The Congregational Church
"It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are
not keeping the Sabbath.. The Sabbath was founded on a specific, divine command.
We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday.. There is not a
single line in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by
violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday." Dr R.W. Dale, "The Ten
Commandments," pg. 106-107.
"The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted
the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New
Testament."
Dr Lyman Abbot, in the "Christian Union," June 26, 1890.
"There is no command in the Bible requiring us to observe the first day of the
week as the Christian Sabbath." Orin Fowler, A.M., Mode and Subjects of
Baptism
"The Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the
Primitive Church called the Sabbath." Dwight's Theology, Vol. 4, pg. 401.
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The Lutheran Church
"The observance of the Lord's day [Sunday] is founded not on any command of God,
but on the authority of the church." Augsburg Confession of Faith, quoted in
the Catholic Sabbath Manual, Part 2, Chap. 1, Sec.10.
"They [the Catholics] allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's Day,
contrary to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any example more
boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power
and the authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten
Commandments." Martin Luther, Augsburg Confession of Faith, Art. 28, Par.9.
"But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament
Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the
children of Israel. In other words, they insist that Sunday is the divinely
appointed New Testament Sabbath, and so they endeavor to enforce the Sabbatical
observance of Sunday by so called blue laws...These churches err in their
teaching, for the Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in
place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that
effect."
John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp. 15,16
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The Episcopal Church
"The Bible commandment says on the seventh day thou shalt rest. That is
Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on
Sunday." Philip Carrington, Toronto Daily Star, Oct. 26, 1949.
"Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are
commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first
day...... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the
seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because
the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it." Isaac Williams, D.
D., Plain Sermons on the Catechism, Vol. 1, pp. 334-336.
"Sunday (Dies Solis, of the Roman calendar, ‘day of the sun,’ because dedicated
to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a
day of worship. The ‘sun’ of Latin adoration they interpreted as the ‘Sun of
Righteousness.. No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New
Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined." Schaff Herzog,
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol.4, art: 'Sunday’
"The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human
ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a
divine command in this respect, far from them and from the early apostolic
church to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday." Neander, History of
the Christian Religion and Church, p.186
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The Presbyterian Church
"There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on
Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same
footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law
enters." Canon Eyton, in "The Ten Commandments"
"We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority
of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must
therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is
constant and uniform." John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the
Gospels, Vol. 1, pg. 277.
"The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue - the Ten Commandments. This alone
forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution... Until,
therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the
Sabbath will stand... The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the
Sabbath."
T.C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp.474,475
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The Anglican Church
"And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at
all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are commanded to keep the
first." Isaac Williams, "Plain Sermons on the Catechism," pp. 334, 336.
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The Disciples of Christ Church
"There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day 'the
Lord's Day." Dr. D.H. Lucas, in the "Christian Oracle," January 23, 1890.
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The Moody Bible Institute
"The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This
fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath
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 when they will admit
that the other nine are still binding?"....."I honestly believe that this
commandment [the fourth, or Sabbath commandment] is just as binding today as it
ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated
(canceled), but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible
where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside;
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, and not man for the
Sabbath.' 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." D.L.
Moody, Weighed and Wanting, pg. 47.
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The Methodist Church
"It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there
any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed
the Sabbath. 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."
Amos Binney, "Theological Compendium," pp. 180-181.
"No Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which
are called moral." "The Sabbath was made for MAN; not for the Hebrews, but for
all men."
Methodist Church Discipline (1904), p.23
"But the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the
prophets, He [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to
revoke any part of this. This is a law which can never be broken.... Every part
of this 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 relation
to each other."
John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, Vol. 1, Sermon XXV.
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The Mormon Church \Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
"In this, a new dispensation, and verily the last - the dispensation of the
fullness of times - the law of the Sabbath has been reaffirmed unto the
church... We believe that a weekly day of rest is no less truly a necessity for
the physical well-being of man than his spiritual growth; but primarily and
essentially, we regard the Sabbath as divinely established, and its observance a
commandment of Him who was and is and ever shall be, Lord of the Sabbath."
James E. Talmage, Articles of Faith, 25th Edition, Art. 13, Chap. 24, pp. 449,
451, 452.
"The acceptance by the Latter-day Saints of what is usually called the
'Christian Sabbath,' or 'Lord's Day,' as the proper day of special service and
worship of the Lord is sometimes challenged. Such acceptance is challenged as
being in violation of one of the Ten Commandments- the fourth- which directed
ancient Israel to keep holy the Sabbath day- the Seventh day of the week; and
which, it is held, was designed to be a perpetual law unto all who accept God as
Creator and Law-giver." Brigham H. Roberts, The Lord's Day (13 page
pamphlet), p. 3.
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The Baptist Church
"There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath
day was not Sunday... It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph,
that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the
week... Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New
Testament - absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the
Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week...’To me it
seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years intercourse with His
disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, never alluded
to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection
life, no such thing was intimated...’Of course, I quite well know that Sunday
did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn
from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes
branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god,
when adopted and sanctioned by papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy
to Protestantism." Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual, in a
paper read before a New York minister’s conference held Nov.13, 1893
"The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath. There is no
Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course, any Scriptural obligation."
"The Watchman."
"The first four commandments set forth man's obligations directly toward God....
But when we keep the first four commandments, we are likely to keep the other
six....The fourth commandment sets forth God's claim on man's time and
thought....The six days of labor and the rest on the Sabbath are to be
maintained as a witness to God's toil and rest in the creation.... No one of the
ten words is of merely racial significance....The Sabbath was established
originally (long before Moses) in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as
an institution for all of mankind, in commemoration of God's rest after the six
days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam."
Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, Aug. 15, 1937.
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Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall
"Therefore God gave his law through Moses to the Israelites and which applies to
all who want to do right, and the first in order and first in importance of his
commandments or fundamental law is this, to wit.' Exodus 20:1-6,".."which is the
first part of the Ten Commandment law...'The law of God never changes, because
God never changes. (Malachi 3:6). His law points out the way to everlasting
life. No creature will ever be given life everlasting who willfully, that is,
intentionally, violates God's law....For a man to violate the fundamental law of
God means that that man puts himself on the side of the devil, who therefore
leads him to destruction." Enemies, Watchtower publications, 1937, pg. 94.
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The Nation of Islam \ note: their holy day is Friday
The leader of the Nation of Islam Minister Farrakahn, in addressing White
America said "You have not obeyed Divine Law, you have set yourself up as a
law beside God, so whatever God says thou shall not do, you said 'it's all
right, hang in there, go on and do it."........"God says you should keep the
Sabbath. You didn't do it, so we (Black people) don't do it. See, we were your
slaves, we came up under you, you were our teacher, you taught us and wanted us
to call you master."
Quoted from Minister Louis Farrakahn's speech at the Jacob Javit Center, in
New York City, December 18, 1993,
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The Church Of England
"Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the
origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles." Sir WILLIAM
DOMVILLE, Examination of the Six Texts," pages 6, 7. (Supplement).
"There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament
about abstaining from work on Sunday. . . into the rest of Sunday no divine law
enters. . . The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same
footing as the observance of Sunday." CANON EYTON, "The Ten
Commandments," pages 52, 63, 65
"Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from
Saturday to Sunday? None." Manual of Christian Doctrine," page 127
"The Lord's day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath ... The Lord's day
was merely an ecclesiastical institution It was not introduced by virtue of the
fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred years together they kept
that day which was in that commandment.... The primitive Christians did all
manner of works upon the Lord's day even in times of persecution when they are
the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew
there was none." BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR, "Ductor Dubitantium," Part 1, Book II,
Chap. 2, Rule 6 Sec.51,59.
"Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet and
called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly
in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), the Christians thought fit
to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear
causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles,
and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel."
T. M. MORER, "Dialogues on the Lord's Day," pages 22,23.
"Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are
commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first
day.... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the
seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because
the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it." ISAAC WILLIAMS,
B.D., "Plain Sermons on the Catechism," Vol. 1, pages 334-336.
"Dear Madam:
"In reply to your letter of May 7th, I am asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury
to say that from the first century onward the Christian church has observed the
first day of the week as the weekly commemoration of the resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the early Christians . . . deliberately substituted
the first day of the week for the seventh on the ground that it was on the first
day that our Lord rose from the dead. [Italics ours.]
"Yours faithfully,
"ALAN C. DON."
"The Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made Sunday into the Sabbath day.
Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even clergymen do.
"But, unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four hours
from six o'clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore, before we come to
Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he ought to observe the Sabbath on
the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once replies that the day, not
the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom? There is no injunction in
the whole of the New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath into Sunday."
--D. MORSE- BOYCOTT, Davy Herald, London, Feb. 26, 1931.
"The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious
transference of the one day to the other." F. W. FARRAR, D.D., "The
Voice From Sinai," page 167.
"Take which you will, either of the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no
Lord's day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them
upon the first day of the week." PETER HEYLYN, History of the Sabbath,
page 410.
"Merely to denounce the tendency to secularize Sunday is as futile as it is
easy. What we want is to find some principle, to which as Christians we can
appeal, and on which we can base both our conduct and our advice. We turn to the
New Testament, and we look in vain for any authoritative rule. There is no
recorded word of Christ, there is no word of any of the apostles, which tells
how we should keep Sunday, or indeed that we should keep it at all. It is
disappointing, for it would make our task much easier if we could point to a
definite rule, which left us no option but simple obedience or disobedience....
There is no rule for Sunday observance, either in Scripture or history."
DR. STEPHEN, Bishop of Newcastle, N.S.W., in an address reported in the
Newcastle Morning Herald, May 14, 1924.
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The Christian Church
"It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God's
Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." DR. N. SUMMERBELL, "History of
the Christian Church," Third Edition, page 415.
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The Church Of Christ
NOTE: The current official position of the Church of Christ is that the Sabbath
was abolished entirely and Christians need not keep either Saturday or Sunday as
a day of worship.
"There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day the
Lord's day." DR. D. H. LUCAS, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890.
"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 entire
Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There
never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any
place in the Bible any intimation of such a change." First-Day Observance,
pages 17, 19.
"To command ... men ... to observe ... the Lord's day ... is contrary to the
gospel." Memoirs of Alexander Campbell," Vol. I, page 528.
"It is clearly proved that the pastors of the churches have struck out one of
God's ten words, which, not only in the Old Testament, but in all revelation,
are the most emphatically regarded as the synopsis of all religion and
morality." ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, "Debate With Purcell," page 214.
"I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or
that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plain
reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no
testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath was changed, or that the
Lord's day came in the room of it." ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, Washington Reporter,
Oct.8, 1821.
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Historical
"During this indefinite time a considerable amount of a sort of theokrasia
seems to have gone on between the Christian cult and the almost equally
popular and widely diffused Mithraic cult, and the cult of
Serapis-Isis-Horus. From the former it would seem the Christians adopted
Sunday as their chief day of worship in- stead of the Jewish Sabbath."
H. G. WELLS, "The Outline of History" (New and Revised), page 543.
"The first who ever used it [the Sabbath to denote the Lord's day (the
first that I have met with in all this search) is one Petrus Alfonsus-he
lived about the time that Repurtus did (which was the beginning of the
twelfth century)-who calls the Lord's day by the name of Christian
Sabbath." PETER HEYLYN, "History of the Sabbath," Part 2, Chap. 2,
Sec. 12.
"Bear in mind that the substitution [of the first for the seventh day] was
not a coerced happening; it could not be a sudden, but only a very slow
development, probably never anticipated, never even designed or put into
shape by those chiefly interested, but creeping almost unconsciously
into being."
WILLIAM B. DANA, "A Day of Rest and Worship," page 174.
The first direct reference to Sunday as a day of rest from physical toil
we find in Tertullian, in about A.D. 200 in his Liber de Oratione,
chapter 23. "We, however ( just as we have received ), only on the day
of the Lord's resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but
every posture and office of solicitude; deferring even our businesses
lest we give any place to the devil." TERTULLIAN, "Ante-Nicene
Fathers," Vol. 111, page 689.
"The early Christians had at first adopted the Jewish seven- day week with
its numbered week days, but by the close of the third century A.D. this
began to give way to the planetary week; and in the fourth and fifth
centuries the pagan designations became generally accepted in the
western half of Christendom. The use of the planetary names by
Christians attests the growing influence of astrological speculations
introduced by converts from paganism. ... During these same centuries
the spread of Oriental solar worships, especially that of Mithra
(Persian sun worship) in the Roman world, had already led to the
substitution by pagans of dies Solis for dies Saturni, as the first day
of the planetary week.... Thus gradually a pagan institution was
ingrafted on Christianity." HUTTON WEBSTER, Ph.D., Rest Days,
pages 220, 221.
Eusebius, fourth-century bishop and friend of the wicked Emperor
Constantine, whose Sunday law is the first on record, flatly says: "All
things, whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have
transferred to the Lord's day [as they had begun to call Sunday]."
--"Commentary on the Psalms."
"Opposition to Judaism introduced the particular festival of Sunday very
early, indeed, into the place of the Sabbath.... The festival of Sunday,
like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was
far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in
this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to
transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps, at the end of the
second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place;
for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a
sin." AUGUSTUS NEANDER, General history of the Christian
Religion and Church" (Rose's translation), Vol. 1, page 186.
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Dictionaries
"As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so it is to be kept holy unto
the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious
services; but these are not binding, because of human institution. Not
so the Sabbath. Hence the fourth commandment is ushered in with a
peculiar emphasis-'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.' ...
The abolition of it would be unreasonable." CHARLES BUCK A
Theological Dictionary," 1830 Edition, page 537.
"But although it [Sunday] was in the primitive times indifferently
called the Lord's day, or Sunday, yet it was never denominated the
Sabbath; a name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the seventh day,
both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers."-Id., page 572.
"The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord's
day [meaning Sunday] for the Jewish Sabbath [or the first for the
seventh day]... and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized
form, of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of
the fourth commandment, has no basis whatever, either in Holy Scripture
or in Christian antiquity." SIR WILLIAM SMITH AND SAMUEL CHEETHAM, A
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," Vol. II, page I82, Article
"Sabbath."
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Encyclopedias
"Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week,
because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, ... the seventh
day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and ... He requires His
creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and
perpetual obligation. ... The Creator 'blessed the seventh day' declared
it to be a day above all days, a day on which His favor should assuredly
rest. ... So long, then, as man exists, and the world around him
endures, does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be set
aside, so long as its foundations last.... It is not the Jewish Sabbath,
properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the
whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there
is in the third commandment, or the sixth." Eadie's Biblical
Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561.
"Thus we learn from Socrates (HE., vi.c.8) that in his time public worship
was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days. The view that
the Christian's Lord's day or Sunday is but the Christian Sabbath
deliberately transferred, from the seventh to the first day of the week
does not indeed, find categorical expression till a much later
period.... The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a
legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D. 32l, enacting that
all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at
rest on. Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception in favor of
those engaged in agricultural labor.... The Council of Laodicea (363)
...,forbids Christians from Judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day.
preferring the Lord's day, and so far as possible resting as Christians.
" Encyclopedia Britannica l899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654.
"Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which
the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is
the sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321. Chambers'
Encyclopedia, Article "Sunday.
"It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning
the, first day. " M'CLINTOCK AND STRONG Cyclopedia of Biblical,
Thedogical, and Ecclesiastical literature, Vol. IX page 196.
"Sunday (Dies Sotis, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because
dedicated to the sun), the, first day of the week, was adopted by the
early Christians as a day of worship. The 'sun' of Latin adoration they
interpreted as the 'Sun of Righteousness.'... No regulations, for its
observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its
observance even enjoined. "
.SCHAFF HERZOG, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol.
IV, Art. "Sunday."
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Miscellaneous
"You will 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 commandment 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 business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy
the first day in its stead'? This is a most important question, which I know,
not how you will 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." --"The Library of
Christian Doctrine" pages 3,4.
"The first precept in the Bible is that of sanctifying the seventh day: 'God
blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.' Genesis 2:3 This precept was
confirmed by God in the Ten Commandments: 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy. ... The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God 'Exodus 20: 8, 10.
On the other hand, Christ declares that He is not come to destroy the law, but
to fulfill it. (Matthew 5: 17.) He Himself observed the Sabbath: 'And, as His
custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.' Luke 4: 16. His
disciples likewise observed it after His death: 'They ... rested the Sabbath day
according to the commandment.' Luke 23: 56. Yet with all this weight of
Scripture authority for keeping the Sabbath or seventh day holy, Protestants of
all denominations make this a profane day and transfer the obligation of it to
the first day of the week, or the Sunday. Now what authority have they for doing
this? None at all but the unwritten word, or tradition of the Catholic Church,
which declares that the apostle made the change in honor of Christ's
resurrection, and the descent of the Holy Ghost on that day of the week. "--JOHN
MILNER, "The End of Religious Controversy, " page 71.
".Sabbath means, of course, Saturday, the seventh day of the week but the early
Christians changed the observance to Sunday, to honor the day on which Christ
arose from the dead "--FULTON DURSLER, Cosmopolitan, Sept 1951, pages 34,35.
"I do not pretend to be even an amateur scholar of the Scriptures. I read the
Decalogue merely as an average man searching, for guidance, and in the immortal
'Ten Words' I find a blueprint for the good life. "--Id., page 33.
"Most certainly the Commandments are needed today, perhaps more than ever
before. Their divine message confronts us with a profound moral challenge in an
epidemic of evil; a unifying message acceptable alike to Jew, Moslem, and
Christian. Who, reading the Ten in the light of history and of current events,
can doubt their identity with the eternal law of nature? "--Id , page 124.. "The
Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not be kept on any
other day. To observe the first day of the week or the fourth is not to observe
the Sabbath.... It was the last day of the week, after six days of work, that
was to be kept holy. The observance of no other day would fulfill the law. "--H.
J FLOWERS, B.A., B D, "The Permanent value of the Ten Commandments, "page 131.
"The evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the resurrection of
Christ, has varied greatly throughout the centuries of the Christian Era. From
time to time it has been confused with the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath.
English- speaking peoples have been the most consistent in perpetuating the
erroneous assumption that the obligation of the fourth commandment has passed
over to Sunday. In popular speech, Sunday is frequently, but erroneously, spoken
of as the Sabbath. "--F. M. SETZLER, Head Curator, Department of
Anthropology, .Smithsonian Institute, from a letter dated Sept.1, 1949.
"He that observes the Sabbath aright holds the
history of that which it celebrates to be authentic, and therefore believes in
the creation of the first man; ho the creation of a fair abode for man in the
space of six days; in the primeval and absolute creation of the heavens and the
earth, and as a necessary antecedent to all this, in the Creator, who at
the close of His latest creative effort, rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath
thus becomes a sign by which the believers in a historical revelation are
distinguished from those who have allowed these great facts to fade from their
remembrance. "-- JAMES G MURPHY, "Commentary on the Book of Exodus, "
comments on Exodus 20: 8-11.
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Infidel
"Probably very few Christians are aware of the fact that what they call the
'Christian Sabbath' (Sunday) is of pagan origin. "The first observance of Sunday
that history records is in the fourth century, when Constantine issued an edict
(not requiring its religious observance, but simply abstinence, from work)
reading 'let all the judges and people of the town rest and all the various
trades be suspended on the venerable day of the sun. At the time of the issue of
this edict, Constantine was a sun-worshipper; therefore it could have had no
relation whatever to Christianity. "-- HENRY M TABER, "Faith or Fact"
(preface by Robert G. Ingersol) page. 112.
"I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion to show me the
slightest authority, for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot
be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a
holy day? . . The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that
because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of the
week holy, therefore the, first day of the week should be so kept by Christians,
is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering.... That Paul habitually
observed and preached on the seventh day of the week, is ,shown in Acts 18:4--
'And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath' (Saturday). "--Id., pages
114, 116.