seventh-day or sunday sabbath

What views do other Christian churches have regarding the Sabbath, God’s day of rest?

PREFACE

This little volume has been compiled for the benefit of those who really desire to know what prominent churchmen, Catholic and Protestant, as well as secular writers, have said regarding immutability of the law of God and the attempted change of the seventh-day Sabbath of creation week. Testimony from the leading denominations is here compiled, along with evidence gathered from dependable secular sources. All unitedly testify that it was the church in apostasy that tampered with the holy law of an unchangeable God. Centuries before the Christian Era the prophet of the Lord had prophesied:–

“He shall speak great words against the most High, . . . and think to change times and laws.” Daniel 7: 25.

To the Christian church, God entrusted great authority, but no man nor organization of men has ever been given divine authority to, tamper with the ten foundation pillars of the government of God. And He Himself has made it plain that they are for ever established by His everlasting covenant whereby He promises to write His laws in the minds and hearts of men. (Hebrews 8: lo.)

“According to Catholic teaching, the only ‘bondage’ to which humans are subject is the moral law which emanates from God Almighty Himself. The Church, as God’s agent, may not tamper with that law.”–Our Sunday Visitor, July 13, 1947, page 129.

“Man is a creature. As a creature, he is subject to his Creator in all that he does. God’s will has . . . a bearing on everything that touches human rights and duties. No state, no group of educators, may reject a truth of the moral order to suit the claim of convenience. –Pronouncement of Roman Catholic bishops as reported in Time, Nov. 23, 1961, page 21.

But the so-called Christian world has tampered with God’s law and rejected a truth of the ten great moral principles enunciated in the eternal jaw reiterated on Sinai by the voice of God and written by His finger.

“For up to this day mankind has absolutely trifled with the original and most specific revelation of the holy God, the ten words written upon the tables of the law from Sinai.”–“Crown Theological Library,” page 178. (Lutheran).

The world unrest, the disregard for law and order, and the immorality of our day may be charged directly to the brazen attempts of the created to meddle with the government of the Creator. This is the testimony of Holy Scripture: “The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore loath the curse devoured the earth.” Isaiah 24: 5, 6.

Friend, please read the testimony of the following pages with an open mind and in the light of God’s Word “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8: 20.

Remember that Jesus declared: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Matthew 5: 17.

His earthly mission was to save men from the transgression of the law, not to change it. Concerning Christ’s first advent, the prophet had declared:– “He will magnify the law, and make it honourable.” Isaiah 42:21.

Will you not “walk even as He walked”? 1 John 2: 6. Our Saviour said, “I have kept My Father’s commandments.” John 15: 10.

May God bless you as you consider this vital doctrine of the Bible.

BAPTIST

“There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday…. It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week…. Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament, absolutely not. There is no Scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.

“To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question . . . never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated.

“Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, when adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism ! “–DR. Edward T. Hiscox, author of “The Baptist Manual,” in a paper read before a New York ministers’ conference held Nov. 13, 1893.

“We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government.”–“Baptist Church Manual,” Art. 12.

“The first four commandments set forth man’s obligations directly toward God…. But when we keep the first four commandments, we are likely to keep the other six…. The fourth commandment sets forth God’s claim on man’s time and thought…. The six days of labour and the rest on the Sabbath are to be maintained as a witness to God’s toil and rest in the creation….

CATHOLIC

“From this same Catholic Church you have accepted your Sunday, and that Sunday, as the Lord’s day, she has handed down as a tradition; and the entire Protestant world has accepted it a tradition, for you have not an iota of Scripture to establish it Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday, you have accepted on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.”–D. B. Ray, “The Papal Controversy,” 1892, page 179.

“I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholics Church alone. The Bible says, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ The Catholic Church says: ‘No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week.’ And lo! the entire civilized world bows down in a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic Church.”–T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb. 18, 1884.

“The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday.”–The Catholic Mirror, Sept. 23, 1893.

“You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we [Catholicsl never sanctify.” –James Cardinal Gibbons, “The Faith of Our Fathers,” page 111.

“There is but one church on the face of the earth which has the power, or claims power, to make laws binding on the conscience, binding before God, binding under penalty of hell-fire. For instance, the institution of Sunday. What right has any other church to keep this day? You answer by virtue of the third commandment [the Papacy changed the fourth commandment and called it the third], which says, ‘Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.’ But Sunday is not the Sabbath. Any schoolboy knows that Sunday is the first day of the week. I have repeatedly offered one thousand dollars to anyone who will prove by the Bible alone that Sunday is the day we are hound to keep, and no one has called for the money. It was the holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the week.”–T. Enright, C. S. S. R., in a lecture delivered in 1893.

“Reason and sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible.” –James Cardinal Gibbons, Catholic Mirror, Dec. 23, 1983.

“QUESTION: What Bible authority is there for changing the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week? Who gave the pope the authority to change a command of God?
“ANSWER: if the Bible is the only guide for the Christian, then the Seventh-day Adventist is right in observing the Saturday with the Jew. But Catholics learn what to believe and do from the divine, infallible authority established by Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church…. Is it not strange that those who make the Bible their only teacher should inconsistently follow in this matter the tradition of the Church?”–“Question Box ” by Conway, 1903 Edition, pages 254, 255.

“QUESTION: Which is the Sabbath day?
“ANSWER: Saturday is the Sabbath day.

“QUESTION: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
“ANSWER: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church, in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.” –Peter Geiermann, “The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine,” Second Edition, 1910, page 50.

“It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ has transferred this rest to the Sunday in remembrance of the resurrection of our Lord. Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] church.” –MGR. Segur, “Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today,” page 213.

“QUESTION: Have you any other way of proving that the Church has power to institute festivals of precept?
“ANSWER: Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her; she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.” –Stephen Keenan, “A Doctrinal Catechism,” page 174.

“QUESTION: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holydays?
“ANSWER: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same Church.

“QUESTION: How prove you that?
“ANSWER: Because by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge the Church’s power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin and by not keeping the rest [of the feasts] by her commanded, they again deny, in fact, the same power.”–Henry Tuberville, D. D., “An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine” (R. C.), page 58.

“Nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the seventh day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the church [Roman] outside the Bible.”–Catholic Virginian, Oct. 3, 1947.

“Our Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week,” said Father Hourigan of the Jesuit Seminary. “That is why the Church changed the day of obligation from the seventh day to the first day of the week. The Anglican and other Protestant denominations retained that tradition when the Reformation came along.” –Toronto Daily Star, Oct. 26,1949.

“Catholic: Is the Bible the rule or guide of Protestants for observing Sunday?

“Protestant: No, I believe the Seventh-day Adventists are the only ones who know the Bible in the matter of Sabbath observance.”–“The Bible an Authority Only in Catholic Hands,” pages 25, 26.

“Practically everything that Protestants regard as essential or important they have received from the Catholic Church. They accepted Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made that change.

“But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible, in observing the Sunday, in keeping Christmas and Easter, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the pope.”–Our Sunday Visitor, Feb. 5, 1950.

“Only gradually did Christians begin to observe Sunday as a day of rest…. In the third century, as we learn from Tertullian, many Christians had begun to keep Sunday as a day of rest to some extent….

“The real need of Sunday as a day of rest as well as worship came much later, in the sixth century.”–“Yes, I Condemned the Catholic Church” (Supreme Council. Knights of Columbus), page 4.

“When St. Paul repudiated the works of the law, he was not thinking of the Ten Commandments, which are as unchangeable as God Himself is, which God could not change and still remain the infinitely holy God.”–Our Sunday Visitor, Oct. 7, 1951.

CHURCHES OF CHRIST (Disciples of Christ)

“There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord’s day.”–DR. D. H. LUCAS, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890.

“The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change.”–“First-Day Observance,” pages 17, 19.

“It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God’s Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday.” DR. N. Summerbell, “History of the Christian Church,” Third Edition, page 415.

“To command…men…to observe…the Lord’s day…is contrary to the gospel.”–“Memoirs of Alexander Campbell,” Vol. I, page 528.

“It is clearly proved that the pastors of the churches have struck out one of God’s ten words, which, not only in the Old Testament, but in all revelation, are the most emphatically regarded as the synopsis of all religion and morality.” –Alexander Campbell, “Debate With Purcell,” page 214.

“I do not believe that the Lord’s day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath was changed, or that the Lord’s day came in the room of it.” — Alexander Campbell, Washington Reporter, Oct.8, 1821.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND

“Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles.”–Sir William Domville, Examination of the Six Texts,” pages 6, 7. (Supplement).

“There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. . . into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters. . . The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday.” –Canon Eyton, “The Ten Commandments,” pages 52, 63, 65

“Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None.”–“Manual of Christian Doctrine,” page 127.

“The Lord’s day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath….The Lord’s day was merely an ecclesiastical institution It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred years together they kept that day which was in that commandment….The primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord’s day even in times of persecution when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none.”–Bishop Jeremy Taylor, “Ductor Dubitantium,” Part 1, Book II, Chap. 2, Rule 6 Sec.51,59.

“Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), 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.”–T. M. Morer, “Dialogues on the Lord’s Day,” pages 22,23.

“Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day…. The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it.”–Isaac Williams, B.D., “Plain Sermons on the Catechism,” Vol. 1, pages 334-336.

“Dear Madam:
“In reply to your letter of May 7th, I am asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to say that from the first century onward the Christian church has observed the first day of the week as the weekly commemoration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the early Christians . . . deliberately substituted the first day of the week for the seventh on the ground that it was on the first day that our Lord rose from the dead. [Itatics ours.]
“Yours faithfully,
“Alan C. Don”

“The Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made Sunday into the Sabbath day. Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even clergymen do. But, unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four hours from six o’clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore, before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he ought to observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom? There is no injunction in the whole of the New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath into Sunday.” –D. Morse-Boycott, Davy Herald, London, Feb. 26, 1931.

“The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious transference of the one day to the other.”– F. W. Farrar, D.D., “The Voice From Sinai,” page 167.

“Take which you will, either of the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord’s day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week.” –Peter Heylyn, History of the Sabbath, page 410.

“Merely to denounce the tendency to secularize Sunday is as futile as it is easy. What we want is to find some principle, to which as Christians we can appeal, and on which we can base both our conduct and our advice. We turn to the New Testament, and we look in vain for any authoritative rule. There is no recorded word of Christ, there is no word of any of the apostles, which tells how we should keep Sunday, or indeed that we should keep it at all. It is disappointing, for it would make our task much easier if we could point to a definite rule, which left us no option but simple obedience or disobedience…. There is no rule for Sunday observ- ance, either in Scripture or history.” –Dr. Stephen, Bishop of Newcastle, N.S.W., in an address reported in the Newcastle Morning Herald, May 14, 1924.

CONGREGATIONALIST

“It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.”–Buck’s Theological Dictionary, page 403. “There is no command in the Bible requiring us to observe the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath.”–Orin Fowler, A. M., “Mode and Subjects of Baptism.”

“The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.”–DR. Lyman Abbott, Christian Union, Jan. 19, 1882.

“It is quite clear that, however rigidly or devoutly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath…. The Sabbath was founded on a specific, divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday…. There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday.”–“The Ten Commandments,” R. W. Dale, D.D., pages 106, 107.

LUTHERAN

“I wonder exceedingly how it came to be imputed to me that I should reject the law of Ten Commandments…. Whosoever abrogates the law must of necessity abrogate sin also.”–Martin Luther, Spiritual Antichrist,” pages 71, 72.

“The observance of the Lord’s day [Sunday] is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church.”– Augsburg Confession of Faith, quoted in “Catholic Sabbath Manual,” Part 2, Chap. 1, Sec.10.

“For up to this day mankind has absolutely trifled with the original and most special revelation of the Holy God, the ten words written upon the tables of the Law from Sinai.”–“Crown Theological library,” page 178.

“The Christians in the ancient church very soon distinguished the first day of the week, Sunday; however, not as a Sabbath, but as an assembly day of the church, to study the Word of God together, and to celebrate the ordinances one with another: with- out a shadow of doubt, this took place as early as the first part of the second century.”–Bishop Grimelund, History of the Sabbath,” page 60.

“They [the Catholics] allege the Sabbath changed into Sun- day, the Lord’s day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments.”–Augsburg Confession of Faith, Art. 28, par. 9.

“The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance.”–Augustus Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church,” Vol. I, page 186.

METHODIST

“This ‘handwriting of ordinances’ our Lord did blot out, take away, and nail to His cross. (Colossians 2: 14.) But the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He did not take away…. The moral law stands on an entirely different foundation from the ceremonial or ritual law. … Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages.”–John Wesley, “Sermons on Several Occasions,” 2-Vol Edition, Vol. I, pages 221, 222.

“No Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.”–“Methodist Church Dis- cipline,” (1904), page 23.

“Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day.”–Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942.

“The Sabbath was made for MAN; not for the Hebrews, but for all men.”–E. O. Haven, “Pillars of Truth, page 88.

“The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first. The early Christians began to worship on the first day of the week because Jesus rose from the dead on that day. By and by, this day of worship was made also a day of rest, a legal holiday This took place in the year 321.

“Our Christian Sabbath, therefore, is not a matter of positive command. It is a gift of the church.”–Clovis G. Chappell, “Ten Rules For Living,” page 61.

“In the days of very long ago the people of the world began to give names to everything, and they turned the sounds of the lips into words, so that the lips could speak a thought. In those days the people worshipped the sun because many words were made to tell of many thoughts about many things. The people became Christians and were ruled by an emperor whose name was Constantine. This emperor made Sun-day the Christian Sabbath, because of the blessing of light and heat which came from the sun. So our Sunday is a sun-day, isn’t it?”–Sunday School Advocates Dec. 31, 1921.

“The moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of His coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can he broken…. Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other.”–John Wesley, “Sermons an Several Occasions,” Vol. I, Sermon XXV.

MOODY BIBLE INSTITUTE

“The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word ‘remember,’ showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?”–D. L. Moody, “Weighed and Wanting,” page 47.

“I honestly believe that this commandment [the fourth, or Sabbath commandment] is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was—in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.”–Id., page 46.

” ‘Sabbath’ means rest, and the meaning of the word gives a hint as to the true way to observe the day. God rested after creation, and ordained the Sabbath as a rest for man.”–Id., pages 46, 47.

“Saturday is my day of rest because I generally preach on Sunday, and I look forward to it as a boy does to a holiday. God knows what we need.”–Id., page 48.

MORMON

(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)

“In this, a new dispensation, and verily the last dispensation of the fullness of times, the law of the Sabbath has been reaffirmed unto the church…. We believe that a weekly day of rest is no less truly a necessity for the physical well-being of man than for his spiritual growth; but primarily and essentially, we regard the Sabbath as divinely established, and its observance a commandment of Him who was and is and ever shall be, Lord of the Sabbath.”–James E. Talmage, “Articles of Faith,” 25th Edition, Art. 13, Chap. 24, pages 449, 451, 452,

“The Sabbath was to be a perpetual covenant between the Lord and the children of Israel. ‘Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant’ (verse 16). In verse 17 they are commanded to observe it as a sign that they remember that the Lord made heaven and earth, and rested on the seventh day.

“In these quotations from Exodus 31, and in the Decalogue the most positive and weighty reasons are given by the Lord to the fathers of the house of Israel, for keeping the Sabbath day. The obligation is evidently as binding upon the Latter-day Saints as it was upon their fathers, and they in like manner will reap the reward of obedience.”–Franklin D. Richards and James A. Little, “A Compendium of the Doctrines of the Gospel,” page 226.

PRESBYTERIAN

“The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments. This alone for ever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution…. Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand….The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath.”– T. C. Blake, D.D., “Theology Condensed,” pages 414, 475.

“We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform.”–John Calvin, “Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels,” Vol. I, page 277

“The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard to the matter contained in it, hut also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.”– “Westminster Confession of Faith,” Chap. 19, Art. 5.

“God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for the purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race.”– American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 175.

“The observance of the seventh-day Sabbath did not cease till it was abolished after the [Roman] empire became Christian.”– American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 118.

DICTIONARIES

“As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so it is to be kept holy unto the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious services; but these are not binding, because of human institution. Not so the Sabbath. Hence the fourth com- mandment is ushered in with a peculiar emphasis-‘Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.’ … The abolition of it would be unreasonable.” Charles Buck, “A Theological Dictionary,” 1830 Edition, page 537.

“But although it [Sunday] was in the primitive times indiffer- ently called the Lord’s day, or Sunday, yet it was never denomin- ated the Sabbath; a name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the seventh day, both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers.”-Id., page 572.

“The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord’s day [meaning Sunday] for the Jewish Sabbath [or the first for the seventh day]… and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the fourth commandment, has no basis what- ever, either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity.”–Sir William Smith and Samuel Cheetham, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,” Vol. II, page I82, Article “Sabbath.”

ENCYCLOPEDIAS

“Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, … the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and … He requires His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation. … The Creator ‘blessed the seventh day’ declared it to be a day above all days, a day on which His favour should assuredly rest. … So long, then, as man exists, and the world around him endures, does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be set aside, so long as its foundations last…. It is not the Jewish Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth.”– Eadie’s Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561.

“Thus we learn from Socrates (H.E., vi.c.8) that in his time public worship was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days. The view that the Christian’s Lord’s day or Sunday is but the Christian Sabbath deliberately transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week does not indeed find categorical expression till a much later period…. The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D. 321, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception in favour of those engaged in agricultural labour…. The Council of Laodicea (363) … forbids Christians from Judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day, preferring the Lord’s day, and so far as possible resting as Christians.”–Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654.

“Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321. Chambers’ Encyclopeedia, Article “Sunday.

“It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.”–M’Clintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Thedogical, and Ecclesiastical literature, Vol. IX, page 196.

“Sunday (Dies Sotis, of the Roman calendar, ‘day of the sun,’ because dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. The ‘sun’ of Latin adoration they interpreted as the ‘Sun of Righteousness.’ … No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined.”–Schaff Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol. IV, Art. “Sunday.”

HISTORICAL

“During this indefinite time a considerable amount of a sort of theokrasia seems to have gone on between the Christian cult and the almost equally popular and widely diffused Mithraic cult, and the cult of Serapis-Isis-Horus. From the former it would seem the Christians adopted Sunday as their chief day of worship instead of the Jewish Sabbath.”–H. G. Wells, “The Outline of History” (New and Revised), page 543.

“The first who ever used it [the Sabbathl to denote the Lord’s day (the first that I have met with in all this search) is one Petrus Alfonsus—he lived about the time that Repurtus did (which was the beginning of the twelfth century)—who calls the Lord’s day by the name of Christian Sabbath.”–Peter Heylyn, “History of the Sabbath,” Part 2, Chap. 2, Sec. 12.

“Bear in mind that the substitution [of the first for the seventh day] was not a coerced happening; it could not be a sudden, but only a very slow development, probably never anticipated, never even designed or put into shape by those chiefly interested, but creeping almost unconsciously into being.”–William B. Dana, “A Day of Rest and Worship,” page 174.

The first direct reference to Sunday as a day of rest from physical toil we find in Tertullian, in about A.D. 200 in his Liber de Oratione, chapter 23. “We, however ( just as we have received ), only on the day of the Lord’s resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude; deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil.” –Tertullian, “Ante-Nicene Fathers,” Vol. 111, page 689.

“The early Christians had at first adopted the Jewish seven-day week with its numbered week days, but by the close of the third century A.D. this began to give way to the planetary week; and in the fourth and fifth centuries the pagan designations became generally accepted in the western half of Christendom. The use of the planetary names by Christians attests the growing influence of astrological speculations introduced by converts from paganism. … During these same centuries the spread of Oriental solar worships, especially that of Mithra (Persian sun worship) in the Roman world, had already led to the substitution by pagans of dies Solis for dies Saturni, as the first day of the planetary week…. Thus gradually a pagan institution was engrafted on Christianity.” –Hutton Webster, Ph.D., Rest Days, pages 220, 221.

Eusebius, fourth-century bishop and friend of the wicked Emperor Constantine, whose Sunday law is the first on record, flatly says: “All things, whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord’s day [as they had begun to call Sunday].”–“Commentary on the Psalms.”

“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 intentions 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 labouring on Sunday as a sin.”–Augustus Neander, General history of the Christian Religion and Church” (Rose’s translation), Vol. 1, page 186.

INFIDEL

“Probably very few Christians are aware of the fact that what they call the ‘Christian Sabbath’ (Sunday) is of pagan origin. “The first observance of Sunday that history records is in the fourth century, when Constantine issued an edict (not requiring its religious observance, but simply abstinence from work) reading ‘let all the judges and people of the town rest and all the various trades be suspended on the venerable day of the sun.’ At the time of the issue of this edict, Constantine was a sun-worshipper; therefore it could have had no relation whatever to Christianity.”– Henry M. Taber, “Faith or Fact” (preface by Robert G. Ingersoll), page 112.

“I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion to show me the slightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a holy day? … The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of the week holy, therefore the first day of the week should be so kept by Christians, is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering…. That Paul habitually observed and preached on the seventh day of the week, is shown in Acts 18:4–‘And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath’ (Saturday).”–Id., pages 114, 116.

MISCELLANEOUS

“You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, ‘Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day,’ who shall dare to say, ‘Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead’? This is a most important question, which I know not how you can answer.

“You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the Ten Commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered.”–“The Library of Christian Doctrine,” pages 3, 4.

“The first precept in the Bible is that of sanctifying the seventh day: ‘God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.’ Genesis 2:3 This precept was confirmed by God in the Ten Commandments: ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. … The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.’ Exodus 20: 8, 10. On the other hand, Christ declares that He is not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. (Matthew 5: 17.) He Himself observed the Sabbath: ‘And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.’ Luke 4: 16. His disciples likewise observed it after His death: ‘They … rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.’ Luke 23: 56. Yet with all this weight of Scripture authority for keeping the Sabbath or seventh day holy, Protestants of all denominations make this a profane day and transfer the obligation of it to the first day of the week, or the Sunday. Now what authority have they for doing this? None at all but the unwritten word, or tradition of the Catholic Church, which declares that the apostle made the change in honor of Christ’s resurrection, and the descent of the Holy Ghost on that day of the week.”–John Milner, “The End of Religious Controversy,” page 71.

“Sabbath means, of course, Saturday, the seventh day of the week, but the early Christians changed the observance to Sunday, to honour the day on which Christ arose from the dead.”–Fulton Oursler, Cosmopolitan, Sept. 1951, pages 34, 35.

“I do not pretend to be even an amateur scholar of the Scriptures. I read the Decalogue merely as an average man searching for guidance, and in the immortal ‘Ten Words’ I find a blueprint for the good life.”–Id., page 33.

“Most certainly the Commandments are needed today, perhaps more than ever before. Their divine message confronts us with a profound moral challenge in an epidemic of evil; a unifying message acceptable alike to Jew, Moslem, and Christian. Who, reading the Ten in the light of history and of current events, can doubt their identity with the eternal law of nature?”–Id., page 124. “The Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not be kept on any other day. To observe the first day of the week or the fourth is not to observe the Sabbath…. It was the last day of the week, after six days of work, that was to be kept holy. The observance of no other day would fulfill the law.”–H. J. Flowers, B.A., B.D., “The Permanent Value of the Ten Commandments,” page 131.

“The evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the resurrection of Christ, has varied greatly throughout the cen turies of the Christian Era. From time to time it has been confused with the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. English- speaking peoples have been the most consistent in perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the obligation of the fourth commandment has passed over to Sunday. In popular speech, Sunday is frequently, but erroneously, spoken of as the Sabbath.”–F. M. Setzler, Head Curator, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institute, from a letter dated Sept. 1, 1949.

“He that observes the Sabbath aright holds the history of that which it celebrates to be authentic, and therefore believes in the creation of the first man; of the creation of a fair abode for man in the space of six days; in the primeval and absolute creation of the heavens and the earth, and, as a necessary antecedent to all this, in the Creator, who at the close of His latest creative effort, rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath thus becomes a sign by which the believers in a historical revelation are distinguished from those who have allowed these great facts to fade from their remembrance.”–James G. Murphy, “Commentary on the Book of Exodus,” comments on Exodus 20: 8-11.

Further references:

https://www.sabbathtruth.com/sabbath-history/denominational-statements-on-the-sabbath/id/catholic#quotes

http://www.thejerusalemroad.com/studies/the-7th-day-sabbath-mark-of-god/the-sabbath-roman-catholic-and-other-church-quotes#.Ysm4qGDMKUl