Zwingle declared “that it was lawful on the Lord’s day, after divine service, for any man to pursue his labors.”[950] Beza taught that “no cessation of work on the Lord’s day is required of Christians.”[951] Bucer goes further yet, “and doth not only call it a superstition, but an apostasy from Christ to think that working on the Lord’s day, in itself considered, is a sinful thing.”[952] And Cranmer, in his Catechism, published in 1548, says:—
“We now keep no more the Sabbath on Saturday as the Jews do; but we observe the Sunday, and certain other days as the magistrates do judge convenient, whom in this thing we ought to obey.”[953]
Tyndale said:—
“As for the Sabbath, we be lords over the Sabbath, and may yet change it into Monday, or into any other day as we see need, or may make every tenth day holy day only if we see cause why.”[954]
It is plain that both Cranmer and Tyndale believed that the ancient Sabbath was abolished, and that Sunday was only a human ordinance which it was in the power of the magistrates and the church lawfully to change whenever they saw cause for so doing. And Dr. Hessey gives the opinion of Zwingle respecting the present power of each individual church to transfer the so-called Lord’s day to another day, whenever necessity urges, as, for example, in harvest time. Thus Zwingle says:—
“If we would have the Lord’s day so bound to time that it shall be wickedness to transfer it to another time, in which resting from our labors equally as in that, we may hear the word of God, if necessity haply shall so require, this day so solicitously observed, would obtrude on us as a ceremony. For we are no way bound to time, but time ought so to serve us, that it is lawful, and permitted to each church, when necessity urges (as is usual to be done in harvest time), to transfer the solemnity and rest of the Lord’s day, or Sabbath, to some other day.”[955]
Zwingle could not, therefore, have considered Sunday as a divinely appointed memorial of the resurrection, or, indeed, as anything but a church festival.
John Calvin said, respecting the origin of the Sunday festival:—
“However, the ancients have not without sufficient reason substituted what we call the Lord’s day in the room of the Sabbath. For since the resurrection of the Lord is the end and consummation of that true rest, which was adumbrated by the ancient Sabbath; the same day which put an end to the shadows, admonishes Christians not to adhere to a shadowy ceremony. Yet I do not lay so much stress on the septenary number that I would oblige the church to an invariable adherence to it; nor will I condemn those churches, which have other solemn days for their assemblies, provided they keep at a distance from superstition.”[956]
It is worthy of notice that Calvin does not assign to Christ and his disciples the establishment of Sunday in the place of the Sabbath. He says this was done by the “ancients,”[957] or as another translates it, “the old fathers.” Nor does he say “the day which John called the Lord’s day,” but “the day which we call the Lord’s day.” And what is worthy of particular notice he did not insist that the day which should be appropriated to worship should be one day in every seven; for he was not tied to “the septenary number.” The day might come once in six days, or once in eight. And this proves conclusively that he did not regard Sunday as a divine institution in the proper sense of the word; for if he had, he would most assuredly have felt that the festival must be septenary, that is, weekly, and that he must urge “the church to an invariable adherence to it.” But Calvin does not leave the matter here. He condemns as “false prophets” those who attempt to enforce the Sunday festival by means of the fourth commandment; and who to do this say that the ceremonial part, which requires the observance of the definite seventh day, is abolished, while the moral part, which simply commands the observance of one day in seven, still remains in force. Here are his words:—