“If we would have the whole rule of Christian faith and practice, we must not be content with those scriptures which Timothy knew from his infancy, that is, with the Old Testament alone; nor yet with the New Testament, without taking along with it the traditions of the apostles, and the interpretation of the church, to which the apostles delivered both the book and the true meaning of it.”13
It is certain that the first-day Sabbath cannot be sustained by the first of these rules; for the word of God says nothing respecting such an
institution. The second one is necessarily adopted by all who advocate the sacredness of the first day of the week; for the writings of the Fathers and the traditions of the church furnish all the testimony which can be adduced in support of that day. To adopt the first rule is to condemn the first-day Sabbath as a human institution. To adopt the second is virtually to acknowledge that the Romanists are right,; for it is by this rule that they are able to sustain their unscriptural dogmas. Mr. W. B. Taylor, an able and-Sabbatarian writer, states this point with great clearness: —
“The triumph of the consistent Roman Catholic over all observers of Sunday, calling themselves Protestants, is indeed complete and unanswerable…. It should present a subject of very grave
reflection to Christians of the reformed and evangelical
denominations, to find that no single argument or suggestion can be offered in favor of Sunday observance that will not apply with equal force and to its fullest extent in sustaining the various other
‘holy days’ appointed by ‘the church.’”14 Listen to the argument of a Roman Catholic: —
“The word of God commandeth the seventh day to be the Sabbath of our Lord, and to be kept holy: you [Protestants] without; any precept of Scripture, change it to the first day of the week, only authorized by our traditions. Divers English Puritans oppose against this point, that the observation of the first day is proved out of Scripture, where it is said ‘the first day of the week.’15 Have they not spun a fair thread in quoting these places? If we should
produce no better for purgatory and prayers for the dead,
invocation of the saints, and the like, they might have good cause indeed to laugh us to scorn; for where is it written that these were Sabbath-days in which those meetings were kept? Or where is it ordained they should be always observed? Or, which is the sum of all, where is it decreed that the observation of the first day should abrogate or abolish the sanctifying of the seventh day, which God commanded everlastingly to be kept holy? Not one of those is expressed in the written word of God.” (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2;
Revelation 1:10.)
Whoever, therefore, enters the lists in behalf of the first-day Sabbath, must of necessity do this — though perhaps not aware of the fact — under the banner of the church of Rome.
CHAPTER 13
THE SUNDAY LORD’S DAY NOT TRACEABLE TO THE APOSTLES
General statement respecting the Ante-Nicene Fathers — The change of the Sabbath never mentioned by one of these Fathers — Examination of the historical argument for Sunday as the Lord’s day — This argument compared with the like argument for the Catholic festival of the Passover.
THE Ante-Nicene Fathers1 are those Christian writers who flourished after the time of the apostles, and before the council of Nicaea, A.D. 325. Those who govern their lives by the volume of inspiration do not recognize any authority in these Fathers to change any precept of that book, nor to add any new precepts to it. But those whose rule of life is the Bible as modified by tradition, regard the early Fathers of the church as nearly or quite equal in authority to the inspired writers. They declare that the Fathers conversed with the apostles; or if’ they did not do this, they conversed with some who had seen some of the apostles; or, at least, they lived within a few generations, of the apostles, and so learned by tradition, which involved only a few transitions from father to son, what was the true doctrine of the apostles.
Thus with perfect assurance they supply the lack of inspired testimony in behalf of the so-called Christian Sabbath by plentiful quotations from the early Fathers. What if there be no mention of the change of the Sabbath in the New Testament? and what if there be no commandment for resting from labor on the first day of the week? or, what if there be no method revealed in the Bible by which the first day of the week can be enforced by the fourth commandment? They supply these serious omissions in the Scriptures by testimonies which they say were written by men who lived during the first three hundred years after the apostles.
On such authority as this the multitude dare to change the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. But next to the deception under which men fall when they are made, to believe that the Bible may be corrected by the Fathers, is the deception practiced upon them as to what the Fathers
actually teach. It is asserted that the Fathers bear explicit testimony to the change of the Sabbath by Christ as a historical fact, and that they knew that this was so because they had conversed with the apostles, or with some who had conversed with them. It is also asserted that the Fathers called the first day of the week the Christian Sabbath, and that they refrained from labor on that day as an act of obedience to the fourth commandment.
Now it is a most remarkable fact that every one of these assertions is false.
The people who trust in the Fathers as their authority for departing from God’s commandment, are miserably deceived as to what the Fathers teach.
1. The Fathers are so far from testifying that the apostles told them