SUNDAY & WHO CHANGED THE SABBATH?

By Uriah Smith

WHO CHANGED THE SABBATH?

TIME was when the first day of the week was not observed as a Christian institution. Allowing it the utmost antiquity which its most fervent friends will claim, we cannot go back beyond the resurrection of our Saviour, not eighteen hundred and fifty years ago. Previous to that time, another day, the seventh day of the week, was observed as the Sabbath by that people whom God had set apart to preserve a knowledge of himself and of his truth in the earth. 

While some confusion of ideas prevails in regard to what effect the change from the Jewish to the gospel dispensation has had upon the Sabbath, some believing it to be unaffected, and others supposing it to have been abolished, the majority believe that it has been changed. And so we find in all Catholic and Protestant countries, that all who keep any Sabbath at all, excepting a few who keep the seventh day, observe the first day of the week. And most of them do it on the ground that this day occupies in this dispensation the same position that the seventh day occupied in the old, and that its observance rests upon the same authority. 

This is certainly a very remarkable change. And the bare suggestion that this change is not in accordance with the will of God, nor in harmony with his word, is enough to raise the query in very many minds, How, then, has it come about? Who has thus changed the Sabbath? By what means has this revolution been accomplished? And not a few attempt to forestall all inquiry on this point by claiming that the fact that such a change has been made, is itself sufficient evidence that God has wrought it. But this is altogether too hasty a conclusion; for Satan has not been asleep these eighteen hundred years; and it has been only by the most diligent care that anything has been preserved to the Christian church free from the taint of fatal corruption.

It is not the object of this tract to enter into an examination of any of the Scripture evidences for or against the change; for this would involve an extended discussion of the Sabbath question from a Bible point of view; nor is it designed to show the particular steps by which the change has been brought about; for this would involve an examination of the history of the Sabbath from apostolic times. We only inquire here respecting the agent or power which has been employed in this work. Most Protestants claim that this change was made by Christ and his apostles. But a rival claim to the honor of this work here comes in from the man of sin, the papacy; hence the issue; and it becomes a very important point, and one which has quite a bearing on the character of the institution, to determine whose work it is - that of Christ or Antichrist.

It will be conceded on all hands that a change of the Sabbath involves a change of what is usually regarded as the moral law, that is, the ten commandments, or decalogue. The law which required of Israel the observance of the seventh day of the week, as the fourth commandment certainly did under that dispensation, could not at the same time enjoin upon them the keeping of the first day of the week. Nor can it enjoin this observance upon us, unless it has been so changed as to demand such a service. If there has been no change, it demands of us exactly what it did of Israel. But if the first day is the divinely appointed Sabbath of the fourth commandment for this dispensation, then the new and unwritten version of the ten commandments for this dispensation so reads as to require the observance of that day.

The question then resolves itself simply into this: Who has changed the law of God? Who was competent to do it? No one except the Father, or his Son, who was associated with him in the creation and the government of the world. Respecting the attitude which Christ should bear toward the law of God, the prophet Isaiah says: “He will magnify the law, and make it honorable.” Isaiah 42:21. To abolish it, as though it was no longer worthy of existence, or to change it, as if it had previously been imperfect, would not magnify it or make it honorable. Christ did neither of these things. Speaking himself of the law of the law of God through the psalmist, he says: “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.” Psalm 40:8.

These expressions denote no hostility on the part of Christ against his Father’s law. We are therefore prepared to hear him declare in his very first sermon that he came not to destroy the law, and that not a jot or tittle should pass from it till heaven and earth should pass, not the smallest fragment should perish, nor the least item be changed, through any work of his. There is a power, however, brought to view in prophecy, which was to hold a very different relation to God and his law. This power was to speak great and blasphemous words against the Most High, wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws. It is symbolized by the little horn of the fourth beast of Daniel 7; and that symbol all Protestants agree in applying to the papacy. That power which would blaspheme God, and wear out his saints, would be just the power to undertake to change his law.

So the prophet expressly specifies on this point: “He shall think to change times and laws.” These laws must certainly be the laws of the Most High. To apply it to human laws, and make the prophecy read, “And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change human laws,” would be doing evident violence to the language of the prophet. But to apply it to the laws of God, and let it read, “And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and laws of the Most High” - then all is consistent and forcible. The Septuagint, the Danish, and the German Bible, read, “the law,” in the singular, which more directly suggests the law of God.

So far as human laws are concerned, the papacy has been able to do more than merely “think” to change them. It has been able to change them at pleasure. It has annulled the decrees of kings and emperors, and absolved subjects from allegiance to their rightful sovereigns. It has thrust its long arm into the affairs of the nations, and brought rulers to its feet in the most abject humility. But the prophet beholds greater acts of presumption than these. He sees it endeavor to do what it was not able to do, but could only think to do: he sees it attempt an act which no man nor any combination of men can ever accomplish; and that is, to change the laws of the Most High.

Bear this in mind while we look at the testimony of another sacred writer on this very point. Paul speaks of the same power in 2 Thessalonians 2; and he describes it, in the person of the pope, as the man of sin, and as sitting as God in the temple of God (that is, the church), and as exalting himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped. According to this, the pope sets himself up as the one for all the church to look to for authority in the place of God. And now we ask the reader to ponder carefully the question how he could exalt himself above God. Search through the whole range of human devices; go to the extent of human effort; by what plan, by what move, by what claim, could this usurper exalt himself above God?

He might institute any number of ceremonies, he might prescribe any form of worship, he might exhibit any degree of power; but so long as God had requirements which the people felt bound to regard in preference to his own, so long he would not be above God. He might enact a law and teach the people that they were under as great obligations to that as to the law of God. Then he would only make himself equal with God. But he is to do more than this; he is to attempt to raise himself above him. Then he must promulgate a law which conflicts with the law of God, and demand obedience to his own in preference to God’s. There is no other possible way in which he could place himself in the position assigned in the prophecy.

But this is simply to change the law of God; and if he can cause this change to be adopted by the people in place of the original enactment, then he, the law-changer, is above God, the law-maker. And this is the very work that Daniel said he should think to do. We now inquire what change the papacy has undertaken to make in the law of God. By the law of God we mean, as already stated, the moral law, the only law in the universe of immutable and perpetual obligation, the law of which Webster says, defining the terms according to the sense in which they are almost universally used in Christendom, “The moral law is summarily contained in the decalogue, written by the finger of God on two tables of stone, and delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai.”

If, now, the reader will compare the ten commandments as found in Roman Catholic catechisms with those commandments as found in the Bible, he will see in the catechisms that the second commandment is left out, that the tenth is divided into two commandments to make up the lack of leaving out the second, and keep good the number ten, and that the fourth commandment (called the third in their enumeration) is made to enjoin the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath, and prescribe that the day shall be spent in hearing mass devoutly, attending vespers, and reading moral and pious books. Here are several variations from the decalogue as found in the Bible.

Which of them constitutes the change of the law intended in the prophecy? or are they all included in that change? Let it be borne in mind that, according to the prophecy, he was to think to change times and laws. This plainly conveys the idea of intention and design, and makes these qualities essential to the change in question. But respecting the omission of the second commandment, Catholics argue that it is included in the first, and, hence, should not be numbered as a separate commandment. And on the tenth, they claim that there is so plain a distinction of ideas as to require two commandments. So they make the coveting of a neighbor’s wife the ninth commandment, and the coveting of his goods the tenth.

In all this, they claim that they are giving the commandments exactly as God intended to have them understood. So, while we may regard them as errors in their interpretation of the commandments, we cannot set them down as intentional changes. Not so, however, with the fourth commandment. Respecting this commandment, they do not claim that their version is like that given by God. They expressly claim a change here, and also that the change has been made by the church. A few quotations from standard Catholic works will make this matter plain. The following, from “Butler’s Catechism,” shows how the ten commandments are numbered and taught in that church:-

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Ques. Say the ten commandments of God. 

Ans. 1. I am the Lord thy God: thou shalt not have strange gods before me, etc.

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

3. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.

4. Honor thy father and thy mother.

5. Thou shalt not kill.

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

7. Thou shalt not steal.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.” 

The same catechism then amplifies on the third commandment (the fourth in our enumeration) as follows: - 

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT

Ques. Say the third commandment. 

Ans. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.

Q. What is commanded by the third commandment? 

A. To spend the Sunday in prayer and other religious duties. 

Q. Which are the chief duties of religion in which we should spend the Sundays?

A. Hearing mass devoutly; attending vespers, or evening prayers; reading moral and pious books; and going to communion. 

Q. The hearing of mass, then, is not sufficient to sanctify the Sunday? 

A. No; a part of the day should also be given to prayer and good works.” - Butler’s Catechism, p. 26. 

In the “Catholic Catechism of Christian Religion,” further instruction is given on the third (fourth) commandment, with the authority for the change as shown by the following questions and answers: - 

“Ques. What does God ordain by this commandment? 

Ans. He ordains that we sanctify, in a special manner, this day on which he rested from the labor of creation. 

Q. What is this day of rest? 

A. The seventh day of the week, or Saturday; for he employed six days in creation, and rested on the seventh. Genesis 2:2; Hebrews 4:1, etc. 

Q. Is it, then, Saturday we should sanctify in order to obey the ordinance of God? A. During the old law, Saturday was the day sanctified; but the church, instructed by Jesus Christ, and directed by the Spirit of God, has substituted Sunday for Saturday; so now we sanctify the first, not the seventh, day. Sunday means, and now is, the day of the Lord. 

Q. Had the church power to make such change? 

A. Certainly, since the Spirit of God is her guide, the change is inspired by that Holy Spirit.” 

In another Catholic work, called the “Abridgment of Christian Doctrine,” the Catholic church asserts its power to change the law, in the following manner: -

“Ques. How prove you that the church hath power to command feasts and holy days? 

Ans. By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church. 

Q. How prove you that? 

A. Because by keeping Sunday they acknowledge the church’s power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin: and by not keeping the rest by her commanded, they again deny, in fact, the same power.” 

In the “Catholic Christian Instructed” is presented the following list of feast days, which all rest upon the same foundation; namely, the authority of the Catholic church. Of these, Sunday takes the lead: - 

“Ques. What are the days which the church commands to be kept holy? 

Ans. 1. The Sunday, or our Lord’s day, which we observe by apostolic tradition, instead of the Sabbath. 2. The feasts of our Lord’s Nativity, or Christmas day; his circumcision, or New Year’s day; the Epiphany, or twelfth day; Easter-day, or the day of our Lord’s resurrection, with the Monday following; the day of our Lord’s ascension; Whit-Sunday, or the day of the coming of the Holy Ghost, with the Monday following; Trinity Sunday; Corpus Christi, or the feasts of the blessed sacrament. 3. We keep the days of the Annunciation, and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 4. We observe the feasts of All-saints; of St. John Baptist; of the holy apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. 5. In this kingdom we keep the feasts of St. Patrick, our principal patron.” 

From the same work, we take the following additional testimony: - 

“Ques. What warrant have you for keeping the Sunday, preferable to the ancient Sabbath, which was the Saturday? 

Ans. We have for it the authority of the Catholic church, and apostolic tradition. 

Q. Does the Scripture anywhere command the Sunday to be kept for the Sabbath? 

A. The Scripture commands us to hear the church (Matthew 18:17; Luke 10:16), and to hold fast the traditions of the apostles. 2 Thessalonians 2:15. But the Scriptures do not in particular mention this change of the Sabbath. John speaks of the Lord’s day (Revelation 1:10); but he does not tell us what day of the week this was, much less does he tell us that this day was to take the place of the Sabbath ordained in the commandments. Luke also speaks of the disciples’ meeting together to break bread on the first day of the week. Acts 20:7. And Paul (1 Corinthians 16:2) orders that on the first day of the week the Corinthians should lay by in store what they designed to bestow in charity on the faithful in Judea; but neither the one nor the other tells us that the first day of the week was to be henceforth the day of worship and the Christian Sabbath; so that truly the best authority we have for this is the testimony and ordinance of the church. And, therefore, those who pretend to be so religious of the Sunday, whilst they take no notice of other festivals ordained by the same church authority, show that they act by humor, and not by reason and religion; since Sundays and holy days all stand upon the same foundation, viz., the ordinance of the church.” - Cath. Chris. Instructed, pp. 209-211. 

The “Doctrinal Catechism,” pp. 101, 174, 351-355, offers proof that Protestants are not guided by Scripture. We present two of the questions and answers: - 

“Ques. Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept? 

Ans. Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her; - she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority. 

Q. When Protestants do profane work upon Saturday, or the seventh day of the week, do they follow the Scripture as their only rule of faith - do they find this permission clearly laid down in the Sacred Volume? 

A. On the contrary they have only the authority of tradition for this practice. In profaning Saturday, they violate one of God’s commandments, which he has never clearly abrogated - ‘Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.’” 

Then follows a statement and refutation of the arguments Protestants usually rely on to prove the change of the Sabbath, such as the resurrection of Christ, the pouring out of the Spirit, the Lord’s day of Revelation 1:10; Acts 20:7; and 1 Corinthians 16:2, showing that these scriptures contain no evidence of the institution of Sunday observance, but that the practice rests solely upon the authority of the Catholic church. 

SUNDAY AUTHORITY

In a Roman Catholic work entitled, “The Shortest Way to End Disputes about Religion,” p.19, by the Rev. Robert Manning, approved by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Fitzpatrick, Coadjutor of the Diocese of Boston, Mass., we find the following: - 

“As zealous as Protestants are against the church’s infallibility, they are forced to depend wholly upon her authority in many articles that cannot be evidently proved from any text of Scripture, yet are of very great importance. 

“1. The lawfulness for Christians to work upon Saturday, contrary, in appearance, to the express command of God, who bids us ‘keep the Sabbath holy,’ and tells us the seventh day of the week is that day. 

“2. The lawfulness and validity of infant baptism, whereof there is no example in Scripture.”

A QUESTION FOR ALL BIBLE CHRISTIANS

In accordance with the instruction given in the catechisms from which the foregoing quotations are made, a Catholic tract, under the above title, makes a precise statement of the positions held respectively by Catholics and Protestants on this question, in the following forcible language: - 

“I am going to propose a very plain and serious question, to which I would entreat all who profess to follow ‘the Bible, and the Bible only,’ to give their most earnest attention. It is this: Why do you not keep holy the Sabbath day? 

“The command of Almighty God stands clearly written in the Bible in these words: ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.’ Exodus 20:8, 9. Such being God’s command, then, I ask again, Why do you not obey it? Why do you not keep holy the Sabbath day? 

“You will answer me, perhaps, that you do keep holy the Sabbath day; for that you abstain from all worldly business, and diligently go to church, and say your prayers, and read your Bible at home, every Sunday of your lives. 

“But Sunday is not the Sabbath day. Sunday is the first day of the week; the Sabbath day was the seventh day of the week. Almighty God did not give a commandment that men should keep holy one day in seven; but he named his own day, and said distinctly, ‘Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day;’ and he assigned a reason for choosing this day rather than any other - a reason which belongs only to the seventh day of the week, and cannot be applied to the rest. He says, ‘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.’ 

“Almighty God ordered that all men should rest from their labor on the seventh day, because he too had rested on that day; he did not rest on Sunday, but on Saturday. On Sunday, which is the first day of the week, he began the work of creation, he did not finish it; it was on Saturday that he ‘ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.’ Genesis 2:2, 3. Nothing can be more plain and easy to be understood than all this; and there is nobody who attempts to deny it; it is acknowledged by everybody that the day which Almighty God appointed to be kept holy was Saturday, not Sunday. Why do you, then, keep holy the Sunday, and not the Saturday? 

“You tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! but by whom? Who has authority to change an express command of Almighty God? When God has spoken, and said, Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day, who shall dare to say, Nay, thou mayest work, and do all manner of worldly business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day, in its stead? This is the most important question, which I know not how you can answer. 

“You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible, and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the ten commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible, and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered, or, at least, from which you may confidently infer that it was the will of God that Christians should make that change in its observance which you have made. 

“The present generation of Protestants keep Sunday holy instead of Saturday, because they received it as a part of the Christian religion from the last generation, and that generation received it from the generation before, and so on, backward, from one generation to another, by a continual succession, until we come to the time of the (so-called) Reformation, when it so happened that those who conducted the change of religion in this country, left this particular portion of Catholic faith and practice untouched. 

“But, had it happened otherwise - had some one or other of the ‘Reformers’ taken it into his head to denounce the observance of Sunday as a popish corruption and superstition, and to insist upon it that Saturday was the day which God had appointed to be kept holy, and that he had never authorized the observance of any other - all Protestants would have been obliged, in obedience to their professed principle of following the Bible, and the Bible only, either to acknowledge this teaching as true, and to return to the observance of the ancient Sabbath, or else to deny that there is any Sabbath at all. And so, in like manner, any one at the present day who should set about, honestly and without prejudice, to draw up for himself a form of religious belief and practice out of the written word of God, must needs come to the same conclusion; he must either believe that the Sabbath is still binding upon men’s consciences, because of the divine command, ‘Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day;’ or he must believe that no Sabbath at all is binding upon them, because of the apostolic injunction, ‘Let no man judge you in respect of a festival day, or of the sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ’s.’ Either one or the other of these conclusions he might honestly come to; but he would know nothing whatever of a Christian Sabbath, distinct from the ancient, celebrated on a different day, and observed in a different manner, simply because holy Scripture itself nowhere speaks of such a thing. 

“Now mind, in all this, you would greatly misunderstand me, if you supposed I was quarreling with you for acting in this manner on a true and right principle - in other words, a Catholic principle, viz., the acceptance, without hesitation, of that which has been handed down to you by an unbroken tradition. I would not tear from you a single one of those shreds and fragments of divine truth which you have retained. God forbid! They are the most precious things you possess, and by God’s blessing may serve as clues to bring you out of that labyrinth of error in which you find yourselves involved, far more by the fault of your forefathers, three centuries ago, than by your own. What I do quarrel with you for is, not your inconsistency in occasionally acting on a true principle, but your adoption, as a general rule, of a false one. You keep the Sunday, and not the Saturday; and you do so rightly, for this was the practice of all Christians when Protestantism began; but you have abandoned other Catholic observances, which were equally universal at that day, preferring the novelties introduced by the men who invented Protestantism to the unvarying tradition of above fifteen hundred years. 

“We blame you, not for making Sunday your weekly holiday, instead of Saturday, but for rejecting tradition, which is the only safe and clear rule by which this observance can be justified. In outward act, we do the same as yourselves in this matter; we, too, no longer observe the ancient Sabbath, but Sunday, in its stead; but then there is this important difference between us, that we do not pretend, as you do, to derive our authority for so doing from a book; but we derive it from a living teacher, and that teacher is the church. Moreover, we believe that not everything which God would have us to know and to do is written in the Bible, but that there is an unwritten word of God, which we are bound to believe and obey, just as we believe and obey the Bible itself, according to that saying of the apostle, ‘Stand fast, and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.’ 2 Thessalonians 2:14. [Douay Bible.] 

“We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy, instead of Saturday, as we have for every other article of our creed, namely, the authority of ‘the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth;’ 1 Timothy 3:15; whereas, you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else. Both you and we do, in fact, follow tradition in this matter; but we follow it, believing it to be a part of God’s word, and the church to be its divinely-appointed guardian and interpreter; you follow it, denouncing it all the time as a fallible and treacherous guide, which often ‘makes the commandment of God of none effect.’” 

A CUTTING REPROOF

In another Catholic work, called, a “Treatise of Thirty Controversies,” we find the following cutting reproof: - 

“The word of God commandeth the seventh day to be the Sabbath of our Lord, and to be kept holy; you (Protestants), without any precept of Scripture, change it to the first day of the week, only authorized by our traditions. Divers English Puritans oppose, against this point, that the observation of the first day is proved out of Scripture, where it is said, the first day of the week. Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10. Have they not spun a fair thread in quoting these places? If we should produce no better for purgatory, prayers for the dead, invocation of the saints, and the like, they might have good cause indeed to laugh us to scorn; for where is it written that these were Sabbath days in which those meetings were kept? Or where is it ordained that they should be always observed? Or, which is the sum of all, where is it decreed that the observation of the first day should abrogate or abolish the sanctifying of the seventh day, which God commanded everlastingly to be kept holy? Not one of those is expressed in the written word of God.” 

And finally, W. Lockhart, B.A., of Oxford, in the Toronto (Cath.) Mirror, offered the following “challenge” to all the Protestants of Ireland; a challenge as well calculated for this latitude as that. He says: - 

“I do, therefore, solemnly challenge the Protestants of Ireland to prove, by plain texts of Scripture, the questions concerning the obligation of the Christian Sabbath. 1. That Christians may work on Saturday, the old seventh day. 2. That they are bound to keep holy the first day, namely, Sunday. 3. That they are not bound to keep holy the seventh day also.” 

This is what the papal power claims to have done respecting the fourth commandment. Catholics plainly acknowledge that there is no scriptural authority for the change they have made, but that it rests wholly upon the authority of the church; and they claim it as a token, or mark, of the authority of that church; the “very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday” being set forth as proof of its power in this respect. 

That many should suppose that Christ wrought this change is not strange; for they have been so taught. But this misapprehension should no longer exist; for, according to the prophecy, the only change ever to be made in the law of God was to be made by the little horn of Daniel 7, and the man of sin of 2 Thessalonians 2; and the only change that has been made in it is the change of the Sabbath. Now, if Christ made this change, he filled the office of the blasphemous power spoken of by both Daniel and Paul - a conclusion sufficiently hideous to drive any Christian from the view which leads thereto. 

But why should any one labor to prove that Christ changed the Sabbath? Whoever does this is performing a thankless task. The pope will not thank him; for if it is proved that Christ wrought this change, then the pope is robbed of his badge of authority and power. And no truly enlightened Protestant will thank him; for if he succeeds, he only shows that the papacy has not done the work which it was predicted that it should do, and so that the prophecy has failed, and the Scriptures are unreliable. The matter had better stand as the prophecy has placed it; and the claim which the pope unwittingly puts forth had better be granted. When a person is charged with any work, and that person steps forth and confesses that he has done the work, that is usually considered sufficient to settle the matter. So, when the prophecy affirms that a certain power shall change the law of God, and that very power in due time arises, does the work foretold, and then openly claims that he has done it, what need have we of further evidence? The world should not forget that the great apostasy foretold by Paul has taken place; that the man of sin for long ages held almost a monopoly of Christian teaching in the world; that the mystery of iniquity has cast the darkness of its shadow and the errors of its doctrines over almost all Christendom; and out of this era of error and darkness and corruption, the theology of our day has come. Would it then be anything strange if there were yet some relics of popery to be discarded ere the Reformation will be complete? 

A. Campbell (Baptism, p. 15), speaking of the different Protestant sects, says: - “All of them retain in their bosom, in their ecclesiastic organizations, worship, doctrines, and observances, various relics of popery. They are, at best, reformations of popery, and only reformations in part. The doctrines and traditions of men yet impair the power and progress of the gospel in their hands.” 

Therefore, let the reader beware, lest he make the mistake of supposing he is following the Lord Jesus Christ, while he is only following his pretended vicegerent, the Antichrist of Rome. 

It may be proper to add a word respecting the testimony of history on this question, and answer an objection that may arise in some minds. 

1. The whole theological world are assiduously taught that the first day of the week has been called the Lord’s day, and unanimously observed as the Sabbath by Christians ever since the days of Christ. This claim is not sustained by either the Bible or history. 

Revelation 1:10, is the only scripture that is brought forward to prove that the term “Lord’s day” had become the familiar title of the first day of the week in the days of the apostles. There are a number of objections to such an application of this text. 

First. John does not say that it was the first day of the week which he here calls the Lord’s day, nor does he make the least statement from which such a conclusion can be inferred. 

Secondly. John wrote his Gospel two years after his Revelation (see Thoughts on Revelation, p. 28); and in his Gospel he twice speaks of the first day of the week, and calls it, not Lord’s day, as he would have done if that had come to be the general name for that day when his Revelation was given, but simply “first day of the week.” 

Thirdly. The seventh day of the week is in the most express manner called God’s holy day. It is the one day of the seven which he has reserved to himself. And the Son of man, through whom the worlds were made, John 1:3; Hebrews 1:2, and who was consequently associated with his Father in the institution of the Sabbath at the beginning, expressly styles himself the Lord of the Sabbath day. Mark 2:28. Hence, we say that the Lord’s day of Revelation 1:10, is the seventh day of the week, not the first. 

No ecclesiastical writer previous to A.D. 194 gives the title of Lord’s day to the first day of the week. The so-called epistle of Barnabas is spurious. The letter of Pliny to Trajan speaks of a stated day, but does not specify which day of the week it was. The epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians is itself a forgery; and the passage which is made to speak of Sunday as the Lord’s day has been interpolated into that forgery. Justin Martyr, A.D. 140, does not use the term Lord’s day, as is so often asserted. Clement of Alexandria, A.D. 194, uses the term ambiguously, perhaps referring to the first day of the week. Victor, bishop of Rome, A.D. 196, attempted to honor the day by an effort to have Easter uniformly celebrated on that day. Tertullian, A.D. 200, furnishes the first evidence of abstinence from labor on that day. In A.D. 321, Constantine made a law in behalf of the “venerable day of the sun,” which was the first Sunday law. But this was a pagan edict, Constantine not yet having become even nominally Christian. At his so-called conversion, two years later, in A.D. 323, this law for Sunday as a heathen festival, being unrepealed, was made use of by Sylvester, bishop of Rome, now reckoned in a line of popes, to enforce Sunday observance as a Christian institution. 

These are the indubitable facts of history, authenticated by a reference to the original authorities in the History of the Sabbath, by J. N. Andrews, to which the reader is particularly referred. 

2. The objection. The papacy was not fully established till A.D. 538, more than two hundred years after Constantine’s law. How, then, can Sunday be called an institution of popery, and the change be attributed to the little horn, according to the prophecy of Daniel, which is a symbol of the papal power? 

Let it be remembered that Sunday, as a subject of prophecy, is Sunday as a Christian institution. The question, then, is, What power or influence established this observance in the Christian church? Not Constantine; for his legislation referred to it as a heathen festival; although he furnished a means which was shrewdly manipulated by pope Sylvester in enforcing it among Christians. But it was brought in by the working of that influence which finally resulted in the establishment of the papacy. The papacy existed in embryo long before Constantine’s time. The mystery of iniquity worked even in Paul’s day, 2 Thessalonians 2:7, waiting only the removal of the restraining influence of paganism, to reveal, in its full strength, the papacy before the world. The root of this monstrous system of evil runs back far into the centuries before its open development, like the tree which sends its tap-root far down into the earth beyond the sight of the observer. Through that root the Sunday has found its way into the professed church of Christ; and on that tree it appears as one of the most characteristic fruits. As an institution, Sunday is both pagan and papal; as a rival of the Sabbath of the Lord, it is wholly papal. 

May God bless you

Elias of the Sunday Times