The Sabbath

and the Lord's Day

The Pope and the Sabbath

THAT THE POPE CHANGED THE SABBATH,
PROVED TO BE BASELESS

  By constantly crying in the ears of the people: "Sunday is a heathen day; and all who observe it keep 'the venerable day of the sun' "; "The bishop of Rome is authority for Sunday observance"; "Constantine changed the Sabbath"; "The observance of the first day of the week began with the pope of Rome," etc., etc., Adventists frighten a few ignorant souls into this belief; and the result is, they cease to observe the great memorial day of the gospel, and go back under the "yoke of bondage." This man of straw is one of the most effectual means in the hands of Sabbatarians. But the whole is wrong from the ground up. Not a word of truth is there in any of the assertions quoted. The facts of history utterly refute them. Let us examine.

  The heathens never kept Sunday, as Adventists affirm. I quote from Canright:

  'Such statements are utterly false. Each day of the week was named after some god, and, in a certain sense, was devoted to the worship of that god, as Monday to the moon, Saturday to Saturn, Sunday to the sun, etc. But did they cease work on these days? No; if they had they would have kept every day in the week. Did they observe Sunday by ceasing to work? No indeed. No such thing was taught or practiced by the Romans. They had no weekly rest day.

  'Prof. A. Rauschinbusch, of Rochester Theological Seminary, quotes Lotz thus: "It is a vain thing to attempt to prove that the Greeks and Romans had anything resembling the Sabbath. Such opinion is refuted even by this, that the Roman writers ridicule the Sabbath as something peculiar to the Jews.' In proof he cites many passages from the Roman poets, and one from Tacitus. Seneca also condemned the Sabbath observance of the Jews as a waste if time by which a seventh part of life was lost."—Saturday or Sunday ? (page 83). "No special religious celebration of [151] any one day of the week can be pointed out in any one of the pagan religions.—"Herzog (Art. "Sabbath.") The pagans never kept Sunday. So much for that. Saturday was sacred to Saturn as Sunday was to the sun.' So if Christians keep a heathen day, Adventists also do.

  Next we inquire, Did Constantine change the Sabbath? Adventist literature and teachings say, "Yes." History and facts say, "No." Notice the Adventists' dilemma. One time they cry, "Constantine changed the Sabbath," and again they say, "It was the pope." Pray how can this be? Constantine's Sunday law was made in A. D. 321, long years before there was a pope recognized as controlling Christendom. Then, their talk about the pope's changing the observance of the day is refuted by their own literature, which teaches that it was Constantine. Now comes the climax. Elder Waggoner, a leading Adventist, finally admits that "it is safe to affirm that there was nothing done in the time of Constantine, either by himself or any other that has the least appearance of changing the Sabbath." —Replies to Elder Canright, (page 150). Amen. Then, from their own admission, we are forced to conclude that they know better themselves when they try to scare the people into believing that Constantine or the pope of Rome changed the observance of the day.

  The facts are, as proved in preceding chapters, that the Christian church observed the Lord's Day as the great memorial day of the gospel, from the resurrection day on. When Constantine was converted, or became favorable to the Christian religion, he simply issued an edict throughout his empire for people to observe the Christian's day. That is all there is to it. "The first day of the week, which was the ordinary and stated time for the public assemblies of the Christians, was, in consequence of a peculiar law enacted by Constantine, observed with greater solemnity than it had formerly been."—Mosheim (Part II, chap. 4, sec. 5). The united testimony of the early Christian writers as seen in a preceding chapter, was that they all held Sunday as a sacred and memorial day, and this long before Constantine's time.

  The following quotation is from The Sabbath. After quoting Mrs. White. who says in her book Great Controversy [152] that the observance of days was changed by Constantine and the bishop of Rome, the writer, D. S. Warner, says:

  "Look at the impudence of this prophetess! The apostle John called the resurrection day 'the Lord's day' in A. D. 96. She says that title was conferred upon it by the bishop of Rome in the fourth century. She speaks of the 'false' and the 'true,' calling the first day of the week the false and the seventh day the true. But eighteen hundred years before she was born, Justin Martyr wrote under the same head, and denounced the Jewish Sabbath as the false, and declared the first day the true Lord's day. He wrote in the virgin purity of Christianity; she writes under the thick fogs of Babel confusion. He wrote as the Apostle did who pronounced the curse of God upon the false teachers who troubled the Galatian church, 'subverting the gospel of Christ' by enjoining the law and its 'days.' She writes largely the doctrine of the Ebionites, one of the first and most abominable heresies.

  "She says that in the first centuries the seventh day had been kept by all Christians. And her own word is the only proof she offers. But we have seen that both the Word of God and the early church Fathers teach us that only persons who were weak and ignorant of the liberties of the sons of God thought it necessary to observe the law respecting meats and the Sabbaths. And Justin told Trypho that the Sabbath of the law belonged only to the Jews, and that it was not proper for Christians to observe it; and by others we are positively told that Saturday was a common work day in the primitive church of God. This prophetess leaves the impression that Constantine, as a heathen, enjoined the observance of Sunday as a public festival, and after his professed conversion still adhered to it, thus making him the author of that day of worship. So Adventism teaches. But all readers of the New Testament and of early history know better. For two hundred years before Constantine's day, in fact from the resurrection of Christ, the first day was kept by the church of God, as a memorial day, a weekly day of worship. Constantine had nothing to do with the establishment of the Lord's Day in the church. [153]

  God's institutions need no kingly decrees. But what that emperor did simply related to the day in his empire.

  "Should the head of the Chinese empire become specially favorable to the Christian religion, nothing would be more natural than that he would adopt the first day of the week as their national holiday. This is substantially what Constantine did. Yet there is no more reason of truth in ascribing to him the origin of the observance of the Lord's Day than there would be in making the emperor of China father of it, were he to do the same thing in this century. When Constantine called the first day 'the venerable day of the sun,' he had no reference to any idolatrous use of that day. More than a hundred years before, the days of the week had all been named after planets, as follows: the first day after the Sun—Sunday; the next after the moon—Monday; the last after Saturn—Saturday; etc. And these names had passed into common use. Constantine, having been convinced of the truth of the Christian religion, would naturally speak of the preeminence of their day of worship, of which preeminence he had a beautiful illustration of the fact that the sun is the greatest planet of the solar system, and the source of all light. So this constant cry of Adventism that 'Constantine changed the Sabbath,' etc., is false. And no person can inform himself of the historical facts and make the assertion without knowing he is wrong. They dispute the plain scriptures, renounce all early history that exposes their creed, and virtually make their own history to suit their purpose.

  "They are now sending out two pamphlets, the first of which is entitled Rome's Challenge, Why do Protestants Keep Sunday? the second, Our Answer. In the first, Roman authorities are quoted, affirming that they changed the day from the seventh to the first day; that there is no evidence in Scripture or early history in favor of the firstday observance; that it rests only upon Rome's authority to change the laws of God. To this false statement Adventists give consent, and then claim to be persecuted because they do not keep the day Rome made. But God's Word and the writings of the church Fathers rebuke both."

  After Waggoner (Adventist) admitted that Constantine did not change the Sabbath, he then attempted to fix the [154]

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