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The Change of the Sabbath

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    Chapter 10- The Two Rest Days In Secular History

    IN the consideration Of the Sabbath and its supposed change, we have now reached an important point. We have had, hitherto, the inspired, unerring word of the Lord as our text book of authority; and we need not discount a single statement it has made on the subject under investigation. We have found the Sabbath of the Lord still standing with undiminished obligation, at the close of the canon of inspiration, at the end of the first century of the Christian era. Now we enter upon a very different order of things. We know that a change of the Sabbath has been attempted, for the majority of professed Christians are found observing the first day of the week and not the seventh. As no account of a change is to be found in the Bible, we must look for it this side of the close of the first century.ChSa 79.1

    The authorities to which we must now look will be the so-called “Christian Fathers,” ecclesiastical historians, the decrees of emperors, and the decisions of councils. We shall find much of fable, contradictory statements, unreliable traditions, and doctrines never taught in the Bible. In the second, third, and fourth centuries, great changes came into the church. It ceased to be the humble, pure church of Christ and the apostles, but became rather a worldly, popular church, paying more heed to ambition, vain show, the love of supremacy, and traditions of men, and heathen notions, than to the word of God. The great errors which finally culminated in the full development of the Catholic Church, here had their rise.ChSa 79.2

    It is not the design of this comparatively brief treatise to notice all the points and questions raised on the subject of the Sabbath and its change, by the multitude of authors and authorities who have discussed this subject. The History of the Sabbath, by Elder J. N. Andrews, does this in a most thorough and conclusive manner; and all who desire to see every argument raised by first-day authors fully considered, should certainly secure this book. It is a work of great thoroughness, comprising over 800 pages.ChSa 80.1

    Our object in this treatise is to present, in as brief a manner as possible, a connected view of the attempted change of the day, and the authority for it. The authorities we quote will, in almost every case, be those who kept the first day of the week for the Sabbath, as far as they kept any day, and not those who favored the seventh day.ChSa 80.2

    Let us briefly notice some predictions of the Scriptures concerning this period upon which we are now entering, as well as the statements of leading Protestant authors concerning the character of these early times.ChSa 80.3

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