262 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Learned authority — against the Sabbath. 



far from the intention of tlie Apostles to establisli a Divine 

 command in tliis respect, far from them and from the early 

 apostolic Church to transfer the hiws of the Sabhatli to Sun- 

 day. Perhaps at the end of the second century, a false appli- 

 cation of this kind had bcgun to take place, for men appear 

 by that time to have considered laboring on Sundayas a sin." 

 (^Hlstory of the Christian Religion and Church, \q\. i. sec. iii. 



J. N. B. informs us that "Human opinions really decide 

 nothing here. Names equally illustrious, if not more 

 numerous, are found arrayed on the other side — that is, in 

 favor of the moral and perpetual obligation of the Sabbath.'^ 

 (p. 190.) Where shall they be found? Will my friend ob- 

 tain countenance for his " tradition of the elders," in the ear- 

 liest commentators — the immediate successors of the apostles — 

 the ^'Fathers" of the Christian church? Almost unanimously 

 do they support my side of the question, and, like " the in- 

 spired Apostle," utterly repudiate the Sahhath! Will he 

 refer to those who in later centuries, casting off the trammels 

 of a long accumulating growth of legendary observance (the 

 fungi of human culture), and caring naught that these ob- 

 servances had received the sanction of ages of acquiescence 

 from the wise and good, dared battle for what they esteemed 

 the Truth — "whether slie carried the balm of life, or the 

 weapon of death" — will he turn to i\iQfathers of Protestantism? 

 Where shall he find " names equally illustrious'^ with those of 

 a Luther, a Melancthon, a Cranmer, a Tyndale, a Calvin? — 

 all of whom explicitly or virtually den)/ the ohligation of the 

 fourth commandment? Or even descending to more recent 

 times, and searching among the names which have earned the 

 most enduring reputation for critical research and Biblical 

 scholarship, ho w many will he find to maintain with him ''the 

 moral and perpetual obligation of the Sabbath ?"* In weight 

 of character at least, I fearlessly may challenge a comparison. 



•5^ " The dogma tliat the observance of the Sabbath is part of the 

 moral law is to me utterly iinintelligible." Whately. 



