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, as appears by several scriptures to that purpose.”—Morer's “Dialogues on the Lord's Day,” page 189.
The historian Neander says: “Opposition to Judaism introduced the particular festival of Sunday very early, indeed, into the place of the Sabbath.... The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect,—far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a sin.”—Neander's “Church History,” Rose's translation, page 186.
Dr. Lyman Abbott says: “The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day of the week for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.”—Christian Union, June 26, 1890.
Archdeacon Farrar says: “The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious transference of the one day to the other.”—“The Voice From Sinai,” page 167.
13. What was the first effort of the Roman Church in behalf of the recognition of Sunday?
In 196 a.d., Victor, bishop of Rome, attempted to impose on all the churches the Roman custom of having the Passover, or Easter, as it is commonly called, celebrated every year on Sunday. See Bower's “History of the Popes,” Vol. I, pages 18, 19.
Note.—This, Dr. Bower, in his “History of the Popes,” Vol. I, page 18, styles “the first essay of papal usurpation.”
14. What was one of the principal reasons for convoking the Council of Nice?
“The question relating to the observance of Easter, which was agitated in the time of Anicetus and Polycarp, and afterward in that of Victor, was still undecided. It was one of the principal reasons for convoking the Council of Nice, being the most [pg 461] important subject to be considered after the Arian controversy.”—Boyle's “Historical View of the Council of Nice,” page 23, edition 1836.
15. How was the matter finally decided?