"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.
SABBATH CHANGED TO SUNDAY?
All scholars and religions agree that the Sabbath of the Old and New Testaments was the seventh-day of the week and not the first day. Here are some more quotes, many directly from Roman Catholic sources, which show what God's word says and how the impudent post-apostolic RC church changed the law of God in their own eyes.
"Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church." Ancient Christianity Exemplified, Lyman Coleman, Ch.26, sec. 2, p.527.
"Our Saturday. The custom to call the Lord's day Sabbath did not commence until a thousand years later." Adamnan's Life of Columba p.230, Dublin, 1857
"According to the Assyrian-Babilonian conception, the particular stress lay necessarily on the number seven...The whole week pointed prominently towards the seventh day, the feast day, the rest day, in this day it collected, in this day it also consumated. 'Sabbath' is dervied from both 'rest' and 'seven'. With the Egyptians it was the reverse...for them on the contrary the sun-god was the beginning and origin of all things. The day of the sun, Sunday, became necessarily for them the feast day...The holiday was transferred from the last to the first day of the week."Daglige Liv i Norden, Vol.XIII, pp.54,55.
"The seven planetary names of the days were at the close of the second century A.D., prevailing everywhere in the Roman Empire...This astrology originated in Egypt, where Alexandria now so loudly proclaimed it to all... 'The day of the sun' was the Lord's day, the chiefest and first of the week. The evil and fatal Saturn's day was the last of the week on which none could celebrate a feast.. Daglige Liv i Norden, Vol.XIII, pp.91,92
"This Sunday law constituted no real favoratism to Christianity..... It is evident from all his statuatory provisions that the Emperor during the time 313-323 with full consciousness has sought the realisation of his religeous aim: the amalgamation of heathenism and Christianity." -Dr. A.Chr. Bang - Kirken og Romerstaten (The Church and the Roman State) p.256. Christiania, 1879
T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb. 18, 1884. "I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says: 'No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week.' And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic Church."
"The seventh-day Sabbath was...solmenised by Christ, and primitive Christians, till the Laodicean Council did in a manner quite abolish the observations of it." - Dissertation on the Lord's Day pp. 33, 34, 44
"Because the Third Commandment (which is really the fourth commandment but Catholicism does away with the second commandment so they do not have to acknowledge their idolatry which to them makes the Sabbath the third~kh) depends upon the remembrance of God's saving works and because Christians saw the definitive time inaugurated by Christ as a new beginning, they made the first day after the Sabbath a festive day, for that was the day on which the Lord rose from the dead."- Pope John Paul II-DIES DOMINI-Dies Hominis v.18, May 31, 1998
Augsburg Confession of Faith art. 28; written by Melanchthon, approved by Martin Luther, 1530; as published in The Book of Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church "They [Roman Catholics] refer to the Sabbath Day, as having been changed into the Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it seems. Neither is there any example whereof they make more than concerning the changing of the Sabbath Day. Great, say they, is the power of the Church, since it has dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments!"
"The distinction of Sunday from the Jewish Sabbath grew ever stronger in the mind of the Church, even though there have been times in history when, because the obligation of Sunday rest was so emphasized, the Lord's Day tended to become more like the Sabbath. Moreover, there have always been groups within Christianity which observe both the Sabbath and Sunday as "two brother days"."-(v.23)Pope John Paul II-DIES DOMINI-Dies Hominis, May 31, 1998
"The ancient Christians were very careful in the observation of Saturday, or the seventh-day...It is plain that the Oriental churches, and the greatest part of the world, observed the Sabbath as a festival...Anthanasius likewise tells us that they held religious assemblies on the Sabbath, not because they were infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, Epiphanius says the same." - Antiquities of the Christian Church, Vol II, Book XX
"'And on the seventh day God rested from the work he had done. ... He blessed the seventh day and hallowed it'. The 'shabbat', the biblical sabbath is tied to this mystery of God's rest. If we Christians celebrate the Lord's day on Sunday, it is because on that day the Resurrection of Christ occurred." Pope John Paul II-July 12 1998
Stephen Keenan- A Doctrinal Catechism Third Edition "Question: Have you any other way of proving that the Church has power to institute festivals of precept? "Answer: Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her-she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority."
Daniel Ferres- ed., Manual of Christian Doctrine (1916) "Question: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holy days? "Answer. By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of, and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same Church.'
The Catholic Press said, "Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claims to observation can be defended only on Catholic principles . . . From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of week public worship from the last day of the week to the first."- CATHOLIC PRESS, (Sydney, Australia), Aug. 25, 1900.
James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1877-1921), in a signed letter."Is Saturday the seventh day according to the Bible and the Ten Commandments? I answer yes. Is Sunday the first day of the week and did the Church change the seventh day - Saturday- for Sunday, the first day? I answer yes. Did Christ change the day'? I answer no!" Faithfully yours, J. Card. Gibbons"
"The Catholic Church, . . . by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday."- The
Catholic Mirror, official publication of James Cardinal Gibbons, Sept. 23, 1893.
Catholic Virginian Oct. 3, 1947- "To Tell You the Truth." "For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the[Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible."
"Wise pastoral intuition suggested to the Church the christianization of the notion of Sunday as "the day of the sun", which was the Roman name for the day and which is retained in some modern languages.(29) This was in order to draw the faithful away from the seduction of cults which worshipped the sun, and to direct the celebration of the day to Christ, humanity's true "sun "-Pope John Paul II-DIES DOMINI-Dies Hominis, May 31, 1998
"They despise our sun-god, Did not Zoroaster, the sainted founder of our divine beliefs, institute Sunday one thousand years ago in honour of the sun and supplant the Sabbath of the Old Testament. Yet these Christians have divine services on Saturday.- O'Leary, The Syriac Church and Fathers, pp 83,84
Episcopalian- Bishop Seymour, -Why We Keep Sunday. "We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy Catholic Church."
Alexander Campbell,- The Christian Baptist, Feb. 2, 1824, "'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? when? and by whom? No man can tell. No; it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned must be changed before the observance, or respect to the reason, can be changed! It is all old wives' fables to talk of the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex officio - I think his name is Doctor Antichrist.'
"Examining the New Testament from cover to cover, critically, we find the sabbath referred to sixty-one times. We find too, that the Saviour invariably selected the Sabbath (Saturday) to teach in the synagogues and work miracles. The four Gospels refer to the Sabbath fifty-one times. In one instance , the Redeemer refers to Himself as 'Lord of the Sabbath' as mentioned by Matthew and Luke, but, during the whole record of His life, while invaribly keeping and utilizing the day, (Saturday), He never once hinted at a desire to change it. "- The Catholic Mirror Nov. 25 1893. J. Cardinal Gibbons.
"...with the Bible alone as the teacher and guide in faith and morals. This teacher most emphatically forbids any changes in the day for paramount reasons. The command calls for a 'perpetual covenant'. The day commanded to be kept by the teacher (The Bible) has never once been kept(by the Protestant or Catholic churches), thereby developing an apostasy from an asumedly fixed principle, as self-contradictory, self-stultisfying, and consequently as suicidal as it is within the power of language to express." - The Catholic Mirror Nov. 25, 1893, Cardinal Gibbons
"The Sabbath is a part of the decalogue - the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution . . . . Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand . . . . The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath." Presbyterian T. C. Blake, D.D., -Theology Condensed.

"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.


"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.


"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


"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.

"Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the sabbatical edict of Constantine in A.D. 321" [Wm Dornville: Examination of Six Texts]

"They know little who do not know that the ancient Sabbath remained and was observed by the Eastern churches three hundred years after our Savior's passion" [Prof. Brerewood: Treatise on the Sabbath]

"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" [Canon Eyton: The Ten Commandments]

"Take which you will, either 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 on the first day of the week" [P. Heylyn: History of the Sabbath]

"... the transference to [Sunday] of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the 4th commandment has no basis whatever either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity" [Wm Smith: Dictionary of Christian Antiquity]

"It is quite clear that however devotedly we may spend Sunday we am to keeping the Sabbath .. the Sabbath was founded on a specific divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday" [R W Dale: The Ten Commandments]

"In the interval between the days of apostles and the conversion of Constantine [4th. cent.] the Christian commonwealth changed its aspect... Rites and ceremonies of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard crept into use then claimed the rank of divine institutions." [Dr Killen: The Ancient Church]

"The seventh-day Sabbath was solemnized [i.e. observed] by Christ, the Apostles and the primitive Christians - until the Council of Laodicea did, in a manner, quite abolish the observance of it. The Council (A.D. 364) first settled the observance of the Lord's Day" [Wm Prynne: Dissertations on the Lord's Day. Prynne was a 17th century Puritan]

"Since the institution of the Sabbath at the close of creation...there has been an unbroken line of God-loving men who have kept the seventh day of the week.... In the Western Church the seventh day continued to be observed quite generally till the fifth century." [Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge]

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