Ninthly, that Cyprian and his colleagues addressed us from a point of time too far removed from the period of the alleged change of Sabbaths, and too fully within that of the great apostasy, to be of service in an exegesis of the Scriptures.
Tenthly, that three of the most pointed and satisfactory of the testimonies heretofore employed by first-day writers, are now abandoned as having been the result of mistake in translation, or in the matter of attributing them to the proper persons. Summing, up, therefore, in a word we inquire again, What has been gained by this departure? We believe that all must see that it has been an entire failure; for, so far as the Sabbath is concerned, we think the reader will hesitate long before he will leave the Scriptures, in the matter of deciding upon its obligation, in order to build the structure of his faith from such material as we have been handling over.
Also, as to the question of what day John referred to in Rev. 1:10, when he said, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” he will deliberate very much before he will decide that it was the first day of the week, simply because an untrustworthy man, admitted to have been heretical on many points, called it such 200 years after the birth of Christ, while Jehovah himself has given to the seventh day that honor, styling it the “Sabbath of the Lord,” “the holy of the Lord, honorable,” &c., and while Christ himself has declared in so many words, that he was the Lord of the Sabbath day. Mark 2:27, 28.
STATESMAN’S REPLY.
ARTICLE NINE.
THEORIES OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
With the facts of history before us concerning sacred time for nearly three centuries after the resurrection of Christ—facts drawn from the inspired writers of the New Testament and their immediate successors, we are prepared to consider the different theories of the Christian Sabbath. These theories may be summed up in three. Of one or another of these, all the remaining theories are simply modifications.
The first of these three leading theories is as follows: “The Sabbath was a Jewish institution, and expired with the Jewish dispensation. The Lord’s day is not in any proper sense a Sabbath. It has an origin, a reason, and an obligation, not drawn from the fourth commandment, but peculiarly its own, as an institution belonging specially to the New-Testament dispensation.”
The second theory, in the order in which we notice these different views, maintains that the observance of the Sabbath, as required under the Old-Testament dispensation, knows no change in any particular. The observance of the seventh day of the week is essential to the proper observance of the Sabbath under the gospel dispensation. The observance of the first day of the week is without divine warrant—a departure from the law of God through the corruptions which crept into the church.
The third theory agrees with the second in maintaining that the Sabbath existed from the beginning, and that it has never been abolished or superseded. It disagrees with the second theory in maintaining that the essential idea of the law of the Sabbath is not the holiness of a portion of time, but the consecration of a specified proportion of time, one day in seven; that, in accordance with this, a change of day was admissible; that a change was actually made by divine warrant from the resurrection of Christ; and that the first day of the week, the Lord’s day, is the true Christian Sabbath, having its moral sanction in the fourth commandment.
By many of those who hold the first of these theories, the Lord’s day is made a purely ecclesiastical institution, without any other warrant for its observance than the action of the church, by whose authority and in whose wisdom, the day is set apart for divine service. By others who accept the same general theory, apostolic authority in the early church is admitted to afford a divine warrant for the observance of the day. In a complete treatise on the Lord’s day, a careful discussion of this theory would be required. Its want of any sufficient foundation could be satisfactorily shown by a presentation of the following points: (1.) The declaration of the Lord of the Sabbath is explicit—“The Sabbath was made for man.” It was not made for any portion of the human family, but for the race of mankind. (2.) Thus, from the design of its Lord, and the very nature of the institution, the Sabbath cannot be limited to any locality or dispensation. (3.) Accordingly, it was given to man at his creation. (Gen. 3:3.) (4.) For the same reason, the law of the Sabbath has its proper place, not among ceremonial, local, or positive enactments, but among the immutable moral precepts of the decalogue. (5.) This law is, therefore, of universal and perpetual obligation upon our race. These points would give room for many articles; but, inasmuch as on all of them there is entire agreement between our seventh-day Sabbatarian friends and ourselves, we pass to a consideration of the second theory, which they accept as correct.
To make good their case, the advocates of the second theory must show that the seventh day continued to be the Sabbath observed by the church after the resurrection of Christ, just as before; and that, in the observance of the first day, a great departure took place from the original practice of the Christian church. They must not make bare statements, but they must furnish proof. Instead of appealing to the letter of the law, and insisting that fact must conform to their interpretation of it, they must accept the facts of history, and put their interpretations to the test. It is more reasonable to conclude that an interpretation of law is wrong, than to reject the attested facts of history, when the interpretation and the facts do not harmonize.