OBSERVANCE. Of the means employed in the period of our present survey for securing honour and respect to the Lord's day, more is recorded than of the successful results. It would be wrong, however, to draw the conclusion, that the measure of practical regard to the institution is to be estimated by the space which it occupies in history. "It is not necessary, that those things which are constantly done should be noted in history, but those things which are rarely done." The preaching, writings, and other labours of such men as Athanasius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Augustine must, among their happy effects, have been instrumental in forming many to so essential a character as that of willing subjection to the Fourth Commandment. The diligence and zeal of councils in prosecuting the same object could not be in vain. But when the eminent Fathers of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century disappeared from the scene, so many impediments to the advance of Sabbath profanation were removed. The spirit, which in other times made that day to be a delight, gave way to one which regarded it as a form and a burden; and the new appliances of fines and bodily chastisement to restrain its abuse, showed that open violation and slothful neglect of the sacred rest had become more prevalent. One token of good, however, was the desire shown throughout the sixth century to stay the progress of the evil. The succession of efforts employed for this purpose by twenty councils, and the views of the institution entertained, proved how excellent it is in itself, and how it commends itself to the reason and convictions of mankind. In the following century, we have accounts of the general observance of the day; one of them by Cummianus, an Irish Abbot or Bishop, of the year 640, and another by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, both in the same terms. "On the Lord's day," says the latter, in his Pœnitential, "the Greeks and Romans neither sail nor ride on horseback; they do not make bread, nor travel in a carriage, except to church only, nor do they bathe." The Emperor Charlemagne having been desired by the clergy to provide for the stricter observation of the day," he accordingly did so, and left no stone unturned to secure its honour, and restrain his subjects from abusing it. His care succeeded, and during his reign the Lord's day bore a considerable figure. But after his decease it put on another face."1 This relapse, however, served to rouse the friends of the institution to greater exertion. Councils were convened at Paris and Aken (Auchen, Aix la Chapelle). Bishop Jona and others set themselves against the evil. And when we take into account, also, the efforts of Leo, the Philosopher, and Alfred the Great, we are not surprised at the remark of an historian as respects Christendom generally in the ninth century: "We are now prepared to allow that there is considerable truth in the statement, that during the contests concerning image-worship, society was strict in all religious observances, and great attention was paid to Sunday."2 It was a part of the creed of the Waldenses, "that the observation of the Sabbath, by ceasing from worldly labours and from sin, by good works, and by promoting the edification of the soul through prayer and hearing the word, is enjoined" in the law of God. We are furnished with information respecting their morals by Reinerus Sacco, an apostate from their church, and a Jacobin inquisitor, who wrote a book against them about 1254, and whose testimony is above suspicion. Besides mentioning, "that they work on feast days, and disregard the fasts of the Church, dedications, and benedictions," and referring to their churches and schools, he says, "They are composed and modest in manners. They do not multiply riches, but are content with necessaries. They are also chaste, especially the Leonists. They are temperate in eating and drinking. They do not go to taverns, nor to dancings, nor to other vanities. They restrain themselves from anger. They avoid scurrility, detraction, levity of conversation, lying and swearing."4 We may conceive what their deportment on the first day of the week would be, from the circumstance, that, when a barbe or minister was appointed, an oath was administered to him before the assembled barbes, in this form, "Thou, such a one, swearest on thy faith to maintain, multiply, and increase our law, and not to discover the same to any in the world, and that thou promisest not in any manner to swear by God, and that thou observe the Lord's day, and that thou wilt not 1 Morer On the Lord's Day, pp. 270, 271. 2 Finlay's Byzan. Empire, vol. i. p. 311. 3 Blair's Waldenses, vol. i. p. 220. 4 Ibid. vol. i. pp. 408, 412. do anything to thy neighbour which thou wouldst not have him to do to thee, and that thou dost believe in God who has made the sun and moon, the heaven and the earth, the cherubim and seraphim, and all that thou seest."1 The practice of the Bohemian Brethren in relation to the Christian weekly holy day, which, we have already seen, they held to be appointed instead of the Jewish Sabbath, was the following: "The brethren rested from all secular employments. Their domestics and cattle also rested. They strictly avoided drunkenness, gambling, dancing, idle conversation, lounging, and the like; and spent the day in singing God's praise, reading the Bible, and attending four or five services at church."2 Besides several days for commemorating events in the history of Christ, and others relating to Mary, the Apostles, and the martyrs, but on which every one after the public services returned to his work, they kept fasts four times a year, and on occasions of remarkable calamities, or of the exclusion of an individual from the Church. They made a distinction between the Sabbath and the other days; the former being considered by them as of inviolable obligation, the others observed with Christian liberty, for recalling important facts, and for giving opportunities of useful admonition, that, "after preaching and prayers are over, they may apply themselves to their ordinary works as on other days." 14 From the facts set forth in this and two preceding sections, it appears that for fifteen centuries the first day of the week was, under various names, recognised throughout Christendom as a divinely-appointed day of worship and sacred rest; that it was regarded as the old ordinance of paradise and Sinai, adapted by extrinsic changes to the New Economy; and that many writings, canons, edicts, and other measures, attested the concern of good men for its observance, and their conviction of its high dignity and excellence. It is not necessary to the evidence for the Sabbath, which the history of that long period supplies, that the language used respecting it, the measures employed on its behalf, and the performance of its duties, should have been immaculate. There have been writers-Dr. Heylyn, for example-who 1 Blair's Waldenses, vol. ii. p. 157. 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 109. 4 Bruce's An. Secul. p. 202. From two have subjected this evidence to a process of disingenuous, unjust, and naughty criticism, which shows a disposition to bear down rather than to discover truth, and under which, as generally applied, no document, no testimony, no man on trial for life, no interest, however important, could be safe. The marvel is, that amidst the growing corruption of a great part of that period, there was such a unanimity of opinion respecting the Lord's day, and that the day did not cease to exist. Nor let it be said that the prevailing evil betrayed any inefficiency in the ordinance. causes at least from endlessly multiplying holidays, which obscured its authority, and diluted its strength, and from the ever increasing neglect and perversion of its essential agencies of instruction and worship-it was not allowed its full and proper influence. In all cases in which the Sabbath has been dissociated from enfeebling, demoralizing festivals of human device, and been joined to its natural allies of sound religious instruction, and a simple, pure worship, it has evinced itself to be the power of God in stemming the tide of error and immorality, and in making communities pious, virtuous, and happy. And that must be a mighty institute which has been found to live and bless mankind under manifold disadvantages, and which, in the case before us, crippled though it was, not only maintained its ground amidst such elements of destruction, but for so long a time prevented the entire overthrow of the religious and social edifice. THE SABBATH AT THE REFORMATION. In the controversy respecting a weekly holy day, parties have eagerly sought support for their respective opinions in the writings of the Reformers. These eminent men have, on the one hand, been represented as holding the common creed of Christians on the subject, although it is admitted that their language in several instances is not in seeming accordance with such views, and have, on the other, been considered as denying the Divine obligation of a stated day of sacredness and rest. Of late years scarcely a volume or tract in defence of the latter notion has appeared, which has not "bristled" with the names of Luther and Calvin as the advocates of liberty from all Sabbatarian impositions. Much, indeed, as Luther, Calvin, and their associates, are entitled to our admiration for their learning, piety, and zeal, and to our gratitude for the services which they rendered to all the interests of mankind, it must be recollected that their sentiments do not on this or on any other point amount to a test of truth. It is not, however, inconsistent with the great principle, that no man is our master in such matters, to feel a desire to have the sanction of the Reformers for our interpretation of the sacred oracles. The friends of the Sabbath, in particular, would be gratified by the persuasion, that such inen had vindicated for themselves a place in the "great cloud of witnesses" for the Divine origin, perpetual sacredness, and indispensable value of that blessed institution. Let us, therefore, inquire what were the views on this subject of the distinguished persons by whose instrumentality our deliverance from Papal bondage was accomplished. The following remarks and illustrations will, we trust, present in a just light the views of the Reformers on the subject of the Sabbatic institution : 1. They regarded the weekly day of rest and worship as a most reasonable, useful, and indispensable arrangement. In the Confessions of Augsburg, Saxony, and Helvetia, we find such expressions as these applied to the institution : "It was requisite to appoint a certain day, that the people might know when to come together."1 "Natural reason doth know that there is an order; and the understanding of order is an evident testimony of God; neither is it possible that men should live without any order, as we see that in families there must be distinct times of labour, rest, meat, and sleep; and every nature, as it is best, so doth it chiefly love order throughout the whole life."" "Although religion be not tied unto time, yet it cannot be planted and exercised without a due dividing and allotting out of time unto it. . . . . Except some due time and leisure were allotted to the outward exercise of religion, without doubt men would be quite drawn from it by their own affairs."3 These passages teach us that the Lutheran and Reformed Churches were agreed as to the propriety, and the necessity to the ends of religion, of certain times being set apart for its exercises and study. The Reformers individually apply these 1 Hall's Harmony of Coufessions, p. 401. Ibid. p. 402. * Ibid. p. 382. |