[392] Matt. 26.
[393] Acts 2:42-46.
[394] This fact has been acknowledged by many first-day commentators. Thus Prof. Hacket comments upon this text: “The Jews reckoned the day from evening to morning, and on that principle the evening of the first day of the week would be our Saturday evening. If Luke reckoned so here, as many commentators suppose, the apostle then waited for the expiration of the Jewish Sabbath, and held his last religious service with the brethren at Troas, at the beginning of the Christian Sabbath, i. e., on Saturday evening, and consequently resumed his journey on Sunday morning.”—Commentary on Acts, pp. 329, 330. But he endeavors to shield the first-day Sabbath from this fatal admission by suggesting that Luke probably reckoned time according to the pagan method, rather than by that which is ordained in the Scriptures!
Kitto, in noting the fact that this was an evening meeting, speaks thus: “It has from this last circumstance been inferred that the assembly commenced after sunset on the Sabbath, at which hour the first day of the week had commenced, according to the Jewish reckoning [Jahn’s Bibl. Antiq., sect. 398], which would hardly agree with the idea of a commemoration of the resurrection.”—Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, article, Lord’s day.
And Prynne, whose testimony relative to redemption as an argument for the change of the Sabbath has been already quoted, thus states this point: “Because the text saith there were many lights in the upper room where they were gathered together, and that Paul preached from the time of their coming together till midnight, ... this meeting of the disciples at Troas, and Paul’s preaching to them, began at evening. The sole doubt will be what evening this was.... For my own part I conceive clearly that it was upon Saturday night, as we falsely call it, and not the coming Sunday night.... Because St. Luke records that it was upon the first day of the week when this meeting was ... therefore it must needs be on the Saturday, not on our Sunday evening, since the Sunday evening in St. Luke’s and the Scripture account was no part of the first, but of the second day; the day ever beginning and ending at evening.”
Prynne notices the objection drawn from the phrase, “ready to depart on the morrow,” as indicating that this departure was not on the same day of the week with his night meeting. The substance of his answer is this: If the fact be kept in mind that the days of the week are reckoned from evening to evening, the following texts, in which in the night, the morning is spoken of as the morrow, will show at once that another day of the week is not necessarily intended by the phrase in question. 1 Sam. 19:11; Esth. 2:14; Zeph. 3:3; Acts 23:31, 32.—Diss. on Lord’s Day Sab., pp. 36-41, 1633.
[395] See the conclusion of [chap. viii.]
[396] Luke 23:56; 24:1.
[397] Rom. 14:1-6.
[398] James 2:8-12.