SABBATH 



59 



It must certainly be admitted that the earliest 

 Christian writers do not identify the Sabbath and 

 the Lord's day ; none of the Fathers before the 4th 

 century ground the duty of observing Sunday on 

 the fourth commandment, or on the precept or 

 example of Jesus or the apostles, or on an ante- 

 Mosaic law promulgated at the Creation. Justin 

 Martyr speaks of the regular assemblies of Chris- 

 tians on Sunday, 'because it is the first day in 

 which God changed darkness and matter and made 

 the world. On the same day also Jesus Christ pur 

 Saviour rose from the dead.' He makes no mention 

 of abstinence from labour as part of the observance 

 of the day. But whatever may have been the 

 opinion and practice of these early Christians in 

 regard to cessation from labour on the Sunday, 

 unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical 

 or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of 

 that day is known to have been ordained, is the 

 edict of Constantine, 321 A.D., of which the follow- 

 ing is a translation : ' Let all judges, inhabitants 

 of the cities, and artificers rest on the venerable 

 day of the sun. But in the country husband- 

 men may freely and lawfully apply to the busi- 

 neas of agriculture ; since it often happens that 

 the sowing of corn ami planting of vines can- 

 not be so advantageously performed on any other 

 day ; lest, by neglecting the opportunity, they 

 should lose the benefits which the divine bounty 

 bestows on us.' Before this time, such of the 

 Christian writers as had endeavoured, by a 

 mystical style of interpretation, to turn the Mosaic 

 ceremonies to account as sources of moral and 

 religious instruction had, probably in imitation of 

 Phifo, spiritualised the law of the Sabbath to the 

 effect or representing it as a mystical prohibition to 

 the Christian of evil works during all the days of 

 his life, and a prefiguration of the spiritual repose 

 and enjoyment which is his portion both in this 

 world and in the next. But, in addition to this 

 significance, there now began to be discovered in 

 the Old Testament foreshadowings of the new 

 Sunday-Sabbath ; and the decrees of synods liecame 

 more stringent. The Emperor Theodosius forbade 

 business and public spectacles; Leo III. forbade 

 legal processes and all labour. The Frank kings 

 enforced Sunday observance by severe statutes. In 

 England Ina of Essex forbade all servile work, and 

 Alfred all liilnmr. traffic, and legal processes. 

 Canute was a supporter of Sunday observance ; 

 and some of the Norman kings were more strenu- 

 ous, statutes of Edward III., Richard II., and 

 Edward IV. specially dealing with the subject. 



In Scotland the first record of effort by the 

 anthorities for the sanctification of the Lord s day 

 is in the life of St Margaret. That saintly and 

 most influential promoter of the stricter Roman 

 usages had in Scotland to contend with great 

 regard lessness of the Sunday, the Culdees (whom 

 strangely enough Presbyterians were wont to 

 claim as their spiritual ancestors) championing a 

 lax Sunday keeping. ' It was another custom of 

 theirs to neglect the reverence due to the Lord's 

 day, by devoting themselves to every kind of 

 hii-iw*t upon it just as they do on other days. 

 That this was contrary to the law she proved to 

 them by reason as well as by authority. Let us 

 venerate the Lord's day because of the resurrection 

 of the Lord, which happened that day, and let us 

 no longer do servile works upon it.' She further 

 quoted St Gregory's arguments in favour of keep- 

 ing holy the day, and proved so unanswerable that 

 thenceforward no one ventured to carry burdens or 

 compel another to do so. How long the influence 

 of St Margaret continued we do not know. Her 

 descendant, James IV., seems to have paid more 

 attention t<> tin' fourth commandment than to some 

 of the others : 1'eilrode Ayala records of him that he 



'fears God and observes all the precepts of the 

 church. He does not eat meat on Wednesdays or 

 Fridays. He would not ride on Sundays for any 

 consideration, not even to mass.' But in Scotland, 

 as a rule, the pre-reformation Sunday was in no 

 sense strict ; markets and fairs were commonly 

 held on that day. Courts of law sat ; archery was 

 practised even in the kirk-yard ; and Robin Hood 

 and Little John plays were special Sunday 

 spectacles. 



The continental Reformers, while insisting on the 

 value of the Sunday as a day of rest and worship, 

 favoured the ' Dominical ' as distinguished from the 

 ' Puritan ' view of the Sunday. Luther denied 

 that Sunday should be kept tecause Moses com- 

 manded it ; Zwingli is even more explicit ; the 

 [ second Helvetic Confession ( 1566) denies that keep- 

 I ing one day in seven is a moral duty, or that the 

 j observance of Sunday is founded on the fourth 

 commandment, or that the Christian people might 

 not choose any other day than the h'rst ; Calvin 

 '. supports the freer view ; and Beza expressly says 

 that 'a Judaical rest from all kinds of work is not 

 to be observed.' Nowhere except in English- 

 speaking countries is the name Sabbath connected 

 with the Sunday ; when the word is regularly used 

 for the n.ame of a dny of the week, as in Italian 

 (Subato), it simply means Saturday ; the word for 

 Sunday being with the Romance-speaking peoples 

 derived from the Latin dies dominica ('Lord's 

 day ')Domenica, Dimanche, &c. Orthodox Ger- 

 man pastors take their households to miscellaneous 

 concerts on Sunday evenings, and would consider 

 hesitation to do so as a remnant of mere Jewish 

 prejudice. 



The English reformers Cranmer, Hooper, Frith, 

 Tyndale it may generally be said, took a view 

 distinctly unlike that of the Puritans. In Scot- 

 land also the less strict opinion at first prevailed. 

 Knox's Confession and tne Geneva Catechism, in 

 use till the Westminster Confession was adopted, 

 do not insist even on Sunday observances, and the 

 word Sabbath is not used. Knox wrote letters and 

 entertained guests to dinner on Sunday ; plays ( re- 

 ligious subjects ) were performed on Sundays with 

 the sanction of kirk-sessions as late as 1574. Church 

 acts were immediately passed against holding mar- 

 kets on Sunday (a custom which obtained, in some 

 places at least, as late as 1581 ), or producing the 

 play of Robin Hood, and drinking in taverns in 

 time of sermon. The Sunday is called Saboth-day 

 soon after the Reformation ; and the national 

 legislation against all working or trading on Sun- 

 day dates from the Act of 1579. But it is con 

 tended, on good grounds, that the stricter view of 

 Sabbath observance is of Puritan origin, and was 

 introduced into Scotland from England. Some 

 Puritans called the Lord's day 'the Sabbath ' long 

 before the end of the 16th century; but the first 

 full statement of the ' high ' doctrine of the Chris- 

 tian Sabbath was the Sabbathum Veteris et Novi 

 Testamenti: or the True Doctrine of the Sabbath, 

 by Dr Nicolas Bownde or Bound ( 1st ed. 1593 ; 

 enlarged ed. 1606). The observance of the Sunday 

 now became a keenly debated point between Puri- 

 tans and High Churchmen the first question of 

 doctrine on which they directly differed. The 

 Book of Sports ( see SPORTS, BOOK OF ) was long 

 an apple of discord between Puritans and the other 

 party ; in the Long Parliament the Puritans 

 triumphed, and the Westminster Assembly incor- 

 porated the Puritan view. It is certainly after 

 the date of Bownde that the kirk-session records of 

 Scotland are filled with proceedings against Sab- 

 bath-breakers for all manner of work, indoor and 

 outdoor (shaving being especially noted ), walking 

 or ' vaging ' in the streets and fields, being absent 

 from public worship, &c. , as well as for drinking 



