4. The making of tradition of equal authority with the Scriptures. This was the great error of the early church, and the one to which that church was specially exposed, as having in it those who had seen the apostles, or who had seen those who had seen them. It was this which rendered the voluntary observance of memorable days a dangerous thing. For what began as a voluntary observance became, after the lapse of a few years, a standing custom, established by tradition, which must be obeyed because it came from those who had seen the apostles, or from those who had seen others who had seen them. This is the origin of the various errors of the great apostasy.
5. The entrance of the no-law heresy. This is seen in Justin Martyr, the earliest witness to the Sunday festival, and in the church of Rome of which he was then a member.
6. The extensive observance of Sunday as a heathen festival. The first day of the week corresponded to the widely observed heathen festival of the sun. It was therefore easy to unite the honor of Christ in the observance of the day of his resurrection with the convenience and worldly advantage of his people in having the same festival day with their heathen neighbors, and to make it a special act of piety in that the conversion of the heathen was thereby facilitated, while the neglect of the ancient Sabbath was justified by stigmatizing that divine memorial as a Jewish institution with which Christians should have no concern.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SABBATH AND FIRST-DAY DURING THE FIRST FIVE CENTURIES.
Origin of the Sabbath and of the festival of the sun contrasted—Entrance of that festival into the church—The Moderns with the Ancients—The Sabbath observed by the early Christians—Testimony of Morer—Of Twisse—Of Giesler—Of Mosheim—Of Coleman—Of Bishop Taylor—The Sabbath loses ground before the Sunday festival—Several bodies of decided Sabbatarians—Testimony of Brerewood—Constantine’s Sunday law—Sunday a day of labor with the primitive church—Constantine’s edict a heathen law, and himself at that time a heathen—The bishop of Rome authoritatively confers the name of Lord’s day upon Sunday—Heylyn narrates the steps by which Sunday arose to power—A marked change in the history of that institution—Paganism brought into the church—The Sabbath weakened by Constantine’s influence—Remarkable facts concerning Eusebius—The Sabbath recovers strength again—The council of Laodicea pronounces a curse upon the Sabbath-keepers—The progress of apostasy marked—Authority of church councils considered—Chrysostom—Jerome—Augustine—Sunday edicts—Testimony of Socrates relative to the Sabbath about the middle of the fifth century—Of Sozomen—Effectual suppression of the Sabbath at the close of the fifth century.
The origin of the Sabbath and of the festival of Sunday is now distinctly understood. When God made the world, he gave to man the Sabbath that he might not forget the Creator of all things. When men apostatized from God, Satan turned them to the worship of the sun, and, as a standing memorial of their veneration for that luminary, caused them to dedicate to his honor the first day of the week. When the elements of apostasy had sufficiently matured in the Christian church, this ancient festival stood forth as a rival to the Sabbath of the Lord. The manner in which it obtained a foothold in the Christian church has been already shown; and many facts which have an important bearing upon the struggle between these rival institutions have also been given. We have, in the preceding chapters, given the statements of the most ancient Christian writers respecting the Sabbath and first-day in the early church. As we now trace the history of these two days during the first five centuries of the Christian era, we shall give the statements of modern church historians, covering the same ground with the early fathers, and shall also quote in continuation of the ancient writers the testimonies of the earliest church historians. The reader can thus discover how nearly the ancients and moderns agree. Of the observance of the Sabbath in the early church, Morer speaks thus:—
“The primitive Christians had a great veneration for the Sabbath, and spent the day in devotion and sermons. And it is not to be doubted but they derived this practice from the apostles themselves, as appears by several scriptures to that purpose; who, keeping both that day and the first of the week, gave occasion to the succeeding ages to join them together, and make it one festival, though there was not the same reason for the continuance of the custom as there was to begin it.”[706]
A learned English first-day writer of the seventeenth century, William Twisse, D. D., thus states the early history of these two days:—
“Yet for some hundred years in the primitive church, not the Lord’s day only, but the seventh day also, was religiously observed, not by Ebion and Cerinthus only, but by pious Christians also, as Baronius writeth, and Gomarus confesseth, and Rivet also, that we are bound in conscience under the gospel, to allow for God’s service a better proportion of time, than the Jews did under the law, rather than a worse.”[707]