July 20, 1903

“Rome on Protestant Inconsistency” Australasian Signs of the Times 18, 29.

E. J. Waggoner

Ever since the Reformation raised the question of the Bible vs. Tradition, Rome has charged Protestants with inconsistency in claiming to follow the Bible, while yet keeping Sunday, which both the Bible and history show to have been introduced after Bible times and to have no authority in the Word, of late this has been pressed by Roman controversialists with increasing frequency.BEST July 20, 1903, par. 1

The “Catholic Mirror,” the official organ of Cardinal Gibbons, recently printed a sermon in which Mr. O’Keefe, a Catholic priest of prominence, carefully went through the texts referring to the Sabbath and the first day of the week, showing, as any reader who looks will see, that they give not a hint of Sunday sacredness nor-of Sunday observance, while on the contrary the Bible declares the seventh day to be the Sabbath, kept by Jesus as our example. He thus, in the name of Rome, calls Protestants to the bar for inconsistency, and we hope his words may have the effect, not of drawing any still further toward Rome, but of showing many that it is only the authority of the apostate Church of Rome, that was to “think” to change God’s law (Daniel 7:25), that has set Sunday in the place of God’s holy Sabbath, and deprived the world of the blessing of Sabbath rest in the Lord:-BEST July 20, 1903, par. 2

“Christ, as their Teacher, informs them, ‘If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments,’ and the chief and most emphatic of these is, “Remember the Sabbath day.”BEST July 20, 1903, par. 3

“Viewing the situation from a commonsense standpoint, it is almost incredible that men endowed with average intelligence could consent to occupy before the world, for an hour, such a self-stultifying, self-contradictory position as this. Professing to adore God, professing to obey His commands, yet they stand to-day before heaven and earth, with His written word clasped to their breast, and which they profess to obey, the most pronounced Sabbath-breakers on earth.BEST July 20, 1903, par. 4

“The Jew is rational, he obeys his teacher, the Bible, pointing to the command, Keep holy the Sabbath; the Catholic is ever rational, he obeys the teacher [the church] appointed him by Christ; but the Protestant obeys neither God nor his teacher, the Bible. Thus I have in this sermon shown his utter abandonment of his professed teacher, the Bible, and his public apostasy from the positive injunctions of God, speaking to him through it; but he has descended to a still lower depth of degradation. Having abandoned the teachings of his Bible, and having poured out the vials of his apparently honest indignation against the Catholic Church, all his life, he is found to-day, after having consummated his apostasy from his own religious principles and teacher, knocking at the door of the Catholic Church to notify her that he is about to borrow her day; thus this traitor to his professed teacher and guide throws open the doors of his meeting-house on each Sunday with a notice overhead.BEST July 20, 1903, par. 5

“‘OPEN EVERY ROMAN SABBATH,’
‘CLOSED EVERY BIBLE SABBATH.’”