” A Theological Dictionary, art. “Sabbath,” p. 403 [(1771-l815) was a British Independent minister and author] Henry Morehouse Taber “Why will not Christian people investigate and find out for themselves (whichthey easily can), that the keeping of Sunday as a ‘holy Sabbath day,’ is wholly without warrant? “I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion, to show me theslightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannotbe shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday asa holy day? Are they not open to the suspicion of imposing upon the confidenceand credulity of their hearers? Surely they are deliberately and knowingly practicing deception upon those who look to them for candor and for truth,unless they can give satisfactory reasons for teaching that Sunday is a sacredday. There never was, and is not now, any such ‘satisfactory reasons.’ No student of the Bible has ever brought to light a single verse, line or word, which can, by any possibility, be construed into a warrant for the religious observanceof Sunday.” Faith or Fact, 1897, p. 114 [(1825-1897) American Businessman,banker, religious liberal, and promoter of public educational buildings] “Quotations from the writings of the ‘Church Fathers,’ and others familiar withChurch history, support this statement, and include the names of Tertullian,Eusebius, Ireneus, Victorinus, Theodoretus, Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingle, Knox, Tyndale, Grotius, Neander, Mosheim,Heylyn, Frith, Milton, Priestly, [and] Domwille. John Calvin had so little respect for the day that he could be found playing bowls most any Sunday. “The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jewswere supposed to be commanded to keep the SEVENTH day of the week holy,THEREFORE that the FIRST day of the week should be so kept by Christians,—is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering.” “Here is the church of Christ, called out of Roman Catholicism in the sixteenth century to take its stand on “the Bible and the Bible only,” professing loyalty to God’s Book, loyalty to God’s law, loyalty to God’s Sabbath, loyalty to allGod’s truth, and yet still observing a day that the Bible never once commands tobe kept, and altogether discarding the day the Bible declares to he holy.” Haynes, Carlyle B., From Sabbath to Sunday, p. 37 Historians John Dowling“There is scarcely anything which strikes the mind of the careful student ofancient ecclesiastical history with greater surprise than the comparatively early period at which many of the corruptions of Christianity, which are embodied in the Roman system, took their rise; yet it is not to be supposed that when the first originators of many of these unscriptural notions and practices planted thosegerms of corruption, they anticipated or even imagined they would ever growinto such a vast and hideous system of superstition and error as is that of popery.” History of Romanism, 13th Edition, p. 65. Antoine Villien “It would be an error to attribute [‘the sanctification of Sunday’] to a definitedecision of the Apostles. There is no such decision mentioned in the Apostolicdocuments [the New Testament].” A History of the Commandments of the Church, 1915, p. 23. McClintock and Strong “It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning thefirst day.” Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. 9, p. 196. William D. Killen “Rites and ceremonies, of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institutions. [Church] officers forwhom the primitive disciples could have found no place, and titles which tothem would have been altogether unintelligible, began to challenge attention,and to be named apostolic.” The Ancient Church, p. xvi. W. Rordorf “Until well into the second century [a hundred years after Christ] we do not find the slightest indication in our sources that Christians marked Sunday by any kindof abstention from work.” Sunday: The History of the Day of Rest and Worship inthe Earliest Centuries of the Christian Church, Philadelphia, 1968, p. 157. Edward Brerewood “The ancient Sabbath did remain and was observed...by the Christians of theEastern Church [in the area near Palestine] above three hundred years after ourSavior’s death.” A Learned Treatise of the Sabbath, Oxford: 1630, p. 77. Walter Woodburn Hyde “Remains of the struggle [between the religion of Christianity and the religion of Mithraism] are found in two institutions adopted from its rival byChristianity in the fourth century, the two Mithraic sacred days: December 25,‘dies natalis soils’ [birthday of the sun], as the birthday of Jesus,—and Sunday,‘the venerable day of the Sun,’ as Constantine called it in his edict of 321.” Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, 1946, p. 6o. p. 257.“Modern Christians who talk of keeping Sunday as a ‘holy’ day, as in the still extant ‘Blue Laws,’ of colonial America, should know that as a ‘holy’ day ofrest and cessation from labor and amusements Sunday was unknown to Jesus...It formed no tenant [teaching] of the primitive church and became ‘sacred’ only in the course of time. Outside the church its observance was legalized for the Roman Empire through a series of decrees starting with thefamous one of Constantine in 321, an edict due to his political and social ideas.” p. 261.“This [Constantine’s Sunday decree of March 321] is the ‘parent’ Sunday law making it a day of rest and release from labor. For from that time to the presentthere have been decrees about the observance of Sunday which have profoundlyinfluenced European and American society. When the Church became a part ofState under the Christian emperors, Sunday observance was enforced by civil statutes, and later when the Empire was past, the Church in the hands of thepapacy enforced it by ecclesiastical and also by civil enactments.” Wilhelm Augustus Johann Neander “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals was always only a humanordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divinecommand in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, totransfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday.” The History of the Christian Religion and Church, 1843, p. 186. William L. Gildea “The [Catholic] Church took the pagan buckler of faith against the heathen. Shetook the pagan Roman Pantheon [the Roman], temple to all the gods, and madeit sacred to all the martyrs; so it stands to this day. She took the pagan Sundayand made it the Christian Sunday...The Sun was a foremost god withheathendom. Balder the beautiful: the White God, the old Scandinavians called him. The sun has worshipers at this very hour in Persia and other lands...Hencethe Church would seem to have said, ‘Keep that old pagan name. It shall remainconsecrated, sanctified.’ And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus. The sun is a fitting emblem ofJesus. The Fathers often compared Jesus to the sun; as they compared Mary tothe moon.” “Paschale Gaudium,” in The Catholic World, p. 58, March 1894. Authur Weigall “The Church made a sacred day of Sunday...largely because it was the weeklyfestival of the sun;—for it was a definite Christian policy to take over the pagan festivals endeared to the people by tradition, and give them a Christian significance.” The Paganism in Our Christianity, 1928, p. 145. M. E. Walsh “Is it not strange that Sunday is almost universally observed when the SacredWritings do not endorse it? Satan, the great counterfeiter, worked through the‘mystery of iniquity’ to introduce a counterfeit Sabbath to take the place of thetrue Sabbath. Sunday stands side by side with Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday,Holy (or Maundy) Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Whitsunday, Corpus Christi, Assumption Day, All Soul’s Day, Christmas Day, and a host of otherecclesiastical feast days too numerous to mention. This array of RomanCatholic feasts and fast days are all man made. None of them bears the divinecredentials of the Author of the Inspired Word.” A. R. Fausset “Sun worship was the earliest idolatry.” Fausset Bible Dictionary, Zondervan, 1984, p. 666. Gaston H. Halsberge “Sun worship was one of the oldest components of the Roman religion.” The Cult of Sol Invictus, 1972, p. 26. Franz F. V. M. Cummont “ ‘Babylon, the mother of harlots,’ derived much of her teaching from pagan Rome and thence from Babylon. Sun worship—that led her to Sunday keeping,—was one of those choice bits of paganism that sprang originally from the heathenlore of ancient Babylon: The solar theology of the ‘Chaldeans’ had a decisive effect upon the final development of Semitic paganism... [It led to their] seeingthe sun the directing power of the cosmic system. All the Baals were thence forward turned into suns; the sun itself being the mover of the other stars—like it eternal and ‘unconquerable’... Such was the final form reached by the religion ofthe pagan Semites, and following them, by that of the Romans...when they raised‘Sol Invictus’ [the Invincible Sun] to the rank of supreme divinity in the empire.”Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans, p. 55 Will Durant “When Christianity conquered Rome, the ecclesiastical structure of the pagan church, the title and the vestments of the ‘pontifex maximus,’ the worship to the‘Great Mother’ goddess and a multitude of comforting divinities...the joy orsolemnity of old festivals, and the pageantry of immemorial ceremony, passedlike material blood into the new religion—and captive Rome conquered herconqueror. The reins and skills of government were handed down by a dying empire to a virile papacy.” Caesar and Christ, p. 672. Please Check this Awesome Christian Site For More Information:churchathome.org/articles/confessions-of-sunday-keepers-concerning-the-sabbath.html.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 03:01:26 +0000
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