CHAPTER 2 — HISTORY OF THE SABBATH

The observance of a different day of the week from that enjoined in the fourth commandment, and for a different reason from that which is there assigned, is by many, supposed to be the apostolic mode of rendering obedience to that precept. That such an idea has no foundation in the New Testament, we have already seen. For the benefit of such as wish to learn the manner in which the first day of the week obtained the place of the Lord’s Sabbath, we present the following important testimony. It is taken from the “History of the Sabbath” published by the American Sabbath Tract Society, New York. We think that those who will read the testimony on this subject with care, will acquiesce in the frank testimony of Dr. Neander, the distinguished historian of the church. In his “History of the Christian Religion and Church,” page 168, he thus remarks: “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 intention 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.”RCSK 15.1

The apostle Paul informed the Thessalonian church that the mystery of iniquity had already begun to work, and that in the predicted period, the man of sin would be revealed. As the great apostasy had begun to develop itself in the days of the apostles, it follows that the early observance of any precept, or belief of any doctrine does not stamp it as apostolic or divine, if it have no foundation in the word of God. To us, therefore, it is a matter of peculiar interest to trace the gradual corruption of the truths of the Bible, even from the days of the apostles, down to the complete development of the man of sin.RCSK 15.2

“The History of the Sabbath,” after proving from the New Testament that the Lord Jesus and his inspired followers observed the Sabbath according to the commandment, narrates the circumstances connected with its observance in the early church. It speaks as follows:RCSK 16.1