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The Change of the Sabbath - Contents
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    A Retrospect

    We have now traced the process of changing the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, from the apostolic age, when it was ever regarded as merely a secular day; through the second century, when it began to be regarded, with Good Friday and other days, as a “voluntary festival” on which religious meetings were held, and to which some little honor was paid by Christians, seeing that it was generally regarded among their heathen neighbors as a weekly festival day in honor of the sun.ChSa 164.2

    In the third century “custom and tradition,” and the efforts of the bishop of Rome and his sympathizers, exalted Sunday still higher, and lowered the Sabbath in public estimation, by turning the latter into a fast and the former into a joyous festival. They had also by this time begun calling it by the honorable title of “Lord’s day,” for which there is no warrant in Scripture.ChSa 164.3

    The process went on still more rapidly during the fourth century, inasmuch as heathenism and Christianity at this time espoused each other in unholy wedlock. Then Constantine, a heathen emperor, issued a heathen decree making the “venerable day of the sun” a rest day by imperial power, which Sylvester, bishop of Rome, cunningly sanctioned and enforced as a Christian institution, by the power of the Catholic Church. And after a season the Catholic Council of Laodicea placed the observance of the true Sabbath under a curse.ChSa 165.1

    With the perseverance of a sleuth hound following his game, the Roman Church still pursued its work of suppressing the Sabbath during the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and following centuries, and elevating the Sunday in its place, by decrees of councils, curses of popes, crusades of extermination, tortures of the inquisition, lying miracles, and rolls said to come from heaven, but really originating in the pope’s palace. Wherever the papacy had the power, Sunday was established, and the Sabbath of the Lord condemned.ChSa 165.2

    When the Reformation arose, its leaders, though men whom God honored by making them a blessing to the world, had through early training so lost the Sabbath from view, and had such a great work of reform on other points to carry through under the greatest difficulties, that many of them did not embrace the Sabbath in their work of reform, though they attributed very little sacredness to Sunday, plainly stating that it stood on a level with such festivals as Easter, Christmas, Good Friday, and other church holidays.ChSa 165.3

    Later, the Presbyterians took the positions held by our Protestant churches generally at the present time, of trying to place the Sunday under the protecting cover of the fourth commandment, and of Christ and the apostles,- positions never taught during the previous sixteen hundred years. This late invention to cover a hoary fraud is now very popular with many.ChSa 165.4

    We have seen that various bodies of Christians in different parts of the world not under the domineering influence of the papal see, still continued to keep the ancient Sabbath long after the Catholic Church had changed it. But that church never neglected, in a single instance, to abolish its observance by persecution wherever it had the power to do so.ChSa 166.1

    We have examined many Catholic authors relative to this change, and they always agree that it was their church which changed the Sabbath. They present this fact as one of the greatest claims of this church to popular regard, and as the highest evidence of its ecclesiastical authority over all Protestant bodies. And intelligent Protestant authorities, with every reason for a bias in favor of Sunday, admit that its introduction was a gradual process, first as a festal day, then gradually coming into favor as a rest day, but with no higher authority than the Catholic Church.ChSa 166.2

    With a brief notice of several texts of Scripture speaking prophetically of this very change, and some general observations, we will close this treatise.ChSa 166.3

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