Sabbath History

Denominational Statements on the Sabbath

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Presbyterian Quotes about the Sabbath

The Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive church called the Sabbath.

—Dwight's Theology, Vol. 14, p. 401.

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 (AD 70). 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 Jonathon Edwards, (Presby.) Vol. 4, p. 621.

We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform.

—JOHN CALVIN, Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels, Vol. 1, page 277.

God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for the purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race.

—American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 175.

The observance of the seventh-day Sabbath did not cease till it was abolished after the [Roman] empire became Christian, ...

—American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 118.

The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard to the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.

—Westminster Confession of Faith, Chap. 19, Art. 5.

The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue-the Ten Commandments. This alone for ever 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 Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand...The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath.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, pages 474, 475.

Sunday being the first day of which the Gentiles solemnly adored that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it) the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear carelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice that might be otherwise taken against the gospel

—T.M. Morer, Dialogues on the Lord's Day

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.

Some have tried to build the observance of Sunday upon Apostolic command, whereas the Apostles gave no command on the matter at all.... The truth is, so soon as we appeal to the litera scripta [literal writing] of the Bible, the Sabbatarians have the best of the argument.

—The Christian at Work, April 19, 1883, and Jan. 1884