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From the Seventh Day to the First:
A Brief Look at the
History of the Sabbath Day vs. Lord's Day
by R. L. Dabney
We shall now attempt to show the ground on which we assert that the Sabbath,
'from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week,
which in Scripture is called the Lord's day, and is to be continued to the end
of the world as the Christian Sabbath.' This proof is chiefly historical, and
divides itself into two branches; first, that drawn from the inspired history of
the New Testament; and second, that found in the authentic but uninspired
testimony of primitive Christians. The latter, which might have been thought to
demand a place in our review of the history of Sabbath opinions has been
reserved for this place, because it forms an interesting part of our ground of
argument. But let us here say, once for all, that we invoke this patristic
testimony, in no popish or prelatic spirit of dependence on it. In our view, all
the uninspired church testimony in the world, however venerable, would never
make it our duty to keep Sunday as a Sabbath. We use these fathers simply as
historical witnesses; and their evidence derives its whole value in our eyes
from its relevancy to this point; whether or not the apostles left a custom of
observing Sunday, instead of the Sabbaths, established by their example in the
Churches.
Our first, or preliminary argument for the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath,
is that implied in the second Scripture reference subjoined by our Confession to
the sentence we have just quoted from it. If we have been successful in proving
that the Sabbath is a perpetual institution, the evidence will appear perfect.
The perpetual law of the Decalogue has commanded all men, in all time, to keep a
Sabbath-day; and 'till heaven and, earth pass, one jot or tittle shall not pass
from the law of God till all be fulfilled.' The Apostle, in Col. 2:16-17,
clearly tells us that the seventh day is no longer our Sabbath. What day, then,
is it? Some day must have been substituted; and what one so likely to be the
true substitute as the Lord's day? The law is not repealed; it cannot be. But
Paul has shown that it is changed. To what day is the Sabbath changed, if not to
the first? No other day in the week has a shadow of a claim. It must be this, or
none; but it cannot be none: therefore it must be this.
The other main argument consists in the fact that disciples, inspired apostles,
and their Christian associates, did observe the Lord's day as a religious
festival. And this fact must be viewed, to see its full force, in connection
with the first argument. When we find them at once beginning, and uniformly
continuing, the observance of the Lord's day, while they avow that they are no
longer bound to observe the seventh day, and when we couple with this the
knowledge of the truth that they, like all the rest of the world, were still
commanded by God to keep His Sabbath, we see that the inference is overwhelming,
that the authority by which they observed the Lord's day was from God, although
they did not say so. That which is inferred from Scripture, 'by good and
necessary consequence,' is valid; as well as 'that which is set down expressly
in it.' Examination shows us, then, that the disciples commenced the observance
of the Lord's day by social worship the very next week after the resurrection.
From John 20:19, we learn that the very day of the resurrection, at evening, the
disciples were assembled with closed doors, with the exception of Thomas Didymus.
Can we doubt that they had met for worship? In verse 26 we learn: 'And after
eight days again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came
Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, 'Peace be unto
you.'' None will doubt but that this was also a meeting for worship, and the
phraseology implies that it was their second meeting. In Jewish language, and
estimates of time, the days at which the counts begin and end are always
included in the counts; so that 'after eight days,' here indisputably means just
a full week.
By consulting Leviticus 23:15-16; Deut. 16:9, we find that the day of Pentecost
was fixed in this way. On the morrow after that Sabbath (seventh day) which was
included within the Passover week, a sheaf of the earliest ripe corn was cut,
brought fresh into the sanctuary, and presented as a thank offering to God. The
day of this ceremonial was always the first day of the week, or our Sunday,
which was, to the Israelites, a working day. From this day they were to count
seven is God's day, the Lord's day should mean a Christian Sabbath. And the
occupation of the Apostle this day, with peculiar spiritual exercises, gives
additional probability to the belief that it was observed by the New Testament
Christians as a day of devotion.
We come now to the second branch of the historical argument --the testimony of
the early, but uninspired Christian writers. The earliest of all cannot be
called Christian. In the celebrated letter of inquiry written by Pliny the
younger to the Emperor Trajan, on the treatment of persons accused of
Christianity, this pagan governor says, that it was the custom of these
Christians, 'to meet, stato die, before light, to sing a hymn to Christ as God,
and bind each other in an oath, (not to some crime but) to refrain from theft,
robbery and adultery, not to break faith, and not to betray trusts.' This letter
was written a few years after the death of the Apostle John. We cannot doubt
that this stated day, discovered by Pliny was the Lord's day. Ignatius, the
celebrated martyr-bishop of Antioch, says, in his epistle to the Magnesians,
written about A. D. 107 or 116, that this is 'the Lord's day, the day, the day
consecrated to the resurrection, the queen and chief of all the days.'
Justin Martyr, who died about A.D. 160, says that the Christians 'neither
celebrated the Jewish festivals, nor observed their Sabbaths, nor practiced
circumcision.' (Dialogue with Trypho, P. 34). In another place, he says, that
'they, both those who lived in the city and those who lived in the country, were
all accustomed to meet on the day which is denominated Sunday, for the reading
of the Scriptures, prayer, exhortation and communion. The assembly met on
Sunday, because this is the first day on which God, having changed the darkness
and the elements, created the world; and because Jesus our Lord on this day rose
from the dead.'
The epistle attributed to Barnabas, though not written by this apostolic man, is
undoubtedly of early origin. This unknown writer introduces the Lord, as saying:
'The Sabbaths which you now keep are not acceptable to me; but those which I
have made when resting from all things, I shall begin the eighth day, that is
the beginning of the other world.' 'For which cause, we (Christians) observe the
eighth day with gladness, in which Jesus rose from the dead,' &c. Ephesians 15.
Tertullian, at the close of the second century, says: 'We celebrate Sunday as a
joyful day. On the Lord's day we think it wrong to fast, or to kneel in prayer.'
Clement of Alexandria, contemporary with Tertullian, says 'A true Christian,
according to the commands of the Gospel, observes the Lord's day by casting out
all bad thoughts, and cherishing all goodness, honouring the resurrection of the
Lord, which took place on that day.'
But, perhaps the most important, because the most learned, and, at the same
time, the most explicit witness, is Eusebius, the celebrated bishop of Cęsarea,
who was in his literary prime about the era of the Council of Nice, A.D. 325. In
his Commentary on the xcii Psalm, which the reader will remember, is entitled 'a
psalm or song for the Sabbath-day,' he says: 'The Word, (Christ), by the new
covenant, translated and transferred the feast of the Sabbath to the morning
light, and gave us the symbol of true rest, the saving Lord's day, the first
(day) of light, in which the Saviour gained the victory over death, &c. On this
day, which is the first of the Light, and the true Sun, we assemble after the
interval of six days, and celebrate holy and spiritual Sabbath; even all nations
redeemed by Him throughout the world assemble, and do those things according to
the spiritual law, which were decreed for the priests to do on the Sabbath. All
things which it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the
Lord's day as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has the precedence,
and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath. It is
delivered to us that we should meet together on this day, and it is evidence
that we should do these things announced in the psalm.'
The first Church council which formally enjoined cessation of labour upon the
Lord's day was the provincial synod of Laodicea, held a little after the middle
of the fourth century. The twenty-ninth canon of this body commanded that none
but necessary secular labours should be carried on upon Sunday. But Constantine
the Great, when he adopted the Christian as the religion of the State, had
already enacted that all the labours of courts of justice, civil and military
functionaries, and handicraft trades, should be suspended on the Lord's day, and
that it should be devoted to prayer and public worship. This suspension of
labour was not, however, extended to agriculturists, because it was supposed
they must needs avail themselves of the propitious season to gather their
harvests, or sow their seed, without regard to sacred days. But the Emperor Leo
(who came to the throne A.D. 457) ultimately extended the law to all classes of
persons.
The Christians did not for several hundred years apply the word Sabbath to the
first day of the week, but always used it distinctly to indicate the Jewish
seventh day. Their own sacred day, the first day, was called by them the Lord's
day as they said, because it was dedicated to the honour of Christ, and because
it was the head, crown, and chief of all the days. They also called it Sunday
(Dies solis, a phrase frequently found among the Latin Christians), because,
according to their interpretation of Genesis 1:3, the sun was created on the
first day of the week; but still more, because on that day the brighter Sun of
Righteousness arose from the dead, with healing in His beams. The objection
often made by persons over-puritanical, that it smacks of Pagan or Scandinavian
profanity to say Sunday, because the word indicates a heathenish consecration of
the day to the sun, is therefore more Quakerish than sensible. We are willing to
confess that we always loved the good old name Sunday --name worthy of that day
which should ever seem the brightest in the Christian's conceptions, of all the
week, when the glorious works of the natural creation first began to display the
honours of the great Creator, and when that new and more divine creation of
redeeming grace was perfected by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But, in the
application of the phrase 'Christian Sabbath' to the first day, the Westminster
Assembly had a definite and truthful design, although the early Church had not
given it this name. It was their intention to express thus that vital head of
their theory; that the Old Testament institute called Sabbath, which was coeval
with man, and was destined to coexist with all dispensations, was not abrogated;
that it still existed substantially, and that Christians were now to find it in
the Lord's day. To the Christian the Lord's day is the Sabbath (such is the
significance of the name), possessing the Divine authority, and demanding in the
main the sanctification which was formerly attached to the seventh day.
Another head of the Sabbath argument remains: from its practical necessity, as a
means of securing man's corporeal and mental health, his morality, his temporal
success in life, and his religious interests. This is the department of the
discussion which has been more particularly unfolded in the 'Permanent Sabbath
Documents,' published under the auspices of Dr. Justin Edwards, and more
recently in the remarkable essays on the Sabbath, produced by workingmen in
Great Britain. It is now by so much the best understood part of the Sabbath
discussion that we should not have introduced it at all except that it was one
of the stones in the arch of our attempted demonstration, that there is a
natural necessity in man for a Sabbath rest. The Creator, who appointed the
Sabbath, formed man's frame; and all intelligent observers are now agreed that
the latter was adapted to the former. Either body or mind can do more work by
resting one day in seven, than by labouring all the seven days. And neither mind
nor body can enjoy health and continued activity without its appointed rest.
Even the structure of the brutes exhibits the same law. Again: As a moral and
social institution, a weekly rest is invaluable. It is a quiet domestic reunion
for the bustling sons of toil. It ensures the necessary vacation in those
earthly and turbulent anxieties and affections, which would otherwise become
inordinate and morbid. It brings around a season of periodical neatness and
decency, when the soil of weekly labour is laid aside, and men meet each other
amidst the decencies of the sanctuary, and renew their social affections. But
above all, a Sabbath is necessary for man's moral and religious interests. Even
in Paradise, and in man's state of innocence, it was true that a stated season,
resolutely appropriated to religious exercises, was necessary to his welfare as
a religious being. A creature subject to the law of habit, of finite faculties,
and required by the conditions of his existence to distribute his attention and
labours between things secular and things sacred, cannot successfully accomplish
this destiny without a regular distribution of his time between the two great
departments. This is literally a physical necessity. And when we add the
consideration that man is now a being of depraved, earthly affections, prone to
avert his eyes from heaven to the earth, the necessity is still more obvious.
Man does nothing regularly for which he has not a regular time. The absolute
necessity of the Sabbath, as a season for the public preaching of religion and
morality, as a leisure time for the domestic religious instruction of the young,
as a time for private self-examination and devotion, is most clear to all who
admit the importance of these duties. And now, it is most obvious to practical
good sense, that if such a stated season is necessary, then it is proper that it
should be ordained and marked off by Divine authority, and not by a sort of
convention on man's part. To neglect the stated observance of a religious rest,
is to neglect religion. And when there is so much of mundane and carnal
affection -- so much of craving, eager worldly bustle -- to entice us to an
infringement of this sacred rest, it is certain that it will be neglected,
unless it be defended by the highest sanction of God's own authority. Nay, do we
not see that this sanction is insufficient, even among some who admit its
validity? Again: If such a stated rest is necessary, then it is also necessary
that its metes and bounds be defined by the same authority which enjoins the
rest itself. Otherwise, the license which men will allow themselves in
interpreting the duration of the season, and in deciding how much constitutes
the observance of it, or how little, will effectually abrogate the rest itself.
If, then, the necessities of human nature require a Sabbath, it does not appear
how God could ordain less than we suppose He has done, in requiring the whole of
a definite length of time to be faithfully devoted to religious exercises, and
in making this, command explicit and absolute.
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