Protestant Confessions

"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 reasons 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, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, vol. 1, p. 334, 336.

"There was never any formal or authoritative change from the...seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance." William Owen Carver, The Lord's Day in Our Day, p. 49.

"There is nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day." Harold Lindsell, editor, Christianity Today, November 5, 1976.

"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, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.

"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!" Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, author of the "Baptist Manual", in a paper read before a New York ministers' conference, November 13, 1893, and reported in New York Examiner, November 16, 1893.

"The first four commandments set forth man's obligations directly toward God....The fourth commandment sets forth God's claim on man's time and thought....Not one of the ten words [commandments] is of merely racial significance....The Sabbath was established originally [long before Moses] in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as an institution for all mankind, in commemoration of God's rest after six days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam." Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, August 15, 1937.

"The sacred name of the Seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument. (Exodus 20:10 quoted)....On this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages....Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week--that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh." Joseph Judson Taylor, The Sabbath Question, p. 14-17, 41.

"I do not believe...that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plan reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath is changed, or that the Lord's Day came in the room of it....There is no divine testimony that the Sabbath was changed..." Alexander Campbell, in The Washington Reporter, October 8, 1921.

"...the seventh day is the only sabbath day commanded, and God never repealed that command. If you would keep the Sabbath, keep it; but Sunday is not the Sabbath....It is the Seventh day not the first day that the command refers to." G. Alridge, editor, The Bible Standard, April, 1916.

"Finally, we have the testimony of Christ on this subject. In Mark 2:27, he says: 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.' From this passage it is evident that the Sabbath was made not merely for the Israelites, as Paley and Hengstenberg would have us believe, but for...that is, for the race. Hence we conclude that the Sabbath was sanctified from the beginning, and that it was given to Adam, even in Eden, as one of those primeval institutions that God ordained for the happiness of all men." Robert Milligan, Scheme of Redemption, (St. Louis, The Fethany Press, 1962), p. 165.

"The Lord's day (or Sunday to him) did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was wholly abrogated, and the Lord's day was merely an ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because they (early Christians) for almost three hundred years together kept that day which was in that commandment." Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium; cited in Source Book For Bible Students, p. 577.

"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 on exactly the same footing as the observance of Sunday." Canon Eyton, The Ten Commandments, p. 52, 63, 65.

"Many people think that Sunday is the Sabbath. But neither in the New Testament nor in the early church is there anything to suggest that we have any right to transfer the observance of the seventh day of the week to the first. The Sabbath was and is Saturday, and not Sunday, and if it were binding on us then we should observe it on that day, and on no other." Pastor Lionel Beere, in Church and People, September 1, 1947.

"...the Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive Church called the Sabbath." Timothy Dwight, Theology: Explained and Defended (1823), Sermon 107, vol. 3, p. 258.

"Much has been made of the attitude of Christ in speech and deed toward the Sabbath. Some have imagined that by words He uttered and by deeds He did He relaxed the binding nature of the old command. This view, however, is to absolutely misunderstand the doing and the teaching of Jesus." G. Campbell Morgan, The Ten Commandments, p. 50.

"...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." Dr. R.W. Dale, The Ten Commandments (New York: Eaton & Mains), p. 127-129 (Some editions, p. 106-107).

"The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day of the week for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament." Dr. Layman Abbot, in Christian Union, June 26, 1890 (January 19, 1882).

"There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day 'the Lord's Day.'" Dr. D.H. Lucas, in Christian Oracle, January 23, 1890.

"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." First Day Observance, p. 17, 19.

"'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.'" Alexander Campbell, in The Christian Baptist, February 2, 1824, vol. 1, #7, p. 164.

"Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week...and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." Charles Buck, A Theological Dictionary, p. 403.

"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, apostolic church of Christ." Bishop Symour, Why We Keep Sunday, Article 12.

"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. No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined." A Religious Encyclopedia, vol. 3, (New York, Funk and Wagnalls, 1883) p. 2259, Article "Sunday".

"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, Archbishop of Quebec, Canada, in Toronto Daily Star, October 26, 1949.

"The observance of the first day instead of the seventh day rests in the testimony of the Catholic church and the church alone." Hobart Church News, July 2, 1894.

"The day is now changed from the seventh to the first day....but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the church." Explanation of Catechism.

"They [Roman Catholics] refer to the Sabbath Day, as having been changed into the Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue...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!" Philip Melanchthon, Augsburg Confession of Faith, article 28, approved by Martin Luther in 1530, as published in The Book of Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Henry Jacobs, editor (1911), p. 63.

"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." Dr Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and Church (1843), p. 186.

"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. In other words, they insist that Sunday is the divinely appointed New Testament Sabbath, and so they endeavor to enforce the Sabbatical observance of Sunday...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." John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday?, p. 15-16.

"For when there could not be produced one solitary place in the Holy Scriptures which testified that either the Lord Himself or the apostles had ordered such a transfer of the Sabbath to Sunday, then it was not easy to answer the question: Who has transferred the Sabbath, and who has had the right to do it?" George Sverdrup, A New Day.

"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..." The Sunday Problem, a study book of the Church (1923), p. 36.

"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." Clovis G. Chappell, Ten Rules For Living, p. 61.

"It is true there is no positive command for infant baptism...Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on supposition." Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, p. 180-81.

"There is no intimation here that the Sabbath was done away, or that its moral use superseded, by the introduction of Christianity. I have shown elsewhere that, 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,' is a command of perpetual obligation." Adam Clarke, The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, vol. 2, p. 524.

"Take the matter of Sunday....there is no [New Testament] passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day." Harris Franklin Rall, in Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, p. 26.

"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." John Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., John Emory, editor (New York: Eaton & Mains), Sermon 25, vol. 1, p. 221.

"When Christ was on earth He did nothing to set it [the Sabbath] aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.' It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was - in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age....

"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?" Dwight L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting (Fleming H. Revell Co.: New York), p. 46-48.

"'Why do we worship on Sunday? Doesn't the Bible teach us that Saturday should be the Lord's Day?'...Apparently we will have to seek the answer from some other source than the New Testament." David A. Womack, "Is Sunday the Lord's Day?" in The Pentecostal Evangel, August 9, 1959, #2361, p. 3.

"A further argument for the perpetuity of the Sabbath we have in Matthew 24:20, Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter neither on the Sabbath day. But the final destruction of Jerusalem was after the Christian dispensation was fully set up. Yet it is plainly implied in these words of the Lord that even then Christians were bound to strict observation of the Sabbath." Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4, p. 621.

"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." T.C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, p. 474-475.

"For the permanency of the Sabbath, we might argue for its place in the decalogue, where it stands enshrined among the moralities of a rectitude that is immutable and everlasting." Thomas Chalmers, D. D., Sermons, vol. 1, p. 51.