The Sabbath Superseded
But let the thoughtful reader notice the striking fact that when idolatry came to prevail fully, the sun-worship became general among all the nations but the Jews, the Sabbath gradually disappeared, and the Sunday, the “memorial” of idolatry, took its place in general esteem. It is in the earliest record of these nations that we find references to the Sabbath. In the later ones there are very few. Satan, the author of false worship, suppressed the Sabbath wherever his influence was paramount.ChSa 102.1
But God chose the children of Abraham because this devout man kept his, charge, his commandments, his statutes, and his laws. He surrounded them with special circumstances, customs, and ordinances, to keep them from the heathen nations around them, till the “seed” Christ should come, through whom all the nations of the world should be blessed, by the calling of the Gentiles again. God gave himself to that people, and with himself his great “memorial,” the Sabbath, which kept in mind his work at creation. The other nations once had it; but through their idolatry, God and his memorial were nearly forgotten by them. Satan tried his best to rob God’s chosen people of this keepsake; but because of God’s chastisements and the constant warnings of the prophets, he could not quite accomplish this work.ChSa 102.2
After Christ came, and the apostles were sent to the Gentiles, they carried with them, as we have shown, the Sabbath of the Lord. The early Christians kept it as Christ and the apostles had done; and as Christianity spread abroad to all the nations of the earth, the two “memorials” once more came in conflict. The Sunday “holiday of all pagan times” was entrenched among all the nations. The people everywhere regarded it as a special day of pleasure and recreation. It came every week. This fact made it difficult for those who kept the seventh day as the Sabbath, something in the same manner as it makes it difficult now for those who turn from the observance of Sunday to the Sabbath. All who have tried it, know how hard it is. Gradually, after a generation or two, the sense of sacredness began to weaken, and feelings of expediency were cherished. The great struggle between the two memorials then began, and continued, as we shall see, till the Sabbath of the Lord was generally abandoned.ChSa 102.3
These influences are well presented by a clergyman of the Church of England, Mr. Chafle, who published in 1652 a work in vindication of first-day observance. After showing the general observance of Sunday by the heathen world in the early ages of the church, he thus states the reasons which forbid Christians’ attempting to keep any other day:ChSa 103.1
“1. Because of the contempt, scorn, and derision they thereby should be had in, among all the Gentiles with whom they lived.... How grievous would be their taunts and reproaches against the poor Christians living with them and under their power for their new-set sacred day, had the Christians chosen any other than the Sunday.... 2. Most Christians then were either servants or of the poorer sort of people; and the Gentiles, most probably, would not give their servants liberty to cease from working on any other set day constantly, except on their Sunday.... 3. Because, had they assayed such a change, it would have been but labor in vain; ...they could never have brought it to pass.”-The Seventh day Sabbath, pp. 61, 62.ChSa 103.2
These reasons present powerful inducements which we cannot deny to those who regard expediency more than principle. The early church had begun already to apostatize from God, and to accept traditions in preference to the Scriptures. Many of the early Fathers had been heathen philosophers. It ever comes natural for human nature, when it changes its religious belief, to take with it more or less of the old notions and practices.ChSa 103.3
Gradually the church began to be less strict in its observance of Bible truths, and to conform more and more to the spirit of the world around them. No Protestant will dispute this in reference to their regard to many of the gospel requirements. Many thought by uniting more or less with their heathen neighbors they would be more likely to convert them. In this way the Sabbath partially lost its sacredness, and the first day gained its position and influence.ChSa 103.4
Morer, after stating the fact that the first day of the week, as we have quoted, had long been the “memorial” of sun-worship, as its name, “Sunday,” implies, places before us the reasons why the church was led to adopt it:ChSa 104.1
“These abuses did not hinder the Fathers of the Christian church simply to repeal, or altogether lay by, the day or its name, but only to sanctify and improve both, as they did also the pagan temples polluted before with idolatrous services, and other instances wherein these good men were always tender to work any other change than what was evidently necessary, and in such things as were plainly inconsistent with the Christian religion. So that Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adored that planet, and called it Sunday, ...the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel.”-Dialogues on the Lord’s Day, pages 22, 23.ChSa 104.2
It is such politic reasoning as this which has always led to apostasy and conformity to the world. It finally developed fully into the Roman Catholic Church, a mixture of heathenism and Christianity. This conformity to the heathen custom of regarding Sunday as a festival day, was carried so far that many thought the Christians worshiped the sun as a god; so that Tertullian, one of the Christian Fathers, defended them from this charge. He answered that though they worshiped toward the east, like the heathen, they did it for another reason than sun worship. He acknowledged that these acts-prayer toward the east, and making Sunday a day of festivity-did give men a chance to think the sun was the god of the Christians. (See Apology, chapter 67, section 16.)ChSa 104.3
Tertullian is therefore a witness to the fact that Sunday was a heathen festival when it was adopted by the Christian church, and that they were taunted with being sun-worshipers.ChSa 105.1
When we see the striking changes which have occurred in the manner of observing Sunday within the past one or two hundred years, even when nearly all regard it with more or less sacredness, and when we note the general laxity of practice as compared with the strictness of our ancestors, we cannot wonder at the changes which two or three centuries produced when strong influences were brought to bear against the Sabbath, and so many other perversions of Bible doctrines were introduced. Thus we see how these two causes-the general regard for Sunday as a weekly heathen holiday, and the difficulty of keeping the seventh day where Sunday observance was almost universal-would powerfully tend to discourage those who kept the Sabbath, and gradually undermine it in the esteem of all.ChSa 105.2