Such, obviously, are the drift and import of the passages. I remark, then, (1.) it is plain that the apostle is here contending with those who were clamorous for the continued and obligatory observance of the Mosaic ritual. It was purely a question about Jewish "ordinances." In Colossians, indeed, it is so stated. Hence, too, the reference, in the text and context, to meats, and drinks, and new moons, and holy days, as well as Sabbaths. The apostle's decision was, that such observance was not obligatory, though on certain conditions to be allowed to the Jewish convert, and tolerated by the Gentile. It is therefore altogether probable, that the "Sabbaths" spoken of in the first passage (Colossians) were not the seventh day Sabbath, but only the other and ceremonial Sabbaths. At all events, the first day or Christian Sabbath was not referred to at all, for that was then known only as "the first day of the week," or "Lord's day," and was never called Sabbath until centuries afterward. Be those "Sabbaths," then, what they might, deciding that they were not obligatory, was not deciding that the Lord's day was not.

The same is true of the passage in Romans. The entire context shows that the question at issue, and the apostle's decision of it, were the same as in the other case. Moreover, what proof is there that the "day" spoken of was a Sabbath of any kind? The term "Sabbath" does not occur at all in the text or context. For aught that appears in them, the "day" in question may have been some holy or feast day, not a Sabbath. It is but probability to suppose that it was any Sabbath day whatever, ceremonial, seventh day, or first. It is sheer assumption to suppose that it was

the first or seventh day Sabbath, rather than the ceremonial Sabbaths. If the day or days were some Sabbath, the whole drift and import of the passage point to the ceremonial Sabbaths, not to the seventh day Sabbath, nor to the first, as the Sabbaths in question. All that can be fairly argued from the passage is, that Christians were at liberty to be fully persuaded in their own minds in respect to the observance of ceremonial feast days or Sabbaths, and to observe them or not, as they chose. There is not a particle of evidence, that the apostle had his eye on any other day whatever. To suppose that he had, and that that day was the seventh or the first day Sabbath, is not only a groundless assumption, but foreign entirely to the scope of the apostle's argument. And to suppose that the seventh day Sabbath, or the first, were included among the others as ceremonials, and so set aside, is to beg the whole question about their being ceremonials. Nay, were it eyen admitted that the seventh day Sabbath was so, and was therefore set aside with the rest, it by no means follows that the "Lord's day," or first day Sabbath, was. The ceremonial Sabbaths, including the seventh day, if you will, may all have ceased to be obligatory, and yet the obligation to observe the Lord's day remained in full force. In deciding, then, that they had ceased to be obligatory, the apostle by no means decided that the Lord's day had. As well may you say, that the decision that eating certain meats, and abstaining from others, is no longer obligatory, was a decision that the observance of the Lord's supper was not obligatory. The truth is, the question of the observance or nonobservance of the Lord's supper, or the Lord's day,

was not the question at issue in either of these cases, and therefore not the question decided in either. The argument from these passages for the non-observance of the first day of the week as Sabbath is therefore groundless. Neither passage has any reference whatever to that question. The most that can be made of them, on the most liberal interpretation, is a decision that the seventh day Sabbath, in common with the ceremonial Sabbaths, was no longer obligatory.

But such a decision, in the circumstances, was a virtual decision that the Lord's day was obligatory. What were the circumstances? First, that the first day of the week, as we have seen, was universally and religiously observed in the primitive church, and that it was observed and known as "Lord's day." Second, that its observance was every where regarded as obligatory-how else could there have been such a general uniformity in regard to its actual observance ? Such uniformity did not obtain touching circumcision or the observance of the seventh day Sabbath, which some of the early disciples advocated, but which were to others of doubtful authority and obligation. The universal observance of the Lord's day in the primitive church, like their observance of baptism and the Lord's supper, is proof of a universal conviction that such observance was obligatory. Indeed, among all the questions and controversies that arose in the first ages of the church about the continued observance of the seventh day Sabbath,—and they were many, it is not known that the propriety of observing Lord's day was ever questioned. Professor Stuart (Gurney, p. 115) says, "There appears,” on this point, "never

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to have been any question among any class of the early Christians, so far as I have been able to discover. Even the Ebionites, who kept the Sabbath (seventh day) according to the Jewish law, kept also the Lord's day. All were agreed, then, in the obligation to keep the Lord's day. Now, to raise the question, in these circumstances, whether the seventh day Sabbath should be kept or not, was to ask, not whether the first day was to be kept,- for that was settled, — nor whether the seventh was to be observed in preference to or in place of the first, — for this too was settled, — but must the seventh be also observed. And to decide, as, on the supposition before us, the apostle did, that it need not also be observed,―i. e. was not also obligatory,

was to decide that the other, viz. the Lord's day, was obligatory. The conclusion, then, is certain, either that the passages in question refer only to the Jewish ceremonial Sabbaths, not including the seventh day Sabbath, and therefore have no bearing whatever on the question of the Sabbath as now agitated; or that, in declaring the seventh as well as the ceremonial Sabbaths no longer obligatory, they virtually declare that the first day Sabbath, or Lord's day, is obligatory. In either case, the argument from them to the non-observance of Lord's day is vain.

CHAPTER VII.

TESTIMONY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

EARLY and authentic ecclesiastical history confirms the view now presented. It states, indeed, in terms, that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week, by authority of Christ himself; and also that the mode of keeping the one was transferred, so far as the genius of Christianity and the nature of the case would allow, to the other. Thus Clement of Alexandria (A. D. 192) says, "A Christian, according to the command of the gospel, observes the Lord's day." So that its observance, instead of being an accident, or a relic of Judaism, or in any way anti-Christian, was "according to the command of the gospel." Athanasius also, (A. D. 326,) renouncing the authority of the seventh day Sabbath, says, (De Semente, Ed. Colon. Tom. I. p. 1060,) "The Lord himself hath changed the day of the Sabbath to Lord's day." The testimony of Eusebius is still more to the purpose. He was born about A. D. 270, and died about 340. Mosheim says, he was "a man of vast reading and erudition." Till about forty years of age, he lived in great intimacy with the martyr Pamphilus, a learned and devout man of Cesarea, and founder of an extensive library