MR. TAYLOR' S TniRD REPLY. 245 



The doctrine of Athanasics — ^»<i-sabbatarian. 



to iutimate that '' the Lord's day'' hecame '^ the Sabbath/' in 

 my friend's language {p. 52), " absorbing into itself all the 

 authority of the original law/' is clear from his previous 

 " Treatise on the Sabbath," in which he says : '^ The Lord's 

 day, which is the heginning of the new creation, ended the 

 Sahhatli; as this same regeneration in man superseded circum- 

 cision." And again, after remarking that the Sabbath com- 

 memorated the termination of Grod's creative labors^ he adds : 



uniformly to the seventh day. Certain it is that Athanasius never 

 claims the authority of the fourth commandment as sustaining any 

 observance of Sunday. And this, be it observed, so late as the fourth 

 Century. I remarked, in my former Reply (jt?. 98, — note), that "I be- 

 lieved no solitary writer could be found, in the first two centuries of the 

 Christian era, who ever called Sunday the Sabbath." My friend J. 

 N. B. has not attempted to question its correctness; and yet he would 

 have us believe that the commandment was transferred to " the first 

 day," by Divine authority establishing that day as "the Sabbath" of 

 the Christian dispensation, while throughout the earlier and purer 

 ages of the Church, no one ever thought of calling " the thing" by its 

 appropriate "name.^' I believe I may give him a broader issue, and 

 add another century. If correct, we shall have to admit that "it was 

 not till erroneous views of the day of Christian worship began to be 

 entertained that it was ever siipposed to ' absorb into itself the authority 

 of the oi'iginal law,'the fourth commandment." [p. 99, — note.) J. N. B. 

 has met this oddly enough, by saying : " This statement of my friend 

 requires no answer. It is sx mere berging of the question." (p. 191.) He 

 mistakes ; it is a negation of the question. He that affirms, must 

 prove. My friend would doubtless be well pleased to transfer the 

 hurden of proof from his own shoulders ; but for once I must decline 

 accepting it, 



I will merely observe that the diligent and scrutinizing Lardner 

 derives a strong argument against the genuineness of " The Apostolical 

 Constitutions," from the circumstance of their ordaining that the 

 Jewish Sabbath should be observed. On which he correctly remarks, 

 that " the Apostles of Christ never gave such instructions about keeping 

 the Sabbath;'^ and that such instructions "are more suitable to the 

 fourth or fifth Century, than to the most early times of Christiani ty." 

 (^Credibil. B. i. chap. Ixxxv. sec. 6.) 



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