History of the Sabbath and first day of the week

Time and eternity—The Creator and his work—Events of the first day of time—Of the second—Of the third—Of the fourth—Of the fifth—Of the sixth.

Event on the seventh day—Why the Creator rested—Acts by which the Sabbath was made—Time and order of their occurrence—Meaning of the word _sanctified_—The fourth commandment ref...

Object of this chapter—Total apostasy of the human family in the antediluvian age—Destruction of mankind—The family of Noah spared—Second apostasy of mankind in the patriarchal...

The Holy One upon Mount Sinai—Three great gifts bestowed upon the Hebrews—The Sabbath proclaimed by the voice of God—Position assigned it in the moral law—Origin of the Sabbath—...

Classification of the precepts given through Moses—The Sabbath renewed—Solemn ratification of the covenant between God and Israel—Moses called up to receive the law which God ha...

General history of the Sabbath in the wilderness—Its violation one cause of excluding that generation from the promised land—Its violation by their children in the wilderness on...

Enumeration of the Hebrew festivals—The passover—The pentecost—The feast of tabernacles—The new moons—The first and second annual sabbaths—The third—The fourth—The fifth—The six...

Silence of six successive books of the Bible relative to the Sabbath—This silence compared to that of the book of Genesis—The siege of Jericho—The standing still of the sun—Davi...

Great change in the Jewish people respecting idolatry and Sabbath-breaking after their return from Babylon—Decree of Antiochus Epiphanes against the Sabbath—Massacre of a thousa...

Mission of the Saviour—His qualifications as a judge of Sabbatic observance—State of the institution at his advent—The Saviour at Nazareth—At Capernaum—His discourse in the corn...

The knowledge of God preserved in the family of Abraham—The call of the Gentiles—The new covenant puts the law of God into the heart of each Christian—The new covenant has a tem...

General purity of the apostolic churches—Early decline of their piety—False teachers arose in the church immediately after the apostles—The great Romish apostasy began before th...

General statement respecting the Ante-Nicene fathers—The change of the Sabbath never mentioned by one of these fathers—Examination of the historical argument for Sunday as the L...

Origin of Sunday observance the subject of present inquiry—Contradictory statements of Mosheim and Neander—The question between them stated, and the true data for deciding that...

Were the martyrs in Pliny’s time and afterward tested by the question whether they had kept Sunday or not?—Argument in the affirmative quoted from Edwards—Its origin—No facts to...

Sunday a heathen festival from remote antiquity—Origin of the name—Reasons which induced the leaders of the church to adopt this festival—It was the day generally observed by th...

The history of first-day observance compared with that of the popes—First-day observance defined in the very words of each of the early fathers who mention it—The reasons which...

The first reasons for neglecting the Sabbath are now mostly obsolete—A portion of the early fathers taught the perpetuity of the decalogue, and made it the standard of moral cha...

Origin of the Sabbath and of the festival of the sun contrasted—Entrance of that festival into the church—The Moderns with the Ancients—The Sabbath observed by the early Christi...

The pope becomes the head of all the churches—The people of God retire into the wilderness—Sunday to be traced through the Dark Ages in the history of the Catholic church—State...

The Dark Ages defined—Difficulty of tracing the people of God during this period—The Sabbath effectually suppressed in the Catholic church at the close of the fifth century—Sabb...

The Reformation arose in the Catholic church—The Sabbath had been crushed out of that church, and innumerable festivals established in its stead—Sunday as observed by Luther, Me...

The case of Carlstadt worthy of notice—His difficulty with Luther respecting the Epistle of James—His boldness in standing with Luther against the pope—What Carlstadt did during...

John Frith, an English reformer of considerable note and a martyr, was converted by the labors of Tyndale about 1525, and assisted him in the translation of the Bible. He was bu...

The light of the Reformation destroyed many of the best Sunday arguments of the preceding Dark Ages—The controversy between the Presbyterians and Episcopalians of England brings...

English Sabbatarians in the sixteenth century—Their doctrines—John Trask for these doctrines pilloried, whipt, and imprisoned—He recants—Character of Mrs. Trask—Her crime—Her in...

The first Sabbath-keeping church in America—Names of its members—Origin of the second—Organization of the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference—Statistics of the Denomination a...

[464] Maclaine’s Mosheim, cent. 1, part ii. chap. iv. sec. 4. I have given Maclaine’s translation, not because it is an accurate version of Mosheim, but because it is so much us...

[499] For a more full statement of the case of Ignatius, see the “Testimony of the Fathers,” pp. 26-30. The quotation from Ignatius examined in this chapter is there shown, acco...

[1025] “Nunc audimus apud Bohemos exoriri novum Judæorum genus, Sabbatarios appellant, qui tanta superstitione servant Sabbatum, ut si quid eo die inciderit in oculum, nolint ex...

“Non posse praeterea, rejectis ejusmodi traditionibus, plura dogmata, quæ nobiscum retinuerunt protestantes cum ab Ecclesia catholica recesserunt, ullo modo adstruis, res est ci...