In another Catholic work, called, a “Treatise of Thirty Controversies,” we find the following cutting reproof: - WCS 18.1
“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.” WCS 18.2
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: - WCS 18.3
“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.” WCS 19.1
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. WCS 19.2
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. WCS 19.3
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? WCS 19.4
A. Campbell (Baptism, p. 15), speaking of the different Protestant sects, says: - WCS 20.1
“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.” WCS 20.2
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. WCS 21.1
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. WCS 21.2
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. WCS 21.3
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. WCS 21.4
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. WCS 21.5
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.” WCS 21.6
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. WCS 21.7
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. WCS 22.1
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. WCS 22.2
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? WCS 22.3
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. WCS 23.1