In alluding to the differences in practice between the eastern and the western churches, Neander distinctly sets forth the resolute animosity of the latter to the ancient Sabbath of the Lord, and the manner in which they sought to bring it into disrepute, while elevating the Sunday into favor. He says: “In the western churches, particularly the Roman, where opposition to Judaism was the prevailing tendency, this very opposition produced the custom of celebrating the Saturday as a fast day. This difference of customs would, of course, be striking, where members of the Oriental church spent their Sabbath day in the western church.”—Hist. Chris. Rel. and Church, First Three Centuries. Rose’s trans., p. 186.
Peter Heylyn also marks the peculiar favor shown to the first day of the week in the western church; and while he declares at one time that it was near “nine hundred years from the Saviour’s birth before restraint of husbandry on this day [Sunday] had been first thought of in the east,” he elsewhere records the fact that in the fifth and sixth centuries general unanimity respecting the exaltation to divine honor was reached. He writes: “The faithful, being united more than ever before, became more uniform in matters of devotion, and in that uniformity did agree together to give the Lord’s day all the honors of a holy festival, yet this was not done all at once, but by degrees, the fifth and sixth centuries being fully spent before it came unto that hight which has since continued. The emperors and the prelates in these times had the same affections, both earnest to advance this day above all others; and to the edicts of the one, and to the ecclesiastical constitutions of the others, it stands indebted for many of those privileges and exemptions which it still enjoyeth.”—Hist. Sab., part 2, chap. 4, sect. 1.
Thus it has been proved, by citations from men who have possessed the resources, as well as the disposition, to make themselves acquainted with the history of the first centuries of the Christian church, first, that the first day of the week was looked upon for a long time as a merely human institution; secondly, that the Edenic Sabbath was for centuries after the crucifixion of Christ quite generally celebrated; thirdly, that prejudice against it seems to have been strongest and to have originated earliest at Rome, where, in order to bring it into odium, it was made a day of fasting, while the Sunday was treated as a festival; fourthly, that after a struggle, which extended through hundreds of years, the ancient Sabbath was finally quite generally repudiated, and the Sunday, through the united efforts of prelates, councils, and emperors, was enthroned and enforced upon all.
Into the details of this long and varying conflict, in which victory seems first to have favored the one side and then the other, we are restricted by the limits of our communication from entering. The intelligent reader can readily fill in the outlines which have been given, and will not be slow to perceive that the contest, from the very nature of things, must have been one of intense interest and heated debate. If he would satisfy himself most fully that the gentleman is mistaken in saying that it has left no traces, we refer him for a more full discussion to the authorities quoted.
Changing now the point of view, we will come to the present time. We return once more to the charge that the church of Rome, availing itself of the condition of things which preceded its rise, has consummated the terrible work which was begun with the great apostasy, long before the papacy proper was fully developed. In prosecuting the labor thus entered upon, the reader is invited to pause a moment and decide upon certain principles which ought to govern in the decision of the question. He will remember that if he has been educated in the observance of Sunday, he will be in danger of requiring more testimony than could reasonably be demanded, since his education, and personal interest, and standing, would all incline him to a conservatism which needs to be guarded with a jealous care, lest it should result in a bias which would terminate in the rejection of sufficient light.
All that we ask him to do is to treat this subject the same as he would any other matter of fact. To illustrate: If the body of a murdered man were discovered upon the street, and if there should be found in the community one whose character was bad in every respect, concerning whom those who knew him best had given warning; if on the garments of this suspicious personage blood stains were found; if, in the meantime, a careful examination of the wounds should show that they had been inflicted by a weapon peculiar to the notorious individual; and if, in addition to the foregoing, he should step forward and frankly confess that he had done the deed, no court in the world would hesitate to inflict the penalty of the law, because of any doubt regarding the guilt of the offending party. Now applying the same principles to the case in hand, if every one can be shown to hold good in every particular, then consistency demands that they should produce a conviction equally clear and strong with that in the mind of the court, in determining in the case of the homicide upon the infliction of punishment.
But is it true that the charge against the Roman Catholic church can be made out as conclusively as that against the individual mentioned above? Let us see. The first point there brought forward was the unquestionable fact that the man had been murdered. This was the starting point of the whole affair. That which answers to it in the case before us is the fact that the change of the Sabbath has been made out beyond reasonable doubt; for God commanded the observance of the seventh day, while, somehow, Christendom is generally observing the first, though utterly incapable of furnishing Scripture warrant for the change.
The second point was that respecting the bad reputation of a certain character in the community—its parallel in the persons of the popes is found in the fact that, as we have seen, their rise and history were symbolized centuries before their appearance under the type of the “little horn” of the seventh of Daniel, by one who never errs in his analysis of character, and who declared of the “man of sin” that he should “think to change times and laws,” and that they should be given into his hands for “a time and times and the dividing of time,” thus proving that this blasphemous power who was to open his mouth in blasphemy against God is capable of attempting the transfer of God’s holy Sabbath to a day different from that pointed out in the commandment.
The third point, which related to blood stains upon the garments of the suspected person, finds its counterpart in the teachings of Romanism, most clearly. We learn, in the writings of Moses, that the blood is the life of the individual. This, however, is not more true than it is that the fourth commandment is the life of the Sabbatic institution. If you mar that commandment, you mar the Sabbath in the same ratio. If you destroy that commandment, you destroy the Sabbath. But the assumed ability to alter this precept as well as others of the decalogue is one of the very crimes of which Rome has been guilty, by which she has blotched all over in the most loathsome manner the garments of a once spotless Christianity, and a profoundly reverent faith. That this is so will become manifest when we present a copy of the decalogue as it has been mutilated by the Romish church in the exercise of a pretended divine right to accomplish such a work. For this purpose we append the ten commandments as they stand in Butler’s catechism.[[16]]
“1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me, &c. 2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. 3. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day. 4. Honor thy father and thy mother. 5. Thou shalt not kill. 6. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 7. Thou shalt not steal, 8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.”