The Seventh Day Sabbath | Page 5

of Jerusalem that their city should remain
forever if they would hallow the Sabbath day. Now suppose the
inhabitants of Jerusalem had entered into this agreement, and entailed it
upon their posterity (because you see it could not have been fulfilled
unless it had continued from generation to generation,) to keep the
Sabbath holy, would not God have been bound to let Jerusalem remain
forever? You say [9]yes. Well, then, I ask you to shew how he could
have kept that promise inviolate if he intended in less than six hundred
and fifty years to change this seventh day Sabbath, and call the first day
of the week the Sabbath, or abolish it altogether? I say, therefore, if
there has been any change one way or the other in the Sabbath, since
that promise, it would be impossible to understand any other promise in
the Bible; how much more reasonable to believe God than man. If men
will allow themselves to believe the monstrous absurdity that
FOREVER, as in this promise, ended at the resurrection, then they can
easily believe that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the
first day of the week. Or if they choose the other extreme, abolished

until the people of God should awake to be clothed on with immortality.
Heb. iv: 9.
Now does it not appear plain that the Sabbath is from God, and that it is
coeval and co-extensive (as is the institution of marriage) with the
world. That it is without limitation; that there is not one thus saith the
Lord that it ever was or ever will be abolished, in time or eternity.--See
Exod. xxxi: 16, 17; and Isa. lxvi: 22, 24; Heb. iv: 4, 9. But let us return
and look at the subject as we have commenced in the light of Paul's
argument to the Romans and Collossians, for here is where all writers
on this subject, for the change or the overthrow of the seventh day
Sabbath attempt to draw their strong arguments. The second question
then, is this:
HAS THE SABBATH BEEN ABOLISHED SINCE THE SEVENTH
DAY OF CREATION? IF SO, WHEN, AND WHERE IS THE
PROOF?
The text already referred to, is in Rom. xiv: 5, 6.--"One man esteemeth
one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every
man be persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day,
regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day to the Lord,
he doth not regard it." Does the apostle here mean to say, that under the
new or Christian dispensation it is a matter of indifference which day of
the week is kept as a Sabbath, or whether any Sabbath at all is kept?
Was that institution which the people of God had been commanded to
call a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, now to be esteemed of
so carnal a nature as to be ranked among [10]the things which Jesus
"took out of the way, nailing it to his cross." If this be true, then has
Jesus, in the same manner, abolished the eight last verses in the
fifty-eighth of Isaiah, and the 2d, 6th and 7th verses of the 56th chapter
have no reference to the Gentile since the crucifixion. O Lord help us
rightly to understand and divide thy word. But is it not evident from the
four first verses in the same chapter of Romans, that Paul is speaking of
feast days; giving them again in substance the decrees which had been
given by the Apostles in their first conference, in A. D. 51, held at
Jerusalem. See Acts xv: 19. James proposes their letter to the Gentiles

should be "that they abstain from pollution of Idols, and from
fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood;" to which the
conference all agreed. Now please read their unanimous decrees (xvi:
4,) from twenty-three to thirty verses. "For it seemed good to the Holy
Ghost and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary
things." "That ye abstain from meats offered to Idols, and from blood,
and from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if ye keep
yourselves ye shall do well." Reading along to the 13th of the next
chapter, we find Paul establishing the Churches with these decrees; (see
4, 5,) and at Philippi he holds his meeting, (not in the Jews Synagogue)
but at the river's side, on the Sabbath day. A little from this it is said
that Paul is in Thesalonica preaching on the Sabbath days. Luke says
this was his manner! What was it? Why, to preach on the Sabbath days,
(not 1st days.) Observe here was three Sabbaths in succession. xvii: 2.
A little while from this Paul locates himself in Corinth, and