SABBATARIANISM.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 298, 16 October 1873, Page 9

SABBATARIANISM.

A certain preacher lately pnt his hearers to considerable difficulty in restraining their risible muscles by spinning a yarn about a man who, being ill in body,and probably in consequence weak in mind, attributed his sickness to having worked on a Sunday, or as the preacher called it " The Sabbath." Would it surprise the reverend gentleman to learn that, independent of the New Testament or the teaching of his own church, which follows in the New Testament track, by no means confounding the Lord's Day of the Christian with the Sabbath of the Jew; would it surprise him to learn that the voices of all the great reformers are against him ? Whether the following expressions of their opinions are known to him or not, they certainly ought to be known to all Christians, whom Puritanism has bound with a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear. Luther says — " As for the Sabbath on Sunday, there is no necessity for its obtervanee ; and if we do^bserve it,

the reason ought to be, not that Moses commanded Jt, but because Nature likewise teaches us to give ourselves from time to time a day's rest, that man^ and beast may recruit th«>ir *stivn»th, and that we may hear the word of Q-od preached." (Werke 11.16 quoted in Michelets'* * "Life of Luther," p. 271.) Luther again says — " If any, one sets up its observance on the Jewish foundation, then I Order you to work on it, to ride, to dance, to feast on it, to do anything that shall remove this croachment on the Christian spirit and liberty." (Quoted in " Christian Sects in the 19th Century," p. 20.) Calvin says—-" We get quit of the trifling of the false prophets who instilled Jewish ideas into the people, alleging that nothing was ■ abrogated but what was ceremonial in the (4th) Commandment Those who cling to their constitutions go thrice as far as the Jews in the gross and carnal superstition of Sabbatism ; so that the rebukes which we read in Isaiah 1.13— V111.13, apply as much to those of the present day as to whom the prophet addressed them." (Quoted in J. E. Lithgow's " Arguments against Sabbatism," in the " Christadelphian Herald.") Beza^ (the great: French Eeformer, Calviu s friend) says — *' No cessation of work on the Lord's Day is required of Christians; for that had not so much abolished Judaism as put it up, and changed it to another day This cessation (of labor) was first brought in by Constantine, and afterwards confirmed with tribre anU more restraint by the following Emperors, by means of which it came to pass thtit^lmt which first was done with a good intent, viz., that men, being free from their worldly business, miirht wholly irive themselves to the hearing of the Word of God — degenerated at the last into downright Judaism." (Quoted in Lithgow's " Arguments against Sabbatism." Bucer (a Grerman Reformer, for some time resident in England) goes further yet, and does not only call it a superstition, but an apostacy from Christ, to think that working on the Lord's Day ! in itself is considered a sinful thing. (Heylin'B History.) The Con fession of the Swiss Churches Bays — " Neither do we conceive one day to be more holy than another, nor think that rest from labor is anything pleasing to God." The same confession teaches — 1. The keeping of one day in seven is not a moral duty. 2. The observance of the Lord's Day is founded, not on any commandment of God, but on the authority of the Church. 3. The Church may alter the day at pleasure., . *,"*, Zwinglius ascribes the same p6wer to the Church, saying further — "It is lawful on the Lord's Day, after Divine Service, for any man to pursue his labors, as commonly we do in the time of harvest." I The Augsburg Confession (drawn up by Melancthon) says — "The Lord's j Day, Easter, Whitsuntide, and other holy days ought to be kept, because they are appointed by the Church. . . . . But the observance of them is not to be thought necessary to salvation, nor the violation of them, done without offence to others, to bo regarded as a sin. For they who think the observance of the Lord's Day has been- appointed by the Church instead j of the Sabbath, us a thing necessary, greatly err. The scriptures allow that we are not bound to keep the Sabbath, for they teach that the ceremonials of the .law of Moses are not necessary after the revelation of the Gospel." Tyndall (an English Beformer and Scripture Translator) says — " We be lords over the Sabbath, and may vet change it into Monday, or any other day as we seed need, or make every tenth day holy-day. . . . Neither need we any holy-day at all if the people might be taught without it. , Frith writes — " Our forefathers which were in the -beginning of the Church did abrogate tine Sabbath to the intent that men might havean example of Xtian liberty, and (that they micrht know that neither the keeping of the Sabbath nor any other day is necessary. Howbeit because it was necessary .that a day should be reserved in which the people might come together to hear the Word of 0-od, they orflained jnetead of the Sabbath, which "was Saturday, the next djiy Jfollgwindr, which was Sunday „ , "., and they .over aqt the day to be a perpetual memory that we are free,' and /.-•,.♦ . may do' all lawful r works., -Hply days were instituted that: the people should come together to hear God's Word, receive the Sacraments, and giye God thanks. That done, they may return to their houses and dp their business as well as any other day. He that thinketh that a man sinneth which worketh on the holy day . . . is not of God but of the Devil, for he maketh sin in such as God leayeth free." Twenty other authorities are before the writer, but probably the above will be sufficient to comfort that poor sick man with regard to whom the rev. gentleman "maketh sin in such as Grod leaveth free." Let him go to his bedside and tell him thai neither God not the Church condemn him; and tha t t overwork on week days is just as likely to make people ill as overwork on Sundays. Let him tell him to cheer up, and come to church the first Sunday he is able, and return thanks to Gcd before the congregation for his

mercy in raising him up ; and on t' at same Sunday afternoon, let him **w rk, ride, dance, feast, do anytbiig that shall remove this encroachment on iha Christian spirit and liberty." — " Wangauui Chronicle."