*The list is truly endless for evidence
Anglican- Isaac Williams- Plain Sermons on the Catechism "And where are we told in the Scriptures 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."
Protestant- Canon Eyton,- The Ten Commandments "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."
Episcopal - 'The Bible commandment says on the seventh day thou shalt rest. That is Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday." Philip Carrington, Toronto Daily Star, October 26, 1949.
Baptist - Harold Lindsell, former editor of Christianity , said, 'There is nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day." Christianity Today, November 5, 1976.
Baptist Dr. Edward T. Hiscox,-a paper read before a New York ministers' conference, Nov. 13, 1893, reported in New York Examiner, Nov. 16, 1893. "There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week .... Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament absolutely not. ......."To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question . . . never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated........ "Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history . . . . But what a pity it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!"
William Owen Carver- The Lord's Day in Our Day "There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance."
Dr. R. W. Dale(Congregationalist)- The Ten Commandments " . . . it is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath - - . . the Sabbath was founded on a specific Divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation to observe Sunday .... There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday."
Congregationalist Timothy Dwight- Theology: Explained and Defended (1823)- " . . . the Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive Church called the Sabbath."
First Day Observance, pp. 17, 19."The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change."
"The Sunday Problem"- United Lutheran Church (1923), "We have seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish sabbath faded from the mind of the Christian Church, and how completely the newer thought underlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church. We have seen that the Christians of the first three centuries never confused one with the other, but for a time celebrated both."
Lutheran- Dr. Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and Church (1843)"The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic Church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday."
John Theodore Mueller (a Lutheran) - Sabbath or Sunday- "But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel .... These churches err in their teaching, for Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect."
"Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day." Methodist- Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942
Methodist, Clovis G. Chappell- Ten Rules For Living- 'The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first."
John Wesley- The Works of the Rev. John Wesley "But, the moral law contained in the ten commandments, and enforced by the prophets, he [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken .... Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other." (Wesley was a Methodist)
"The Sabbath instituted in the beginning and confirmed again and again by Moses and the Prophets, has never been abrogated. A part of the moral law, not a part or tittle of its sanctity has been taken away."- New York Herald 1874, on the Methodist Episcopal Bishops Pastoral 1874.
Another Methodist, Dwight L. Moody- Weighed and Wanting, The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath already existed when God Wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?"
"It seems to have been customary in the Celtic churches of early times, in Ireland as well as Scotland, to keep Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, as a day of rest from labour. They obeted the fourth commandment literally upon the seventh day of the week." - Professor James C. Moffat, DD., Professor of Church History at Princeton.; from The Church in Scotland, pp140.
Dr. Hefele, Concilliengesch 3, 512, sec. 362 about the Council of Liftinae, Belgium AD 745 (attended by Boniface)- "The third allocution of this council warns against the observance of the Sabbath, referring to the decree of the council of Laodicea"
Dr. Hefele, Concilliengesch 4, 346-352, sec 478 quoting Pope Nicholas I answer to a question from Bogaris the prince of Bulgaria- "One is to cease from work on Sunday, but not also on the Sabbath" /On the subject of the same letter- "The head of the Greek Church , offended at the interference of the papacy, declared the Pope ex-communicated"- Truth Triumphant pp 232
"They worked on Sunday, but kept Saturday in a sabbatical manner...These things Margaret abolished" - A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, speaking of Queen Margaret's (a Catholic) decree.
"During the first crusade, Pope Urban II decreed at the council of Clermont (AD 1095) that the Sabbath be set aside in hounour of the Virgin Mary."- History of the Sabbath p 672
"There is much evidence that the Sabbath prevailed in Wales universally until AD 1115, when the first Roman bishop was seated at St. David's. The old Welsh Sabbath-keeping churches did not even then altogether bow the knee to Rome, but fled to their hiding places." - Lewis, Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol 1, p 29
Josephus , first century Historian, says : "There is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come!" M'Clathie, Notes and Queries on China and Japan. (edited by Dennys),Vol.4, Nos. 7,8, p.100.
"It was the practice generally of the Easterne Churches; and some churches of the west..For in the church of Millaine [Milan];.. it seemes the Saturday was held in farre esteeme ..Not that the Easterne churches, or any of the rest which observed that day, were inclined to Iudaisme [Judaism]; but that they came together on the Sabbath day, to worship Iesus [Jesus] Christ the Lord of the Sabbath." , Dr. Heylyn's- History of the Sabbath Part 2, pp. 73,74, London: 1636
"The primitive Christians did keep the Sabbath of the Jews;..therefore the Christians for a long time together, did keep their conventions on the Sabbath, in which some portion of the Law were read: and this continued till the time of the Laodicean council." The Whole Works of Jeremey Taylor, Vol. IX, p416 (R. Heber's Edition, Vol.XII, p.416)
"The gentile Christians observed also the Sabbath." Gieseler's Church History, Vol.1, ch.2, par.30, p.93.
"The first matter concerned a keeping holy of Saturday. It had come to the earth of the archbishop that people in different places of the kingdom had ventured the keeping holy of Saturday. It is strictly forbidden- it is stated- in the Church-Law, for any one to keep or adopt holy-days. outside of those which the pope,archbishop, or bishops appoint." - speaking of the Church Council held at Bergen, Norway in the year 1435, The History of the Norwegian Church under Catholicism, R. Keyser, Vol II, p 488. Oslo: 1858.
"It will surely be far safer to observe the seventh day, according to express commandment of God, than on the authority of mere human conjecture to adopt the first."- Jihn Milton, Sab. Lit. pp 46-54.
"Thus we see Dan. 7 , 25, fulfilled, the little horn changing 'times and laws'. Therefore it appears to me that all who keep the first day for the Sabbath are Pope's Sunday-keepers and God's Sabbath-breakers."- American Elder T.M. Preble, Feb 13 1845.
Just getting started!
