SABBATH HISTORY I
BEFORE
THE BEGINNING OF MODERN DENOMINATIONS
BY
AHVA JOHN CLARENCE BOND, M.A., D. D.
AUTHOR OF "RECONSTRUCTION MESSAGES" "THE CHALLENGE OF THE
MINISTRY"
"THE SABBATH" ETC.
AMERICAN SABBATH TRACT SOCIETY
PLAINFIELD. N. J.
Copyright 1922
American Sabbath Tract Society
Second Edition
1927
TO
MY WIFE
WHOSE SYMPATHETIC CO-OPERATION AND
LOVING SACRIFICE
MADE POSSIBLE SPECIAL STUDY AND RESEARCH THIS LITTLE VOLUME
THE FIRST MATERIAL FRUITS OF THAT STUDY IS DEDICATED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
A Growing Regard for Bible Authority
CHAPTER TWO
The Sabbath in the Old Testament
CHAPTER THREE
The Sabbath in the Gospels
CHAPTER FOUR
The Sabbath in the Early Church
CHAPTER FIVE
The No-Sabbath Theory of the Early Reformers
CHAPTER SIX
The Sabbath in the Early English Reformation
CHAPTER SEVEN
John Trask and the First Sabbatarian Church in England
CHAPTER EIGHT
Theophilus Brabourne an Able Exponent of Sabbath Truth
CHAPTER NINE
A Sabbath Creed of the Seventeenth Century
OLD SEVENTH DAY BAPTIST MEETING HOUSE AT WESTERLY, RHODE
ISLAND. Built about the year 1680, by the church then known as the Westerly
Church, now known as the First Hopkinton Church.
CHAPTER ONE
A Growing Regard for Bible Authority
DURING the last several years the Christian
church has been passing through a period of renewed and unusual testing. This
may be said to be a twofold experience of the church. For a period of
twenty-five years and more the church has been undergoing a process of
intellectual readjustment. This revision of its thinking was made necessary
because of the new world into which the church had been thrust by the
well-defined principles and revelations of modern science, and by the historical
method in education, which the theologian could not escape. This readjustment
was largely doctrinal. Its motives and methods had their origin within the
church, working from within outward, and resulted in the revision of certain conceptions
of truth. Men began to discriminate in their thinking between the
fundamental truths of Christianity and the mere traditions of an unholy past,
the clinging deposit of the Dark Ages. It is true that the motives of the
scholars were not always holy, nor their methods the most wholesome.
Consequently their conclusions were not always reliable. There was often,
lacking the warmth and glow of a living faith in the Christ of the Gospels.
This process was in the main constructive however, and a deal of Christian
truth was rediscovered, as the rubbish of a paganized church, the accumulation
of years of weakness and compromise, was removed by this critical and
scientific study.
The second period in the development of the
life of the modern Christian community is more constructive. It consists
in the practical adjustment of doctrine to life, and the application of the
life of faith to the problems of a distraught world.
The church is still in this new constructive
period, which doubtless it has but fairly entered. Doctrinally the church goes
forward by going back. No longer is it possible to sit supinely down and
carelessly toss to one side a cherished tradition with nothing vital to take
its place. Driven as the church has been to seek a more solid foundation for
its faith, the Bible is taking a new and vital place in the lives of men and
has become the basis of Christian doctrine, and of ethics as well. The
testimony of history to the value of doctrine may not be ignored, but it must
be in harmony with the Bible. Certain truths of Scripture, long covered up by
tradition, are coming in for a new evaluation. Certain fundamental truths of
the ages are being brought to the fore and filled with new significance and
power.
It has come to be a conviction of many hearts
that the present and compelling need of every man, and of all men everywhere,
is a new sense of the presence of God in the world. To uncover in the heart of
man his native longing for God, and to make him keenly conscious of the divine
immanence, is the supreme task of the church of Jesus Christ. It is the
business of the church to discover the means of divine grace that has been
provided for man, and to administer such in the fear of the Lord and for the
cure of souls. The source of this divine revelation is the Bible. From it men
draw their inspiration, and by the light of its teachings their feet are
guided. In the work of rescuing men from the thraldom of sin and leading them
out into the saving light of truth, the church finds in the Word of God both
its pole-star and its power.
Seventh Day Baptists, in common with other
evangelical denominations, accept the Bible as the rule of faith and practice.
They are not particularly interested in establishing an unbroken
"apostolic succession," either for ministerial orders or for church
ordinances. They are content to know that a proposed doctrine or duty is
enjoined in the Word of God and has the sanction of the Master. If this be
true, it matters not what has been the attitude of the church historic; it
becomes a part of the teaching and practice of the church present and future.
They believe in the priesthood of all believers, and are familiar with the fact
that the ecclesiastics are not always right. While not ignoring tradition as an
asset to faith, they minimize the value of tradition mediated through a special
and perpetual priesthood, and magnify the Word of God mediated by the Holy
Spirit acting directly upon the souls of men. History, however, in the
large-vindicates truth, and emancipates human life. It brings to men of the
present generation the results of the experience of the race in the laboratory
of time. It corrects many of the false conclusions of science which deals with
secondary causes only, and which has no right, therefore, to arrogate to itself
final authority in interpreting human experience.
The Sabbath can not escape the pragmatic
test now being applied to every doctrine and practice of the church. If the
Sabbath could escape, that very fact would go far toward proving its lack of vital
worth. In the face of a distraught world, crying out for the saving Gospel of
Jesus Christ, and in the face of a feverish advocacy of Sunday laws to arrest
the rising tide of worldliness, Seventh Day Baptists bring to the church,
humbly but confidently, the Sabbath of Christ as their peculiar contribution.
This they do I while, joining with all followers of the common Lord of all
Christians in every possible service which can be better promoted by such
cooperation. It is the hope of the author that through these chapters the
position of modern Sabbath-keeping evangelical Christians may be better
understood.
CHAPTER TWO
The Sabbath in the Old Testament
ONE of the institutions provided for the
blessing of man as set forth in the Sacred Scriptures is the Sabbath. The place
of the Sabbath in making known to man the love and care of God, and its place
in promoting the worship of God, are matters which the conscientious student of
the Word may not escape.
No institution of the Hebrew religion had
greater disciplinary influence upon the chosen people of God, or more fruitful
life-giving results, than the Sabbath. The Jews believed in a transcendent God
who created the heavens and the earth, and who dwells outside of and beyond the
earth, and who is greater than all that he created. They believed also in an immanent
God who lives with men; who walked in the garden with our first parents,
who talked with the patriarchs, and who inspired the prophets. His loving,
active interest in man was revealed in the fact that he created not only a
physical world, inhabitable by man, but in the morning of the
world, "when the stars slid singing down their shining way," God
created the Sabbath for rest and spiritual communion.
According to the creation story as recorded
in the first verses of Genesis,(1)the earth was not made
fit for the abode of man when all creature comforts had been provided, but only
when the continued presence of God had been assured through the symbolism of a
holy day. There is a great truth in this creation narrative, back of which man
cannot go. In the beginning God; and God created the heavens and the earth - and
the Sabbath. The crowning work of creation was the creation of the
Sabbath. This seems to be the theme of the first creation story. Scholars
affirm it as their belief that it was written not primarily to describe the
creation of the physical world, but to set forth the divine origin of the
Sabbath. This conclusion is in accord with the fact that the Bible is a book of
religion and not of science.
In commenting upon this passage in Genesis
Prof. Skinner says:
"The section contains but one idea,
expressed with unusual solemnity and copiousness of language-the institution of
the Sabbath. It supplies an answer to the question, Why is no work done on the
last day of the week? The answer lies in the fact that God Himself rested on
that day from the work of creation, and bestowed on it a special blessing and
sanctity. The writer's idea of the Sabbath and its sanctity is almost too
realistic for the modern mind to grasp; it is not an institution which exists
or ceases with its observance by man; the divine rest is a fact as much as the
divine working, and so the sanctity of the day is a fact whether man secures
the benefit or not. There is little trace of the idea that the Sabbath was made
for man and not man for the Sabbath; it is an ordinance of the cosmos like any
other part of the creative operations, and is for the good of man in precisely
the same sense as the whole creation is subservient to his welfare."(2)
The Bible account of the creation of the
Sabbath "in the beginning," is not a denial of the creed of the
evolutionist. But while one may hold the theory of an evolutionary process in
the development of the universe, the Sabbath of Genesis confirms the fact that
God was not only "in the beginning," but that he stayed with his
earth as the benevolent Father of his people whom he created in his own image
and likeness.
That God created the heavens and the earth,
and at the same time instituted the Sabbath on the seventh day, was a
fundamental belief of the Hebrews. In this faith Jesus was born, and of it he
said not one jot or tittle should pass away till all is fulfilled. If the roots
of the Sabbath reach back to this ancient Scripture it is well grounded.(3) If Jesus said it can not pass away till the earth passes,
then in our Sabbath-keeping we do well to hearken to the voice of the Master.
Israel's exodus from Egypt has been referred
to as the first labor strike in history; and, again, as an early and mighty
social movement. But in the mind of the leader it was pre-eminently, if not
solely, a religious movement. Moses had met God in the wilderness, and the great
object of his mission to his people from that time forward was to lead them out
into a life of warmer faith and of fuller obedience. They were not simply
getting away from something but they were getting away to
something.
When they had put the sea between themselves
and their task-masters they came into full control of their time once more, and
were free to make their acts conform to their own desires. Then it was that the
Sabbath, the appointed witness of God's presence in the earth, again threw its
benevolent shadow across their pathway. The demand for its observance was the
call for a practical demonstration of their faith in God. The keeping of the
Sabbath was an expression of their purpose to obey all God's
commandments.
In the long years of the wilderness journey
the people were disciplined in the law of God, and were taught the necessary
rules of community life. They learned to obey God and to act for the common
good. Nothing in these important years of Israel's history had greater
influence upon their lives than the Sabbath. It occupied a central place in
their thought and experience even before it found a place in the formal
pronouncement of the law of God at Sinai.
One can not read the Ten Commandments
without realizing the fact that he is face to face with a unique and lofty
moral code.(4) These stately but practical precepts feel
as if they possessed real authority over life and conduct. The question
whether they were written by the finger of God on tables of stone need not
concern us greatly. Apart from the incidents of the giving of the law as
recorded in Scripture - the stone slabs, the smoke and fire and thunder - there
remains the greater fact of the commandments themselves. They are now on record
in the twentieth chapter of Exodus where they have been preserved for
centuries, and where they are read today by men everywhere, and learned by
heart by children of every civilized race. They formed the foundation of
religion and ethics for the Hebrews; and men of Christian faith believe it was
of these that Jesus spoke when he said: "I came not to destroy the
law."
At the heart and center of this moral code
is this commandment: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."
"The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." The burden of
proof would seem to rest not upon him who holds to the fourth commandment with
the rest of the decalogue, but upon him who rejects the fourth while
acknowledging the authority of the other nine. Let those who tear one out give
reason why. To Sabbath-keeping Christians it seems sufficient to hold to the
plain teachings of the Word of God.
In the later history of Israel the sins
condemned by the prophets were not ceremonial but ethical. The people were not
asked to multiply sacrifices, but to do good to others, and to walk humbly
before God. These prophets, who in life and teaching approached the Gospel
standard, taught that true Sabbath-keeping was necessary to right living. They
cried out against Sabbath-breaking, which was one of the chief sins that
brought punishment to the race. They held that spiritual Sabbath-keeping would
free the people from threatened punishment and would bring blessings in its
train.(5)
George Adam Smith comments on the
fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah in a most illuminating way. After describing the
anti-ceremonial and highly ethical nature of the prophet's message, he
concludes his treatment of the chapter in the following manner:
"And so concludes a passage which fills
the earliest, if not the highest, place in the glorious succession of
Scriptures of Practical Love, to which belong the sixty-first chapter of
Isaiah, the twenty-fifth of Matthew and the thirteenth of First Corinthians.
Its lesson is-to go back to the figure of the draggled rose-that no mere forms
of religion, however divinely prescribed or conscientiously observed, can of
themselves lift the distraught and trailing affections of man to the light and
peace of Heaven; but that our fellow-men, if we cling to them with love and
with arms of help, are ever the strongest props by which we may rise to God;
that character grows rich and life joyful, not by the performance of ordinances
with the cold conscience of duty, but by acts of service with the warm heart of
love.
"And yet such a prophecy concludes with
an exhortation to the observance of one religious form, and places the keeping
of the Sabbath on a level with the practice of love. . . . . Observe that our
prophet bases his plea for Sabbath-keeping, and his assurance that it must lead
to prosperity, not on its physical, moral, or social benefits, but simply upon
its acknowledgment of God. Not only is the Sabbath to be honoured because it is
the 'Holy of Jehovah' and 'Honourable', but making it one's pleasure is
equivalent to 'finding one's pleasure in Him'. The parallel between these two
phrases in verse 13 and verse 14 is evident and means really this: Inasmuch as
ye do it unto the Sabbath ye do it unto Me. The prophet, then, enforces the
Sabbath simply on account of its religious and Godward aspect. . . . . Now, in
that wholesale destruction of religious forms, which took place at the
overthrow of Jerusalem, there was only one institution which was not
necessarily involved. The Sabbath did not fall with the Temple and the Altar:
the Sabbath was in. dependent of all locality; the Sabbath was possible even in
exile. It was the one solemn, public, and frequently regular form in which the
nation could turn to God, glorify Him, and enjoy Him. Perhaps, too, through the
Babylonian fashion of solemnizing the seventh day, our prophet realized again
the primitive institution of the Sabbath, and was reminded that, since seven
days is a regular part of the natural year, the Sabbath is, so to speak,
sanctioned by the statutes of Creation."(6)
Among the lessons of the Babylonian
captivity was the lesson of better Sabbath observance. As Professor Briggs well
says: "They are exhorted to be faithful to the Sabbath, the holy day of Jehovah.
All other holy things have been destroyed. All the more is their fidelity to be
shown by the sanctification of the holy day. In response to such repentance
Jehovah will come. His glory will be revealed, and his light will shine, and
dispel their darkness and gloom. He will guide them continually, and satisfy
all their needs, so that they will become like a well-watered garden; and the
wastes of Zion which have been long desolate will be rebuilt."(7)
The prophets approached the Gospel standard
of righteousness, and taught and lived a religion which brought men into a
vital relationship with God. They had no interest in matters of mere form and
ceremony. Religion as they conceived and taught it must issue in right conduct.
Again and again these prophets of old who could not tolerate a formal religion
called their people back from the apostacy of Sabbath-breaking. They exalted
the Sabbath, and assured the people that peace and prosperity would follow a
wholehearted return to the observance of God's holy day.
Jesus said he came not to destroy the
prophets; and in that declaration he sealed forever for himself and for his
followers the truths taught by these holy men of God.
A renewed spirit of loyalty was shown
immediately upon the return of the Jews from captivity. Under the inspiration
and guidance of Jehovah, Nehemiah came back to rebuild the holy city, and to
restore the temple and the temple worship. This consecrated and practical
leader was conscious of the fact that the captivity was but the natural result
of their own unfaithfulness. He was determined to hold true to all that
promised help and blessing. It is not likely that the Sabbath commandment was
considered more important than the others; but by its very nature and claims it
became the first test of obedience under the new order. Nehemiah not only
enjoined its observance, but he resisted those whose mercenary interests led
them to encroach upon its holy hours.(8) The discipline of
the exile years, with the teachings of the prophets ringing in their ears and
lodged in their hearts, brought the Hebrew race up to the birth of Christ free
from the paganism of no-Sabbathism.
CHAPTER THREE
The Sabbath in the Gospels
THE Sabbath played an important part in the
development of the Hebrew religion, which gave birth to Jesus, and which was
the bud that blossomed into Christianity. There were husks of the old religion
which fell away on account of the bursting life of the new, but one of the
petals which compose the flower of Christianity and hold its fragrance of
heavenly incense is the Holy Sabbath.
The Sabbath may be held in such a way as to
come between men and God. It may become an object of worship, rather
than a means of worship. This was the case with the Pharisees. No doubt
the spirit and practice of the Pharisees in regard to the Sabbath influenced
the church in its gradual forsaking of the Sabbath. But the Sabbath of the
Pharisees grew out of that period of Jewish history between Old Testament times
and the coming of Jesus, which produced no sacred writing and gave birth to no
prophet. Jesus, to whom was given all authority in heaven and on earth, and who
spoke not as the Pharisees, went back to the original purpose of the Sabbath,
which he said was made for man.
The Old Testament was Jesus' only Bible. In
it he was taught as a child. From it he received inspiration and instruction.
In the teachings of the Old Testament his life was grounded, and upon its
truths his faith was founded. It has been said that Jesus taught nothing new;
only new conceptions.(9) In the birth of Jesus the highest
hopes of the prophets were fulfilled.
Jesus was born in a Hebrew home, and
therefore in a Sabbath-keeping home; in a Seventh-day-Sabbath-keeping home. His
life was spent in a home that gathered up into its life all that was best in
the traditions of the race, and where the Scriptures were read and reverenced.
This was no accident. The Hebrew race in spite of its mistakes and weaknesses
had in it the elements that entered into his own life, and that furnished the
basis of his teachings. No other race could have given him birth. We find the
Master doing just what we would expect of one who had perfect discernment.
Continuing, correcting, and enlarging the conceptions of truth found in the Old
Testament, he rejected only that which the New Way found worthless. By his life
and teaching he gave larger meaning to all that had permanent worth.(10)
The Jews by ceremonial washings had washed
all the color out of their religion, burdening the Sabbath with rabbinical
restrictions. From these burdens Jesus sought to free the Sabbath; but no
recorded act of his can be construed to teach that he ever forgot its sanctity,
or disregarded its claims upon his own life. They who desired to condemn him,
and who accused him of Sabbath-breaking, could find no charge more serious than
that he healed a blind man on the Sabbath day, restored a withered hand, and
straightened the bent form of a woman long bowed down under an infirmity.(11) In passing through the grain fields Jesus did not so
much as rub out the grains to satisfy his hunger. It is true he defended his
disciples against their hypocritical accusers, but in his defense of them the
sacred character of the Sabbath was not involved.(12)
Think what kind of Sabbath-keeping Jesus
must have practiced when those who would condemn him by the strict law of the
Pharisees could find no charge more serious than these ministries of mercy on
the Sabbath day. The whole attitude of Jesus toward the Sabbath convinces us
beyond a peradventure that it was one of the institutions of the Old Testament
that had permanent worth. It must be preserved but purified. It must be
redeemed from Pharisaical formalism and restored to its primitive purpose of
blessing to all mankind. In connection with Luke's statement that the Son of
man is lord of the Sabbath,(13) one of the best Western
texts preserves a saying which may be original: "Observing a man at work
on the Sabbath, he said to him, 'Man if thou knowest what thou art doing, happy
art thou; but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed and a transgressor of the
law'."(14) The man who had in mind the principle
underlying the Sabbath regulation and responded to the call of necessity or
service to the needy was a law to himself.
Another recently discovered saying of Jesus
emphasizes the importance of Sabbath observance: "Except ye keep the
Sabbath ye shall not see the Father."(15) While these
sayings are not a part of our Gospel record, they are very ancient, and may be
authentic. They are in harmony with the speech as well as the spirit of Jesus
as set forth in our canonical gospels. Such consideration of the Sabbath
question lifts it above the plane of sectarianism, and of mere seventh-day
propagandism. Here we face the question of loyalty to Jesus Christ, and of a
spiritual conception of the Sabbath that shall make of it a constructive
religious force in a day when every spiritual resource is needed to build the
kingdom of God out of a broken humanity and a despoiled world. Truly he who announced
himself as Lord of the Sabbath when he was here on earth, is Lord of the
Sabbath today.
As the Son when on earth worked in harmony
always with the Father, so the Holy Spirit when he had descended according to
promise, took the things of Christ and made them known.(16)
The Sabbath which was made for man was established in the beginning by the
Father. It was observed by the Son, who by his spirit and attitude gave it the
stamp of a Christian institution, which increased its power to promote the
spiritual life of men. We should expect, therefore, that the first churches
established under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the
Trinity, would be Sabbath-keeping churches. Such was the case; and for three
centuries at least, the Sabbath of the Old Testament and of Christ held its
supreme place in the Christian church.(17) Men more
anxious to maintain their traditions than to establish historical facts declare
that the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit was on a Sunday. The day of
the week on which Jesus rose from the dead is a matter not fully
established among scholars, and certainly it is the height of presumption to
lay claim to the day of Pentecost as proof of special divine recognition of
Sunday. G. T. Purves in Hastings Dictionary of the Bible says that if
Jesus ate the passover with his disciples at the regular time, Pentecost fell
on Saturday. This same article says: "Wieseler plausibly suggests that the
festival was fixed on Sunday by the later Western Church to correspond with
Easter."(18) Every one who reads history knows that
the later church did not hesitate to adjust Christian dates to a pagan
calendar.
CHAPTER
FOUR
The Sabbath in the Early Church
THE first Christian churches were organized
by converted Jews, who of course were Sabbath-keepers, even as Jesus and his
disciples were Jews and Sabbath-keepers. Many proselytes also became
Christians, and these were numerous in this early period. The keeping of the
Sabbath was evidently one of the most noticeable changes in their outer conduct
as they went from paganism to belief in Jehovah, God of the Hebrews. It was but
another step to Christianity, and their Sabbath-keeping which had helped to
bring them thus far, was found to be a practice followed by the disciples of
the New Way.
So many pagans adopted Jewish customs that
Josephus could say: "There is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the
barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the
seventh day hath not come."(19) And a modern
authority says that the Sabbath of later Judaism became exceptionally important
"so that 'to Sabbatize' was a current phrase in the Roman Empire for
adopting the Jewish religion or customs."(20)
The Ethiopian eunuch was doubtless one of
these proselytes, who had been to Jerusalem to worship in the temple, when
Philip found him and taught him about Jesus. In the days of Jeremiah banished
Jews found a refuge in this region of the upper Nile, the modern Abyssinia, and
took their faith with them.(21) Possibly the queen's
treasurer was a descendant of one of these persecuted Jews, or more likely a
descendant of a native convert. After his baptism by Philip he carried back
home his new-found faith. If this be true, he becomes a most interesting link
in the history of the Sabbath, for Abyssinian Christians have been
Sabbath-keepers to the present time.(22)
Paul the great missionary was a Sabbath-keeper.
He was so brought up; and although he renounced the formal Jewish worship,
including new moons and Sabbaths, there is no evidence that he ever forsook the
weekly Sabbath, which was older than Judaism. From its place in the religion of
the Hebrews it was taken up into Christianity. Paul clashed with the Jews
everywhere he went, but never on the Sabbath question. We may be sure
that these strict legalists, who hounded Paul to the death, would have found
fault with his Sabbath-keeping if there had been the least occasion. Like his
Master, Paul rings true on this question.
The first European convert was a God-fearing,
Sabbath-keeping, Gentile woman. Lydia had forsaken the polytheistic faith of
paganism for belief in one God who created the heavens and the earth, as taught
by the purer religion of the Jews. Still open-minded, she accepted through
Paul's preaching the true and warmer faith of Christianity.
It was in a Sabbath-afternoon prayer meeting
that the first church in Europe was born.(23) The apostle
and his companions on that first Sabbath in a strange city were looking about
for a place of prayer. When these Sabbath-keeping followers of the Christ came
upon the Sabbath-keeping worshipers of Jehovah, everything was favorable and
the time ripe for the organization of a church of the new faith. The Philippian
church became noted for its spirit of generosity, and we are not surprised at this
when we recall the circumstances of its beginning, and the character of its
founders.
The Roman Catholic church has never claimed
Bible authority for Sunday. On the other hand, that church has repeatedly
referred to the change of the weekly day of worship from the Bible Sabbath to
Sunday as evidence of the authority of the church over the Bible.
As early as the fourth century Augustine was
sent by his mother to inquire of the Father-confessor in regard to the
"Saturday fast," which was then agitating the minds of believers. The
answer of the venerable St. Ambrose was: "Follow the church." In the
thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas, an authority in the present day Roman
Catholic confession, declared that the Lord's day depended upon the authority
of the church.
The Roman church has held consistently to
this position to the present time. The Latin Christians early began to dominate
the church, and they were not only anti-Jewish, but were anti-Eastern as well.
Between their antipathy for the East and their political ambitions in the West,
which early developed, the Roman church took on pagan elements, developing
ecclesiasticism as against the voluntary and personal faith of the first
Christians.
The primitive type of Christianity
prevailed, however, in many parts of the world, and was never wholly crushed.(24) It was early planted in the British Isles, and here the
Sabbath was kept to a late date. The evidence that St. Patrick kept the Sabbath
is not to be despised. The church in Ireland was evangelical, and accepted the
Scriptures as the rule of life, and repudiated Rome. Patrick's successor, St.
Columba, observed the Sabbath as a day of rest, but held worship on Sunday.(25) A church or society of Sabbath-keepers persisted in
Ireland to the middle of the last century, and included in its membership
members of the nobility, as well as peasants.
What has been said of Ireland is equally
true of Scotland. In commending Queen Margaret of Scotland as a Christian ruler
of the eleventh century, history says she was successful in establishing the
observance of Sunday. "For until that time the Sabbath was the day of
rest."(26) Sunday was observed as a day for worship,
but not as a day of cessation from labor.
Early in the Reformation period
Sabbath-keeping Christians were known to be living in Bohemia. While we have
only distorted accounts of these Christians, left to us by their enemies, it is
significant that Sabbath observers lived in the land of John Huss, where the
Christians were freest and most evangelical in consequence of being most
Biblical.
Other groups of Sabbath-keeping followers of
Christ have persisted to modern times. According to good authority there are
thirty million Sabbath-keeping Christians in the land of Abyssinia. An article
in a recent number of the Geographic Magazine makes reference to a group of
Sabbath-keeping Christians in Georgia of the Russian Trans-Caucasia. All these
furnish undeniable evidence that the early churches were Sabbath-keeping
churches, and that such were the churches planted by the early missionaries of
the Cross as they went everywhere preaching the Gospel. It is true that the
Sabbath, with many other elements of New Testament Christianity, was lost from
the main body of the Christian church when the latter "entered the tunnel
of the dark ages." But if these scattered Sabbath-keeping groups form no
part of the on-flowing current of Christian history, they, as bayous formed
near the source of the stream, bear testimony to the character of the waters
near the fountain head, before they were polluted by the inflowing streams of
paganism.
CHAPTER
FIVE
The No-Sabbath Theory of the Early Reformers
THE Sabbath question was revived as a part
of modern evangelical Christianity when the stream of Christian history emerged
again into the open this side the Middle Ages. It was agitated somewhat during
the Reformation in Germany, but did riot become prominent until the later years
of the English Reformation, a century after Luther's break with Rome.
Luther repudiated Rome, and acknowledged the
Bible to be the rule of faith and practice. He held the authority of the Bible
rather loosely, however, and in the matter of the Sabbath, as in the case of
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he held to the Roman position and accepted
the sanctions of tradition mediated through the church.
He seems to have believed that Jesus
deliberately disregarded the Sabbath, but he does not claim that either Jesus
or his disciples substituted Sunday. Such a position was not taken by any one
until much later. Luther says: "And seeing that those who preceded us
chose the Lord's-day for them, this harmless and admitted custom must not be
readily changed."(27)
Philip Melanchthon, Luther's younger
contemporary, says the church appointed the Lord's day, not as a substitute for
the Sabbath, but for the purpose of expressing the freedom of Christians from
any day. Sunday was chosen for a day of worship, not by New Testament
authority, but by the authority of the church, as an expression of its freedom
and of its authority over the Scriptures.(28)
Such reasoning is of the psychology of the adolescent
who must violate some law of life before he can convince himself of his own
freedom. He fastens himself about with enslaving bands of sin, the result of
his own deliberate choice, to prove that he can do as he pleases. It is the
elemental experience of the Garden of Eden over again, which always brings pain
and death.
The position of Calvin, the great Genevan
reformer, in regard to the Lord's day, was practically identical with that of
Luther. He says that Sunday was substituted for the Sabbath not by Christ or
his apostles, but by "the Ancients." He disputes the sanctity of
Sunday, and says it is an insult to the Jews to deny the Sabbath, and then to
claim the same sacredness for another day.(29)
Carlstadt, one of Luther's ablest
co-laborers, took an advanced position on the question of the authority of the
Bible as against that of the church. In other words, Carlstadt took the
position later assumed by evangelical Protestantism that the Bible and the
Bible alone is the rule of faith and practice for Christians. In harmony with
that position he exalted the Sabbath of the Bible.
Historical evidence is not entirely wanting
that Carlstadt not only taught the Biblical authority for the observance of the
seventh day Sabbath, but that he practiced its observance as a Christian
obligation and privilege.
To complete this phase of the discussion,
and pursue the development of the question up to the time of its appearance in
England, reference should be made to Henry Bullinger of Switzerland, and
Theodore Beza of France.
The former follows the early reformers and
accredits the change of the day to the desire of the church to get away from
Jewish ceremony. Then he advocates legal restrictions against Sunday
desecration, quoting the Jewish law regarding the Sabbath in support of his
demand for a strict Sunday law. Such men as he, and not the Sabbath-keepers of
that time, were the Judaizers. His appeal to the Bible, however, shows the
trend of the reformers who more and more felt the need of Scriptural authority
for their beliefs and practices, if they were to meet and answer the false
claims of the church of Rome.
Beza, who died in 1605 declared it to be superstition
to believe that one day is more sacred than another. Then he proceeds to
say that they keep one day in seven according to commandment; asserting
that this was the Sabbath until the time of Christ, but the Lord's day since
the resurrection.
The reformers were dead sure of the death of
formalism with the coming of Jesus, and the formalism of Rome repelled them.
They denied the claims of the Bible Sabbath because its observance smacked of
formalism. Then they turned around and accepted the day appointed by a
repudiated church because they felt that a worship day was necessary. In this
they did not follow Jesus. They interpreted him correctly as to his attitude
toward formalism. He found the Sabbath burdened with rabbinical restrictions
which defeated its spiritual ends. But he did not therefore repudiate the
Sabbath. It was instituted in the beginning by his Father, in harmony with whom
he ever worked. Jesus stripped the sacred seventh day of the Old Testament of
the hindering forms heaped upon it by the Pharisees. He restored the Holy
Sabbath of the Commandments and of the prophets to the use to which it had been
dedicated by the authority of Heaven.
No-Sabbathism was distinctly the teaching of
the early reformers. They accepted the Roman-made day, but were logical and
consistent so far as they took the position that it had no authority in
Scripture.
Being intense men and challenged by their
lives to a defense of their position against the power of the hierarchy, it is
no wonder that they centered their attack upon the more glaring abuses of the
papacy. It remained for later men to follow their' claim for Bible authority to
the logical inclusion of every matter of faith and practice. That is, so long
as the Protestant movement was purely a protest, certain particular
issues were made prominent, their prominence depending upon the strength and
persistency with which they were opposed by the Roman church. When the
Reformation movement had developed far enough to take on a positive,
constructive character of its own, then was the way open for the consideration
of every matter affecting Christian life and conduct. Then men began to seek in
the Bible a basis for every doctrine and practice of Christians. In this more
constructive period the scene of action shifted from the continent to England,
and the Sabbath occupied an important place. Christians who accepted the Bible
as the only authority in religion felt the inconsistency of observing a
Roman-made day. If they continued to keep Sunday they must attempt to find some
basis for it in the Bible. The theory of the transfer of the Sabbath from the
seventh to the first day of the week grew out of this unholy compromise, and is
therefore but four hundred years old. It was a makeshift, which gave us the
Scotland and New England Sunday, the beneficent influence of which is still
felt in American Protestantism, but which has lost its hold on the church in
the face of modern Biblical scholarship.
Prof. Adeney says: "If the tide that
threatens to sweep away the Sabbath is not stemmed there is danger of religion
itself being swept out, and of society becoming secularized and
materialized." He also says in the same article,(30)
"Dr. Hessey has shown that Sunday as 'the Lord's Day' was never identified
with the Jewish Sabbath in New Testament times, nor during the first three
centuries of Christian history. Saturday was still the Sabbath."
The "New England Sunday" was a
"Sabbath." It was based of course upon a false theory, which can not
be revived, but by which, nevertheless, it carried in the minds and hearts of those
who observed it the sanctions of Scripture.
Prof. Harnack has said that writers of
church history have not taken into sufficient account the very early entrance
of pagan influence into Christianity. Recent writers have shown a clearer
conception of this fact so important to the proper understanding of all
subsequent Christian history.
Sunday made its way into the church through
compromise. Up to the period of the Reformation it had no Sabbatic authority or
influence. Following the Reformation, for more than two centuries, and in
restricted areas dominated by evangelical Protestantism, it carried the Sabbath
atmosphere and toned up the spiritual life of those who conscientiously
observed it. From the beginning of the operation of the transfer theory, however,
there began to appear in England able and aggressive advocates of a return to
the sacred seventh day of Scripture.
Residence of Dr. Peter
Chamberlen, M.D., 1601-1683, Pastor Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church,
London, 1651-1683. Physician to three British Sovereigns.
CHAPTER
SIX
The Sabbath in the Early English Reformation
WHEN English Christianity was divorced from
Rome during the reign of Henry VIII, it became necessary to adopt a new
liturgy. As the new church, in its professions at least, was more Biblical than
the Roman church, it included in its litany the Ten Commandments. This included
of course the commandment to remember the Sabbath to keep it holy, to which
when repeated by the minister the congregation responded: "Incline our
hearts to keep this law." They were but following the Scripture of course
in including the fourth commandment; but when the minister had repeated the
commandment, and the people had asked the Lord to incline their hearts to keep
it, it became a matter of some concern among the more conscientious, and of
much debate all around, as to just what was meant.
The evangelical party maintained that in
thus employing the commandment the church acknowledged its obligation to keep
the Sabbath of Scripture. Others claimed that it should be understood as simply
enforcing the obligation to worship God, and to devote a portion of time to his
honor.
Heylyn, the High-church historian, who
accredits this to Cranmer and Ridley, thinks it was not their purpose to introduce
the Jewish Sabbath. Doubtless he is right. But it did raise the question on the
part of many as to whether they were really following the teachings of the
Bible and not the church of Rome, in their non-observance of the Sabbath of the
fourth commandment.
In its quarrel with England the Roman
Catholic church argued that since the church had displaced without question the
Sabbath day, therefore its authority was supreme, and it could make other laws.
If this premise in the question of the Sabbath were granted by the English
clergy, it would be difficult to meet other points at issue with Rome. There
was no question that the Sabbath had been set aside by the authority of Rome.
If her authority was recognized here, why not in all other matters.
Cranmer proved himself quite equal to the
occasion. His reply was both original and unique. He replied that there are two
parts to the Sabbath, and declared that "the spiritual part can not be
changed."(31)
This was the beginning of the idea of a
sacred Sabbath institution, unrelated to a particular day, and therefore
transferable.
Thus the Archbishop of Canterbury in order
to extricate himself from a compromising position made further compromise, and
laid the foundation for the "transfer" theory. This theory has
since put to sleep many a conscience which had been awakened to a sense of
Sabbath obligation by reading the plain Word of God.
Richard Greenham, a celebrated Puritan
minister who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century, advocated
Scriptural grounds for Sunday-keeping. He declared that the Sabbath was changed
by the apostles and can not be changed again, and that Sunday must be strictly
kept. This brings us up to the publication of the celebrated work of Nicholas Bownd.(32) In this book is set forth the position since held
by all evangelical Christians who reject the Sabbath of Scripture while
claiming Bible authority for their Sunday-keeping. Not all Sunday-keeping
Christians agree in regard to the relation of Sunday to the Sabbath, but many
claim with Bownd that the one has taken over the sanctity of the other.
Another thing that brought the Sabbath into
prominence at that time was the utter disregard for Sunday as a religious rest
day. Games and sports were engaged in on that day more freely than on other
days of the week, and people abandoned all restraint in seeking their own
pleasure. Many leaders in the Church of England approved such use of the day,
and had only criticism and condemnation for those who sought to place religious
significance upon the keeping of Sunday.
On the other hand, many Christians who
recognized Bible authority for their faith became dissatisfied with anything that
fell short of the standards of Scripture. These grew increasingly bold in their
loyalty to the plain teaching of the Word.
There were two influences therefore working
to bring into prominence the Sabbath question, which held the center of the
stage in religious discussion in England for more than a hundred years. One was
the reaction against the unethical and corrupted life of the church which had
little regard for the Bible and none for the Sabbath day. The other was the
growing appreciation of the Bible as authority in religion on the part of many
honest Christians, and their refusal to accept the dictates of a corrupted
church.
The discussion growing out of this situation
was a three-cornered affair. There were those who held that there is no Sabbath
under the new dispensation, and that there should be no distinction of days in
divine service. Sunday was the day on which to assemble for worship, but after
that each might follow his regular pursuits on that day. In the second place
there were those who held to the sacredness of the seventh day of the
Scriptures and believed that the Sabbath of the Bible and of Christ is the
Sabbath of Christianity, unabrogated and binding for all time. There developed
the third class of Christians who agreed with the seventh-day advocates as to
Bible authority for the Sabbath, but who accepted the transfer theory, claiming
for the first day of the week the sanctity which the Bible gives only to the
seventh. Many went so far in trying to conform their Sunday-keeping to Scripture
as to begin its observance at sunset. A book published in London as early as
1655, written by a New England minister, contained the following argument:
"If God hath set any time to begin the Sabbath, surely 'tis such a time as
may be ordinarily and readily known, that so here (as well as in all other
ordinances) the Sabbath may be begun with prayer, and ended with praise."
Dwight L. Moody was brought up to keep
Sunday from sunset to sunset, as was many another New England boy of his
generation. So was Charles M. Sheldon's mother in western New York.
The Christian character which that custom
had a part in producing may well serve as an exhortation to those who keep the
Sabbath from sunset to sunset according to the Scriptures, to begin and close the
day in such a way as to bring them into conscious fellowship with God who
created the heavens and the earth, and who made the seventh day a time symbol
forever of his own gracious presence in the world.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
John Trask and the First Sabbatarian Church in England
AS THE atmosphere became charged with the
spirit of religious freedom, religious orders were dissolved, and the authority
of the church was denied. A new amalgamation was taking place, and the
lodestone was the Bible; a new authority in religion was being recognized-the
Holy Scriptures interpreted and obeyed in harmony with one's own knowledge and
conscience. This spirit gave birth to the Independent churches. Those who
believed in faith baptism and baptized by immersion were called Baptists. At
the very beginning of Baptist history we find those whose interpretation of
Scripture and whose loyalty to truth led them to the observance of the Sabbath
of the Bible.
The first Baptist church composed of
Englishmen was founded by Rev. John Smyth, who with his followers had gone to
Holland. Smyth at first opposed the Independents, but later accepted their
position, and even went beyond them in his adherence to the teaching of the
Word. Some members of Smyth's congregation in Holland evidently came to America
in the Mayflower group. For a century and a half in England and in the American
colonies, Baptists played an important part in the development of Biblical
Christianity and its legitimate offspring, modern democracy.
Helwys, an associate of Smyth's, returned to
England and established a church of General or Arminian Baptists in 1611. Another
congregation of Dissenters was organized in London in i6i6. Accepting the
Baptist position they sent one Blount, who "understood Dutch," to
Holland, to be baptized. On his return he baptized others, and there was
established the first Particular or Calvinistic Baptist church.
At about this same time a "Sabbatarian
Baptist" church was organized in London, the old Mill Yard church, which
has a continuous history to the present time.(33) At the
beginning as at present Baptists held to the principle of local church
autonomy. There were present from the beginning certain differences of belief
which later developed into distinct bodies, all holding the fundamental Baptist
doctrines, of faith baptism administered by immersion, religious freedom,
separation of church and state, local church independence, and the priesthood
of all believers. They soon associated themselves together for certain common
purposes of defense against the state church, and for the dissemination of
Baptist truths, especially their doctrine of the authority of the Bible.
"Sabbatarian Baptists" took their place along with the others, often
taking the position of leader and spokesman. Later in the century, during that
stirring period of English history to be treated in a subsequent volume, the
learned Dr. Joseph Stennett addressed the king on behalf of all Dissenters.
JOSEPH STENNET, D.D., 1663-1713
Pastor Pinner's Hall Seventh
Day Baptist Church, London, 1690-1713. Author of many hymns, including the one
beginning -
"Another six days' work
is done
Another Sabbath has
begun."
Dr. Peter Chamberlain, physician to three
sovereigns of England, was in a position to render like service. These were
both Seventh Day Baptists. No Dissenters ever suffered more on account of their
non-conformity than these Sabbath-keeping Baptists, and no roster of Christian
martyrs is complete without the name of John James, the pastor of a London
Seventh Day Baptist church.
While the early Baptist movement had
its beginning in Continental Europe, the first churches of that faith
were organized, as we have seen, in England, and were founded by ministers who
came out of the Established church. This was true of "Sabbatarian"
Baptists equally with others. One of the first names to appear in this
connection is that of John Trask.(34) He applied for
orders in the Church of England but was refused; perhaps on account of his
advanced evangelical views, for later we find him preaching as a Puritan
minister. He came to London from Somerset sometime between 1615 and 1620, where
he did the work of an evangelist. He preached not only in the city but in the
fields, thus anticipating Wesley by a hundred years in this kind of preaching.
His opposition to the Church of England is said to have been expressed in his
ranking of men into three "estates," of nature, repentance, and
grace. This sounds quite Biblical, and goes to show that he preached an
evangelical Gospel, and was no doubt in conflict with the views of the
Established church.
Trask was himself a school teacher. One of
his converts by the name of Hamlet Jackson, a tailor by trade, fired with the
evangelistic zeal of his leader, also became an evangelist. These preachers of
the Gospel in breaking away from the Established church evidently took the
Bible as their authority in religion, and true to its teachings Jackson became
a Sabbath-keeper. A vision of this truth came to him as he was walking alone in
the fields one Sunday. Possessing the courage of his convictions he began
keeping the Sabbath, and soon Trask followed his disciple in his new-found
faith.
By this time Trask had gathered about him a
company of followers, and these accepted the truth of the Sabbath with their
pastor, forming the first Seventh Day Baptist church referred to above. Jackson
later went to the Continent. Trask temporarily forsook his Sabbath-keeping
practice on account of the severe persecution which he was called upon to
suffer. In this his church did not follow him. Many of them remained true,
among them his wife, who, because of her Sabbath-keeping, spent sixteen years
in prison, where she finally died. Mrs. Trask(35) was a
school teacher also, and her services in that capacity were much in demand.
They had no free schools of course, and only tuition pupils came to her; but
she was compelled to turn many away on account of lack of room. Testimonials
are still extant which praise her as a teacher. Her disregard for the Church of
England was expressed in the request which she left in regard to the
disposition of her body after death. In that day of course, burial by "the
church" was quite necessary to insure one a place with the saved in the
heavenly kingdom! She requested that she be buried, not in the church-yard made
"holy" by the priests, but in the fields. She doubtless based her
hope for the future on obedience to, God through faith in his Son Jesus Christ,
and not upon any priestly ceremonies at death. Her desire in the matter of the
disposition of her body was carried out. Richard Lovelace, the lyric poet,
while in this same prison wrote: "To Althea from Prison." The
following lines are supposed to refer to Mrs. Trask:
"Stone
walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a heritage."
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Theophilus Brabourne an Able Exponent of Sabbath Truth
IN 1628 Theophilus Brabourne published his
first defense of the Sabbath. Brabourne(36) was a much
abler writer than Trask, and during thirty years he wrote four volumes in
defense of the Sabbath of the Bible. He dedicated his second volume, published
in 1632, to the king, Charles I. This was a larger book than the first one, and
was entitled: "A Defense of That Most Ancient and Sacred Ordinance of
God's, the Sabbath Day." Gilfillan says that "if on neither occasion
the author sounded the first trumpet to the fight, yet by his second publication
he blew a blast in the ear of royalty itself which compelled attention and
provoked immediate as well as lasting hostilities."
It may be well to recall the fact again that
the king and clergy of the Church of England were at this time endeavoring to restore
Sunday to the place it had held before the Reformation, as simply one of the
church's holy days. On it Christians were supposed to meet for worship, but
after the services they might pursue their own pleasures and occupations. King
James had issued a "Book of Sports," setting forth certain amusements
which the people were encouraged to engage in on Sunday, which had outraged the
Puritans.
Heylin,(37) a clergyman
in the Church of England, and one of the ablest defenders of this liberal
position, published a stupendous volume on the subject a number of years later
in which he discusses together the position of Trask and Brabourne. He calls
them consistent Puritans, and says their "conclusions in the matter of the
Seventh day Sabbath must necessarily follow the premises on which the Brownists
rejected the communion of the Church of England." It will be recalled that
it was a company of these "Brownists" who came to America in the
Mayflower, and who have been called since the Pilgrim Fathers.
In discussing the consistency of the
position of Trask and Brabourne on the Sabbath question with the Puritan
movement, Heylin declares that "Saturday was as highly honored as the
Lord's Day by the Eastern Churches, that the Lord's Day was only partly given
to religious exercises, the rest to feasting; and that Calvin cried down
dancing not because of the Lord's Day, but because of his opposition to the
sport itself." (Sunday was given over to dancing and other worldly
amusements.)
Of course the author's purpose is to condemn
Puritanism, of which he considers Sabbath-keeping a logical part.
The position of this Churchman has been given
here because it fairly represents the position of the orthodox party during
this interesting period of our history.
As might have been expected because of the
nature of the subject and the fact of its dedication to the king, Brabourne's
book stirred the ire of the powers that be. He was therefore called before the
court of the High Commission. Just what transpired there is not clear from this
distance. Hevlin says, "He altered his opinions, having been misguided in
them by some noted men in whom he thought he might have trusted."
Gilfillan says, "He confessed his error and submitted to the 'Mother
Church'." Cox says, "He quickly conformed to the Church of
England," but that "his followers did not all accompany him back
to orthodoxy."
Following his alleged recantation he is
reported to have said: "Nevertheless, if Sabbatic institution be indeed
moral and perpetually binding, the seventh day ought to be sacredly kept."
This remark reminds us of the familiar one
uttered in the same year by his learned Italian contemporary, Galileo. When
forced by the Inquisition to abjure belief in the Copernican theory of the
earth, he is said to have stamped his foot on the earth indignantly muttering,
"Yet it moves."
Whether Brabourne the Sabbatarian expressed
the impatience alleged to have been evinced in the action of Galileo the
astronomer, we may not say. He seems to have revealed the same tenacity for
truth as he believed it. He is accredited with the following judicious but
self-revealing statement: "Take your choice. But in keeping the Lord's day
and profaning the Sabbath you walk in great danger and peril (to say the least)
of transgressing one of God's eternal and inviolable laws, the Fourth
Commandment. Otherwise you are out of all gunshot of danger."
Whatever may have taken place when he was
brought before the High Commission, Theophilus Brabourne must be given an
honored place among the faithful defenders of the Sabbath truth. As late as
1659 we find him writing in defense of the Sabbath. In 1660 appeared his last
volume on the subject. The nature of the book may be judged somewhat by the
title: "Of the Sabbath day, which is now the highest controversie in
the Church of England; for of this controversie dependeth the gaining or losing
one of God's Ten Commandments, by name of the 4th Command for the Sabbath
day." Something of his character as well as his steadfastness in his
Sabbath principles is revealed in his preface to his defense of the Sabbath
published in 1659. This is twenty-seven years after his experience in the High
Commission, and he bravely writes as follows: "The soundness and clearness
of this my cause giveth me good hope that God will enlighten them (the
magistrates) with it and so incline their hearts to mercy. But if not, since I
verily believe and know it to be a truth, and my duty not to smother it, and
suffer it to die with me, I have adventured to publish it and defend it, saying
with Queen Esther, 'If I perish, I perish'; and with the apostle Paul, 'neither
is my life dear unto me, so that I may fulfill my course with joy.' What a
corrosive it would prove to my conscience, on my deathbed, to call to mind how
I knew these things full well, but would not reveal them. How could I say with
Paul, that I had revealed the whole counsel of God, and had kept nothing back
which was profitable? What hope could I then conceive that God would open his
gate of mercy to me, who, while I live, would not open my mouth for him?"
Confident of the correctness of his
position, and possessing the true Puritan conscience which held him true to his
religious convictions however unpopular they might be, he dared to face
persecution in this world, if only he could meet God with a clear conscience.
THE PLAINFIELD SEVENTH DAY BAPTIST
CHURCH OF CHRIST, PLAINFIELD, N.J.
The mother church of
Plainfield, the Piscataway Seventh Day Baptist Church, was constituted 1705.
Plainfield was organized 1838. Present building erected 1891.
CHAPTER
NINE
A Sabbath Creed of the Seventeenth Century
BRABOURNE'S last book was poorly printed
which goes to show that he had difficulty in getting it published. The king had
sought to control printing by imposing a license. By this method he thought to
suppress heretical writings. Brabourne's book was published by a foreigner
possibly, or by some private shop that lacked adequate equipment. Its contents
were of such a nature, however, that Francis White, D. D., Bishop of Ely, was
asked by the king to prepare a reply. This he did, dedicating his book to
Archbishop Laud. The author's avowed purpose was to "settle the king's
good subjects who for a long time had been disturbed by Sabbatarian
questions."
White set forth the usual arguments of the
orthodox clergymen of that time. In regard to the response to the fourth
commandment in the Book of Prayer, he says they beseech God to incline their
hearts to keep this law in such a manner as is agreeable to the state of the
Gospel and the time of grace; that is, according to the rule of Christian
liberty. He pleads church authority for the day and the manner of its
observance, and does not appeal to the Bible.
Of course not all English clergymen agreed
with these liberals. The eminent Thomas Fuller laments the looseness of
Christians regarding the observance of the Lord's Day. He says: "These
transcendents, accounting themselves mounted above the predicaments of common
piety, aver they need not keep any, because they keep all days Lord's Days in
their elevated holiness. But, alas, Christian duties, said to be ever done will
prove to be never done, if not sometimes solemnly done."
The anonymous author of "Dissenters and
Schismatics Exposed,"(38) a book which purports to
give the tenets of some fourteen "Sectaries," speaks of the
"Sabbatarians," naming Trask and Brabourne as their earliest
representatives. The doctrines held by them at the time this was written, were
stated as follows: They believe, 1. That the Fourth Commandment of the
Decalogue, Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, is a Divine Precept;
simply and entirely moral, containing nothing legally ceremonial, in whole or
in part, and therefore ought to be perpetual, and to continue in full force and
virtue to the world's ends. 2. That Saturday, or the seventh day in every week,
ought to be an everlasting Holy Day in the Christian church, and the religious
observation of this day obliges Christians under the Gospel, as it did the Jews
before the coming of Christ. 3. That Sunday, or the Lord's Day, is an ordinary
working day, and it is superstition and will-worship to make the same the
Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment.
Thus by the hand of their enemies we have,
in a somewhat stilted form it is true, but nevertheless very clearly presented,
the position of Sabbath-keeping Baptists in the seventeenth century.
It will be seen that while these exponents
of Sabbath truth were called Judaizers, they observed the Sabbath as
Christians, and argued its obligation from that viewpoint. They opposed the
view held by the orthodox party as to the character and purpose of the Sabbath.
They agreed with the Puritan dissenters, that it had a sacred character, and
was to be used for religious purposes only. They went one step beyond other
dissenters, and claimed that the Sabbath of the Bible, the seventh day of the
week, was the Sabbath of Christians, and had not been changed by Christ or his
disciples.
We have discussed the conflicting views
concerning the Sabbath which obtained in England in the seventeenth century. In
this question, as many admitted, was involved the consistency of the whole
Puritan position. The authority of the Bible as opposed to the Roman Catholic
idea of the authority of the church, was involved in the discussion of the
Sabbath question.
It is a question to be reckoned with in
these days of reconstruction, economical, moral, and religious, that freedom in
the matter of interpreting the Bible, and in the manner of applying its
teachings, is the basis of modern democracy. Another fact of history which must
not be forgotten in these times is that the Puritan ideal of religion as a
personal relation of the soul to God, and of obedience to the divine will, has
produced the highest morality yet reached by any people.
For these principles the Dissenters stood.
More consistent than the others we believe were the Baptists. And most
consistent of all were those Baptists who, in harmony with the principles above
referred to, kept the Sabbath of the Bible and taught its sanctity.
It will be seen, as Heylin says, that they
built fairly on Puritan principles. These Sabbath-keeping Baptists of the first
years of the seventeenth century were Biblical and evangelical, and were the
immediate forerunners of the long list of Sabbath advocates in England and
America, known in those early years of Protestantism as Sabbatarians, and to
the present time as Seventh Day Baptists.
We close this book at the threshold of the
most interesting period of Sabbath discussion in all Christian history-the
second half of the seventeenth century. It is to be hoped that at no distant
date the story may be taken up at this point and carried through the following
century and a half of agitation, and of growing Sabbath sentiment, which led up
to the organization of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference in 1802. This
in turn should be followed by a popular history of the denomination from the
latter date to the present.
It is a worthy history and altogether
constitutes an important chapter in the story of modern evangelical
Christianity. It is a timely topic in view of the conscious demand for-a religious
weekly rest day. The Sabbath, like every other religious question, can never be
settled till it is settled right; that is, until it is settled according to
Scripture, history, reason and religious sentiment; and upon the basis of the
highest good of man considered as a physical being, not only, but as a moral
and spiritual being.
Endnotes
1. Genesis 1:
1 - 2:3.
2. The International Critical Commentary, Genesis.
3. Bible Studies on the Sabbath Question, Main, pages 3-10. Note:
Dean Main's book contains a thorough treatment of the Bible teachings
concerning the Sabbath.
4. Exodus 20: 8-11.
5. Isaiah 58: 13, 14; Jeremiah 17: 19-27.
6. An Exposition of the Bible, Isaiah, chapter XXIII.
7. Messianic Prophecy, page 367.
8. Nehemiah 13: 15-21.
9. The Theology of the Old Testament, Davidson, pages 6-11.
10. Matthew 5:17ff.
11. John 9: 13ff; Mark 3: Iff; Luke 13: 10ff.
12. Matthew 12:1ff.
13. Luke: 6: 5.
14. The Life and Teachings of Jesus, Kent, page 92.
15. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, article
"Logia."
16. John 14: 26,27.
17. History of Sabbath and Sunday, Lewis, chapter XII. Note:
charters XVIII and XIX carry the history of the Sabbath through the Dark Ages,
and supply much source material for this period.
18. Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, article "Pentecost."
19. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,
article "Sabbath."
20. The Encyclopedia of Sunday Schools and Religious Education, Vol.
III, page 940.
21. The Kings and Prophets of Israel and Judah, Kent, page 303.
22. Any reliable encyclopedia.
23. Acts 16: 11-15.
24. Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol. 1, pages 15-17.
25. History of the Christian Church, Hurst, Vol. 1, page
625f.
26. Ibid, page 639; Celtic Scotland, Skene, Vol. 2, pages
348, 349.
27. A Critical History of the Sabbath and the Sunday, Lewis, page
229.
28. Ibid, page 234.
29. A Critical History of the Sabbath and the Sunday, Lewis, page
237-243.
30. Encyclopedia of Sunday Schools and Religious Education, article
"Sabbath."
31. A Critical History of the Sabbath and Sunday, Lewis, pages 256,
257, quotes from the Catechism.
32. History of Sabbath and Sunday, Lewis, pages 296ff.
33. Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol. 1, pages 39-44.
34. Ibid 107 - 109.
35. Ibid 109 ­ 111.
36. Ibid 69ff.
37. A Critical History of the Sabbath and the Sunday, Lewis, Index:
"Heylin."
38. In New York City Library. Rare.