“In opposition to the opinion that some one day in seven is all that the fourth commandment requires to be set apart, the writer maintains the obligation of the Saturday Sabbath on the ground that ‘God himself directly in the letter of the text calls the seventh day the Sabbath day, giving both the names to one and the selfsame day, as all men know that ever read the commandments.’”[1072]
One of the most eminent Sabbatarian ministers of the last half of the seventeenth century was Francis Bampfield. He was originally a clergyman of the church of England. The Baptist historian, Crosby, speaks of him thus:—
“But being utterly unsatisfied in his conscience with the conditions of conformity, he took his leave of his sorrowful and weeping congregation in ... 1662, and was quickly after imprisoned for worshiping God in his own family. So soon was his unshaken loyalty to the king forgotten, ... that he was more frequently imprisoned and exposed to greater hardships for his nonconformity, than most other dissenters.”[1073]
Of his imprisonment, Neale says:—
“After the act of uniformity, he continued preaching as he had opportunity in private, till he was imprisoned for five days and nights, with twenty-five of his hearers in one room ... where they spent their time in religious exercises, but after some time he was released. Soon after, he was apprehended again and lay nine years in Dorchester jail, though he was a person of unshaken loyalty to the king.”[1074]
During his imprisonment, he preached almost every day, and gathered a church even under his confinement. And when he was at liberty, he ceased not to preach in the name of Jesus. After his release, he went to London, where he preached with much success.[1075] Neale says of his labors in that city:—
“When he resided in London he formed a church on the principles of the Sabbatarian Baptists, at Pinner’s hall, of which principles he was a zealous asserter. He was a celebrated preacher, and a man of serious piety.”[1076]
On Feb. 17, 1682, he was arrested while preaching, and on March 28, was sentenced to forfeit all his goods and to be imprisoned in Newgate for life. In consequence of the hardships which he suffered in that prison, he died, Feb. 16, 1683.[1077] “Bampfield,” says Wood, “dying in the said prison of Newgate ... aged seventy years, his body was ... followed with a very great company of factious and schismatical people to his grave.”[1078] Crosby says of him:—
“All that knew him will acknowledge that he was a man of great piety. And he would in all probability have preserved the same character, with respect to his learning and judgment, had it not been for his opinion in two points, viz., that infants ought not to be baptized, and that the Jewish Sabbath ought still to be kept.”[1079]
Mr. Bampfield published two works in behalf of the seventh day as the Sabbath, one in 1672, the other in 1677. In the first of these he thus sets forth the doctrine of the Sabbath:—