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    THE EARLY CHURCH KEPT THE SABBATH

    In proving the teachings and customs of the apostles, we doubtless prove also the custom of the early church. Neither would it prove anything against this view to show that some of the members of the church at an early age violated the Sabbath; as you will allow that we inherit no right to be fornicators because some in the church at Corinth were such (1 Corinthians 5:1); nor dare we turn away from God and plead the example of those in the church at Galatia (Galatians 1:6, 7), Peter dissembled, and Paul and Barnabas contended sharply, but we may not. We do not plead custom, but law, as a rule of duty. Our lives are not to be regulated by the actions of mortals like ourselves, but by the revealed will of the infinite God. Said Paul, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1. But if Paul had not followed Christ, it would be wrong to follow Paul. We must follow the apostles as they followed Christ, and we must follow Christ because he kept his Father’s commandments, and was pure and sinless.TFNOS 27.6

    Dr. Henry, a Protestant commentator, acknowledges that the first day of the week is not called the Sabbath in the Bible, and was not so called by the primitive church. But we have the fullest proof that one day of the week was, in the New Testament, and by the apostles and the primitive church, called the Sabbath, which was, of course, the seventh day.TFNOS 28.1

    Also, the first day of the week was by men (but not in the Bible) called the Lord’s day; and from the second to the fifth century there was much contention in the Western Roman Empire as to the respective claims of the Sabbath and the Lord’s day. And some writers of that age are quoted to prove that they kept the so-called Lord’s day instead of the Sabbath. Now as they meant the first day when they said the Lord’s day, and kept it instead of the Sabbath, it is proof positive that they did not call the first day of the week the Sabbath; and this shows that the Sabbath was the proper name of the seventh day, even by consent of the Roman Church, for centuries after the resurrection of Christ. In the Eastern Empire, and in Africa, the observance of the Sabbath continued longer than in Western Rome, as the Bishop of Rome obtained the supremacy, and the Western States were more immediately under the control of the ambitions and corrupt rulers of the church. The American Presbyterian Board of Publication, in tract No. 118, states that the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath did not cease till it was abolished, after “the empire became Christian;” that is, after the State came under papal rule.TFNOS 28.2

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