[pg. 9]
of St. Thomas. What is there in these facts to do away with the obligation of keeping holy the seventh day? Our Lord rose from dead on the first day of the week, and on the same day at evening He appears to many of His disciples; He appears again on that day [of the] week, and perhaps also on other days in the interval. Let Protestants, if they will, keep holy the first day of the week in grateful commemoration of that stupendous mystery, the Resurrection of Christ, and of the evidence He vouchsafed to give of it to His doubting disciples; but this is no scriptural authority for ceasing to keep holy another day of the week which God had expressly commanded to be kept holy for another and altogether different reason.
5. But lastly, we have the example of the Apostles themselves. “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight” (Acts xx. 7). Here we have clear proof that the disciples came together for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and that they heard a sermon on a Sunday. But is there any proof that they had not done the
[pg. 10]
same on Saturday also? Is it not expressly written concerning those same early Christians, that they “continued daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house?” (Acts ii. 46). And as a matter of fact, do we not know from other sources that, in many parts of the Church, the ancient Christians were in the habit of meeting together for public worship, to receive Holy Communion, and to perform the other offices, on Saturdays just the same as on Sundays? Again, then, I say, let Protestants keep holy, if they will, the first day of the week, in order that they may resemble those Christians who were gathered together on that day in the upper chamber in Troas; but let them remember that this cannot possibly release them from the obligation of keeping holy another day which Almighty God has ordered to be kept holy, because on that day He “rested from all His work”.
I do not know of any other passages of holy Scripture which Protestants are in the habit of quoting to defend their practice of keeping holy the first day of the week instead of the seventh; yet surely those which I have quoted are not such as should satisfy any reasonable man, who looks upon the written word of God as they
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profess to look upon it, namely as the one only appointed means of learning God’s will, and who really desires to learn and to obey that will in all things with humbleness and simplicity of heart. It is absolutely impossible that a reasonable and thoughtful person should be satisfied, by the texts that I have quoted, that the almighty God intended the obligation of Saturday under the old law to be transferred to Sunday under the new. And yet Protestants do so transfer it, and never seem to have the slightest misgivings lest, in doing so, they should be guilty of breaking one of God’s commandments. Why is this? Because, although they talk so largely about following the Bible and the Bible only, they are really guided in this matter by the voice of tradition.”
“We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy instead of Saturday as we have for every other article of our creed, namely,** the authority of “the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth” (1 Tim. iii 15); whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever**;
for there is no authority for it in the Bible*, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else. Both you and we do, in fact, follow tradition in this matter; but we follow it, believing it to be a part of God’s word, and the Church to be its divinely-appointed guardian and interpreter; you follow it, denouncing it all the time as a fallible and treacherous guide, which often “make the commandment of God of none effect.”
I think it has made my point!
*
