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The Change of the Sabbath

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    Sunday a Festival

    We will next notice the efforts of the Roman Church and its sympathizers to make Sunday a very joyful festival, in opposition to the Sabbath, which it had thus stigmatized as a day of sorrow and fasting. It was considered a sin to fast on Sunday; and on that day they must stand, not kneel, during prayer, this act of standing in prayer being a symbol of the resurrection.ChSa 109.4

    Tertullian, the oldest of the Latin Fathers, who wrote about A. D. 200, says:ChSa 109.5

    “We devote Sunday to rejoicing.”-Apologeticus, paragraph 16.ChSa 109.6

    Dr. Heylyn says:ChSa 109.7

    “Tertullian tells us that they did devote Sunday partly unto mirth and recreation, not to devotion altogether. When in a hundred years after Tertullian’s time there was no law or constitution to restrain men from labor on this day in the Christian church.”-History of the Sabbath, part 2, chapter 8, section 13.ChSa 109.8

    Tertullian himself says:ChSa 109.9

    “We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord’s day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday.”-De Corona, section 3.ChSa 109.10

    From Peter of Alexandria, another Father, we quote the following:ChSa 110.1

    “But the Lord’s day we celebrate as a day of joy, because on it he rose again, on which day we have received it for a custom not even to bow the knee.”-Canon 15.ChSa 110.2

    We could give many other similar statements, but it is not necessary. We will not, however, omit one statement from Tertullian. In speaking of “offerings for the dead,” the manner of Sunday observance, and the use of the sign of the cross upon the forehead, he gives the ground of these observances as follows:ChSa 110.3

    “If for these and other such rules you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, and faith as their observer.”-De Corona, section 4.ChSa 110.4

    Truly, this is a frank statement, which cannot be disputed. In this statement we have presented, clearly and boldly, one of the reasons why Sunday gradually advanced in sacredness in the popular view, the acceptance of tradition instead of the word of God being the real ground of first day observance, as well as of a vast number of other doctrines and customs which came into the church at this, time. Tradition vs. Scripture is the great point of difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. The moment we admit tradition as a proper authority for religions duty, we step down from the Protestant rock, and can find no good reason why we should not receive all the heterogeneous practices of the Catholic Church.ChSa 110.5

    We close this part of the subject, relating to the authority for Sunday keeping previous to the edict of Constantine, by giving the conclusions of one who has spent many years in investigating the writings of the early Fathers, He gives the substance of their testimony concerning the earliest observance of Sunday as follows:ChSa 110.6

    “We shall find, 1. That no one claimed for first-day observance any divine authority; 2. That none of them had ever heard of the change of the Sabbath, and none believed the first-day festival to be a continuation of the Sabbath institution; 3. That labor on that day is never set forth as sinful, and that abstinence from labor is never mentioned as a feature of its observance, nor even implied, only so far as is necessary in order to spend a portion of the day in worship; 4. That if we put together all the hints respecting Sunday observance which are scattered through the Fathers of the first three centuries (for no one of them gives more than two of these, and generally a single hint is all that is found in one writer), we shall find just four items. (1) An assembly on that day in which the Bible was read and expounded, and the supper celebrated, and money collected. (2) The day must be one of rejoicing. (3) It must not be a day of fasting. (4) The knee must not be bent in prayer on that day.”-Andrews’s History of the Sabbath, pages 285, 286.ChSa 110.7

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