"Sunday
was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week,
because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, ...the
seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and ...He requires
His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal
and perpetual obligation...The Creator 'blessed the seventh day'-declared
it to be a day above all days, a day- on which His favour should
assuredly rest. ...So long, then, as man exists, and the world around
him endures,' does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot
be set aside so long as its foundations last.... It is not the Jewish
Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment.
In the whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any
more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth."
Eadie's Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561.
"Thus
we learn from Socrates (H.E., vi.c.8) that in his time public worship
was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days.... The
view that the Christian's Lord's day or Sunday is but the Christian
Sabbath deliberately transferred from the seventh to the first day
of the week does not indeed find categorical expression till a
much later period.... The earliest recognition of the observance
of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D.
321, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns,
and workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die
Solis), with an exception in favour of those engaged in agricultural
labour...The Council of Laodicea (363) ... forbids Christians from
judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day, preferring the Lord's
day, and so far as possible resting as Christians."-Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654.
"Unquestionably
the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical
observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the sabbatical
edict of Constantine, A.D. 32I." Chambers' Encyclopodia,
Article "Sunday."
"It
must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning
the first day."-M'CLINTOCK AND STRONG, Cyclopedia of Biblical,
Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. IX, page 196.
"Sunday
(Dies Solis, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because
dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by
the early Christians as a day of worship. The 'sun' of Latin adoration
they interpreted as the 'Sun of Righteousness.' . . . No regulations
for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed,
is its observance even enjoined."-SCHAFF HERZOG, Encyclopedia
of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol. IV, Art. "Sunday."