"Not
any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed
the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles."-SIR
WILLIAM DOMVILLE, "Examination of the Six Texts,"
pages 6, 7. (Supplement).
"There
is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from
work on Sunday. . . . Into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters…,
The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same
footing as the observance of Sunday." -CANON EYTON, 'The
Ten Commandments," pages 52, 63, 65.
"Is
there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly
rest from Saturday to Sunday? None."-"Manual of Christian
Doctrine," page 127.
"The
Lord's day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath....The Lord's
day was merely an ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced
by virtue of the fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred
years together they kept that day which was in that commandment...The
primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord's day,
even in times of persecution, when they are the strictest observers
of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was
none."-BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR, "Ductor Dubitantium,"
Part I, Book II, Chap. 2, Rule 6. Sec. 51, 59.
"Sunday
being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet and
called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially,
and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it),
the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name
of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that
means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater
prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel."-T.
M. MORER, "Dialogues on the Lord's Day," pages
22, 23.
"Where
are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all?
We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded
to keep the first day.... The reason why we keep the first day of
the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that
we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because
the church has enjoined it."-ISAAC WILLIAMS, B.D., "Plain
Sermons on the Catechism," Vol. I, pages 334-336.
"Dear
Madam:
"In
reply to your letter of May 7th, I am asked by the Archbishop of
Canterbury to say that from the first century onward the Christian
church has observed the first day of the week as the weekly commemoration
of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the early
Christians ... deliberately substituted the first
day of the week for the seventh on the ground that it was on
the first day that our Lord rose from the dead. [Italics ours.]
"Yours
faithfully,
"ALAN
C. DON."
"The
Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made Sunday into the
Sabbath day. Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even
clergymen do."
"But,
unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four
hours from six o'clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore,
before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he
ought to observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm.
He at once replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed.
But changed by whom? There is no injunction in the whole of the
New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath into Sunday.'
- D. MORSEBOYCOTT, Daily Herald, London, Feb.
26, 1931.
"The
Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious
transference of the one day to the other."- F.W. FARRAR, D.D.,
"The Voice From Sinai," page 167.
"Take
which you will, either of the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall
find no Lord's day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath
set on foot by them upon the first day of the week."-PETER
HEYLYN, "History of the Sabbath," page 410.
"Merely
to denounce the tendency to secularise Sunday is as futile as it
is easy. What we want is to find some principle, to which as Christians
we can appeal, and on which we can base both our conduct and our
advice. We turn to the New Testament, and we look in vain for any
authoritative rule. There is no recorded word of Christ, there is
no word of any of the apostles, which tells how we should keep Sunday,
or indeed that we should keep it at all. It is disappointing, for
it would make our task much easier if we could point to a definite
rule, which left us no option but simple obedience or disobedience.
. . . There is no rule for Sunday observance, either in Scripture
or history."-DR. STEPHEN, Bishop of Newcastle, N.S.W., in an
address reported in the Newcastle Morning Herald, May
14, 1924.