Gradually.
Notes.—“The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious transference of the one day to the other.”—“The Voice From Sinai,” by Archdeacon F. W. Farrar, page 167.
This of itself is evidence that there was no divine command for the change of the Sabbath.
15. For how long a time was the seventh-day Sabbath observed in the Christian church?
For many centuries. In fact, its observance has never wholly ceased in the Christian church.
Notes.—Mr. Morer, a learned clergyman of the Church of England, says: “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 that they derived this practise from the apostles themselves.”—“Dialogues on the Lord's Day,” page 189.
Prof. E. Brerwood, of Gresham College, London (Episcopal), says: “The Sabbath was religiously observed in the Eastern church three hundred years and more after our Saviour's passion.”—“Learned Treatise of the Sabbath,” page 77.
Lyman Coleman, a careful and candid historian, says: “Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigor and solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued.”—“Ancient Christianity Exemplified,” chap. 26, sec. 2.
The historian Socrates, who wrote about the middle of the fifth century, says: “Almost all the churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, refuse to do this.”—“Ecclesiastical History,” book 5, chap. 22.
Sozomen, another historian of the same period, writes: “The people of Constantinople, and of several other cities, assemble together on the Sabbath as well as on the next day; which custom is never observed at Rome.”—“Ecclesiastical History,” book 7, chap. 19.