Protestantism Speaks about the Bible Sabbath and Sunday

The Bible Sabbath is the seventh day of the week and Sunday is the first day. Protestant ministers, writers, and leaders from America and other countries--here unite to tell us the truth about both days:

Baptist: "There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, 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 the 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. . .

"I wish to say that this Sabbath question, in this aspect of it, is the gravest and most perplexing question connected with Christian institutions which at present claims attention from Christian people; and the only reason that it is not a more disturbing element in Christian thought and in religious discussion is because the Christian world has settled down content on the conviction that somehow a transference has taken place at the beginning of Christian history.

"To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' discussion with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from it's false [Jewish traditional] glosses, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated. Nor, so far as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question. Nor yet did the inspired apostles, in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counseling and instructing those founded, discuss or approach the subject.

"Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of Paganism, and christened with the name of the sun-god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism." --Dr. E. T. Hiscox, author at the Baptist Manual. From a photostatic copy of a notarized statement by Dr. Hiscox.

Presbyterian: "In the interval between the days of the apostles and the conversion of Constantine, the Christian commonwealth changed its aspect. The Bishop of Rome--a personage unknown to the writers of the New Testament--meanwhile rose into prominence, and at length took precedence of all other churchmen. Rites and ceremonies of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institution." --William D. Killen, Preface, The Ancient Church, 1883, xv-xvi [Dr. Killen was professor of ecclesiastical history in the [Protestant] Irish Assembly's College in Belfast, Ireland].

American Congregationalists: "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament." --Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890.

Disciples of Christ: "Either the [Ten Commandment] Law remains in all its force, to the utmost extent of its literal requirements, or it is passed away with the Jewish ceremonies. If it yet exists, let us observe it according to law. And if it does not exist, let us abandon a mock observance of another day for it." --Alexander Campbell, "Address to the Readers of the Christian Baptists," part 1, Feb. 2, 1824, pp. 44-45 [Campbell (1788-1866) was the founder of the Disciples of Christ Church].

British Congregationalists: "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 observance of Sunday . . . There is not a single line 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, Hodder and Stoughton, page 106-107.

Protestant Episcopal: "Ques. --Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? Ans.--None." --Manual of Christian Doctrine, p. 127.

Lutheran: "The taking over of Sunday by the early Christians is, to my mind, an exceedingly important symptom that the early church was directly influenced by a spirit which does not originate in the gospel, nor in the Old Testament, but in a religious system foreign to it." --Dr. H. Gunkel, Zum Religionsgesch. Verstaendnis des NT., p.76.

English Independent: "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, art. "Sabbath," p. 403 [Buck (1771-1815) was a British Independent minister and author].

Methodist Episcopal: "The Sabbath instituted in the beginning, and confirm ed again and again by Moses and the prophets, has never been abrogated. A part of the moral law, not a jot or tittle of its sanctity has been taken away." -- Bishop's Pastoral, 1874 edition.

Southern Baptist: "Before the giving of the law from Sinai the obligation of the Sabbath was understood. When some of the people went out [four chapters before Sinai] to get manna, God said unto Moses: 'How long refuse ye to keep My Commandments and My Laws? The Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore He hath given you on the sixth day bread enough for two days' [Ex. 16]. Indeed, it may be questioned if the Law given through Moses on tables of stone disclosed any new truth . . . The fourth commandment does not institute a Sabbath, nor does it sanctify a day; it simply writes the Sabbath among the immutable things of God." --Joseph Judson Taylor, The Sabbatic Question, 1914, pp. 22, 24 [Dr. Taylor (1885-1930) was vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention].

Church of England: "The Lord's day did not succeed in the place of the [Bible] Sabbath, but the . . . Lord's day was merely of ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because they for almost three hundred years together kept that day which was in that commandment." --Jeremy Taylor, The Rule of Conscience, 1851, pp. 456-548 [Dr. Taylor (1613-1667) was chaplain to the King of England, and later appointed a bishop and became president of a college in Wales].

Lutheran Free Church: "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, En ny Dag (A New Day), in Sondagen og dens Halligholdelse (Sunday and its Observance), 1879 [Sverdrup (1848-1907) was the Norwegian-born founder of the Lutheran Free Church, and principal of the Augsburg Seminary in Minnesota].

Christian Church (Christian Connection): "The Roman Church . . . reversed the Fourth Commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God's word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." --Nicholas Summerbell, History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., 1873, p. 415 [Summerbell (1816-1889) was the president of Union Christian College in Indiana].

American Sunday School Union: "Up to the time of Christ's death no change had been made in the day . . . So far as the records show, the apostles did not give any explicit command enjoining the abandonment of the seventh-day Sabbath, and its observance on the first day of the week." --American Sunday School Union, prize Essay, "The Lord's Day," page 185-186.

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

Protestant Episcopal: "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." --The Protestant Episcopal "Explanation of Catechism."

Baptist: "The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath . . . There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course any Scriptural obligation." --The Watchman.

Episcopal: "The Sabbath was religiously observed in the Eastern church three hundred years and more after our Saviour's Passion." --Prof. E. Brerewood of Gresham College, London in a sermon.

Irish Protestant Assembly: "The Great Teacher never intimated that the Sabbath was a ceremonial ordinance to cease with the Mosaic ritual. It was instituted when our first parents were in Paradise; and the precept enjoining its remembrance, being a portion of the Decalogue, is of perpetual obligation. Hence, instead of regarding it as a merely Jewish institution, Christ declares that it was made for MAN.' or, in other words, that it was designed for the benefit of the whole human family. Instead of anticipating its extinction along with the ceremonial law, He speaks of its existence after the downfall of Jerusalem [in A.D. 70, 39 years after the crucifixion]. When He announces the calamities connected with the ruin of the holy city, He instructs His followers to pray that the urgency of the catastrophe may not deprive them of the comfort of the Sabbath rest. "Pray ye,' said He, "that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath-day.' Matt. 24.201" --William Dool Killen, The Ancient Church, pp. 188-189 [Killen (1806-1902) was a European church historian and president of a Protestant college].

Baptist: "There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath was not Sunday. It will, however, be readily said, 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." -- ER. Hiscox, report of his sermon at the Baptist Ministers' Convention, in New York Examiner, November 16, 1893 [Dr. Hiscox was a well-known Baptist writer and author of their Baptist Manual].

Presbyterian: "There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters." --Canon Eyton, in The Ten Commandments [Dr. Eyton was the Canon at Westminster in London].

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." --Phillip Carrington, quoted in Toronto Daily Star, October 26, 1949 [Carrington (1892- ), Anglican archbishop of Quebec, spoke the above in a message on this subject delivered to a packed assembly of clergymen. It was widely reported at the time in the news media].

Anglican: "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 [commanded] it." --Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, Vol. 1, pp. 334. 336.

Disciples of Christ: "If it [the Ten Commandments] yet exist, let us observe it . . . And if it does not exist, let us abandon a mock observance of another day for it. 'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? when? and by whom?--No, it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned [in Genesis 2:1-3] 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, The Christian Baptist, February 2, 1824, vol. 1, no. 7 [Campbell (1788-1866) was an Irish Protestant who founded in America the denomination known as the Disciples of Christ].

Lutheran: "We have seen how gradually the impression of the Sabbath faded, 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 United Lutheran Church, 1923, p. 36.

Methodist: "It is true that 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 a supposition." --Amos Binney, Theological compendium, 1902 edition, pp. 180-181, 171 [Binney (1802-1878), Methodist minister and presiding elder, whose Compendium was published for forty years in many languages, also wrote a Methodist New Testament Commentary].

Episcopalian: "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 ." --Episcopalian Bishop Symour, Why We Keep Sunday.

Southern Baptist: "In the Scriptures these two days [the seventh day and the first day] are never confounded, nor are they in any way exchanged the one for the other. On the contrary they are set in contrast, and are kept distinct . . . In current usage these two days have two secular names. The seventh is called Saturday, and the first is called Sunday. In no case are these names used interchangeably. The seventh day is never called Sunday, nor is the first called Saturday . . .

The sacred name of the seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument. The truth is stated in concise terms: "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.' This utterance is repeated in Exodus 16:26, 23:12, 31:15, 35:2, Leviticus 23:3, and Deuteronomy 5:14. On this point the teaching of the word has been admitted in all ages. Except to certain special [yearly] sabbaths appointed in Levitical law [Lev. 23], . . . the Bible in all its utterances never, no, not once, applies the name Sabbath to any other day . . .

"Not once did the [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 Sabbatic Question, 1914, pp. 14, 15, 16-17, 41 [Dr. Taylor (1885-1930) was vice-president of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention].

Lutheran: "They [the Catholics] allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord's day, as it seemeth, to the Decalogue [the Ten Commandments]; and they have no example more in their mouths than the change of the Sabbath. They will needs have the Church's power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with a precept of the Decalogue." --The Augsburg Confession, 1530 A.D. (Lutheran), part 2, art. 7, in Philip Schaft. the Creeds of Christendom, fourth edition, vol. 3, p. 64 [this important statement was made by the Lutherans and written by Melancthon, only thirteen years after Luther nailed his theses to the door and began the Reformation].

Anglican: "The Christian Church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious transference of the day to the other."--Frederic William Farrar, The Voice from Sinai, p. 167 [Dr. Farrar (1831-1903), an Anglican clergyman, was the dean of Canterbury in England].

Congregational: "It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping Sabbath, The Sabbath was founded on a specific, Divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday. There is not a single line in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday."--Dr. R.W. Dale, in The Ten Commandments, pp. 106-107.

Church of England: "The seventh day of the week has been deposed from its title to obligatory religious observance, and its prerogative has been carried over to the first under no direct precept of Scripture." --William E. Gladstone, in his Later Gleanings, p. 342 [Gladstone (1809-1898) was a leading British statesman, four times prime minister, and a member of Parliament for 62 years].

Southern Baptist: "There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish Seventh Day Sabbath to the Christian First Day observance.

"There are in the New Testament no commands, no prescriptions, no rules, no liturgies applying to the observance of the Lord's Day . . .

"There is no organic [no actual] connection between the Hebrew Sabbath and the Christian Lord's Day . . . It was only a short while until gentiles predominated in the [early church] Christian movement. They brought over the consciousness of various observances in the pagan religions, pre-eminently the worship of the sun--a sort of Sunday consciousness." --William Owen Carver, Sabbath Observance, 1940. pp. 49, 52, 54 [Dr. Carver (1868-1954) was professor of comparative religion at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky].

Presbyterian: "For the permanency of the Sabbath, however, we might argue its place in the decalogue, where it stands enshrined on a tablet that is immutable and everlasting."--Dr. Thomas Chalmers, Sermons, vol. 1, pp. 51-52.

Congregationalist: "The Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scripture, and was not by the primitive [early Christian] church called the Sabbath." --Timothy Dwight, Theology, Sermon 107, 1818 ed., Vol. IV, p. 49 [Dwight (1752-18 17) was president of Yale University from 1795-1817].

Episcopalian: "The observance of the first day instead of the seventh day rests on the testimony of the Catholic church, and the [Catholic] church alone." --Hobart Church News, July 2, 1894.

Dwight L. Moody: "I honestly believe that this commandment is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated [abolished], but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it 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, not man for the Sabbath' [Mark 2:27]. 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 this 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 [adultery, murder, lying, theft, etc.] are still binding?" --Dwight L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, 1898, pp. 46-47 [D.L. Moody (1837-1899) was the most famous evangelist of his time, and founder of the Moody Bible Institute].

Irish Methodist: "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 [Clarke (1760-1832) was an Irish Wesleyan minister, writer, and three times Methodist conference president].

Church of England: "Take which you will, either the 'fathers' or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord's Day instituted by any apostolic mandate, no sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week" --Dr.Peter Heylyn quoted in History of the Sabbath, Part 2, chapter 1, page 410.

Southern Baptist: "As presented to us in the Scriptures the Sabbath was not the invention of any religious founder. It was not at first part of any system of religion, but an entirely independent institution. Very definitely it is presented in Genesis as the very first institution, inaugurated by the Creator Himself." --WO. Carver, Sabbath Observance, pp. 40-41 [Dr. Carver (1868-1954) was professor of comparative religion in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky].

Lutheran: "When servants have worked six days, they should have the seventh day free. God says without distinction, 'Remember that you observe the seventh day' . . . Concerning Sunday it is known that men have instituted it . . . It is clear however, that you should celebrate the seventh day." --Andres Carolstat [Andreas Rudolf Karlstadt], Concerning the Sabbath and Commanded Holidays, 1524, chap. 4, pp. 23-24 [Karlstadt (1480-1541) joined Luther at Wittenberg in 1517. the year the German Reformation began, and as an important coworker with Luther, he taught the Bible Sabbath].

Congregationalist: "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.' Christ is here speaking of the flight of the apostles and other Christians out of Jerusalem and Judea, just before their final destruction, as is manifest by the whole context, and especially by the 16th verse: 'Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains.' But the final destruction of Jerusalem was after the dissolution of the Jewish constitution, and 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 a strict observance of the Sabbath."--The Works of President Edwards, reprint of Worcester ed., 1844-1848, vol. IV, pp. 621-622.

Presbyterian: "God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for that purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race." --Dr. Archibald Hodge, Tract No. 175 of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, pp. 3-4.

Baptist: "The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath. There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor, of course, any obligation." --Watchman Magazine.

Christian Church: "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."--Alexander Campbell [founder of the "Christian Church"], quoted in The Reporter, Washington, Pennsylvania, October 8, 1921 [Campbell (1788-1866) was also the founder and president of Bethany College].

Church of England: "The reason for which the [Sabbath] command [of Exodus 20:8-11] was originally given, --namely, as a memorial of God's having rested from the Creation of the World, --cannot be transferred from the seventh day to the first; nor can any new motive be substituted in its place, whether the resurrection of our Lord or any other, --without [first in Scripture receiving] the sanction of a divine commandment . . .

"For if we under the gospel are to regulate the time of our public worship by the prescriptions of the Decalogue,--it will be far safer to observe the seventh day, according to the express commandment of God, than on the authority of mere human conjecture to adopt the first day of the week]." --John Milton, A Posthumous Treatise on the Christian Doctrine, bk. 2, chap. 7 [John Milton (1608-1674) was the most famous poet of English literature, and the author of Paradise Lost].

Lutheran: "God blessed the Sabbath and sanctified it to Himself. It is moreover to be remarked that God did this to no other creature. God did not sanctify to Himself the heaven nor the earth nor any other creature. But God did sanctify to Himself the seventh day . . . The Sabbath therefore has, from the beginning of the world, been set apart for the worship of God." --Martin Luther, Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1, Comment on Gen. 2:3, pp. 138-139 [Luther (1483-1546) is recognized as the one who led out in the great Sixteenth Century Reformation].

Methodist Episcopal: "The Sabbath was made for man; not for the Hebrews, but for all men." --Bishop E.O. Haven, Pillars of Truth, p. 88.

"It is certain that Christ Himself, His apostles, and the primitive Christians for some good space of time, did constantly observe the Seventh-day Sabbath." --William Prynne, Dissertation on the Lord's Day Sabbath, page 33.

"Long should pause the erring hand of man before it dares to chip away with the chisel of human reasonings one single word graven on the enduring tables by the hand of the infinite God." --George Elliott.

"If we had no other passage than of Genesis 2:3, there would be no difficulty in deducing from it a precept for the universal observance of the Sabbath to be devoted to God, as holy time, by all of that race for whom the earth and its nature were specially prepared. The first men must have known it. The words 'He hallowed it,' can have no meaning otherwise. They would be a blank unless in reference to some who were required to keep it holy." --Taylor Lewis, Translator's note on Gen. 2:3, in John Peter Lange, A Commentary: Genesis, 1868, p. 197 [Lewis (1802- 1877) was a respected ancient language and literature professor at Union College and N. Y. City University].

Henry Tabor (1825-1897) was an American Businessman, banker, religious liberal, and promoter of public educational buildings of over a century ago. He was a man who clearly saw facts as they were and generally stated them bluntly: "Why will not Christian people investigate and find out for themselves (which they easily can), that the keeping of Sunday as a 'holy Sabbath day,' is wholly without warrant?

"I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion, to show me the slightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a holy day? Are they not open to the suspicion of imposing upon the confidence and credulity of their hearers? Surely they are deliberately and knowingly practicing deception upon those who look to them for candor and for truth, unless they can give satisfactory reasons for teaching that Sunday is a sacred day. There never was, and is not now, any such 'satisfactory reasons.' No student of the Bible has ever brought to light a single verse, line or word, which can, by any possibility, be construed into a warrant for the religious observance of Sunday."

"Quotations from the writings of the 'Church Fathers,' and others familiar with Church history, support this statement, and include the names of Tertullian, Eusebius, Ireneus, Victorinus, Theodoretus, Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingle, Knox, Tyndale, Grotius, Neander, Mosheim, Heylyn, Frith, Milton, Priestly, [and] Domville. John Calvin had so little respect for the day that he could be found playing bowls most any Sunday.

"The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the SEVENTH day of the week holy, THEREFORE that the FIRST day of the week should be so kept by Christians,--is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering. "--Henry Morehouse Taber, Faith or Fact, 1897, p.114.