2. _The hatred of the church of Rome toward the Sabbath, and its determination to elevate Sunday to the highest place._ This church, as the chief in the work of apostasy, took the lead in the earliest effort to suppress the Sabbath by turning it into a fast. And the very first act of papal aggression was by an edict in behalf of Sunday. Thenceforward, in every possible form, this church continued this work until the pope announced that he had received a divine mandate for Sunday observance [the very thing lacking] in a roll which fell from Heaven. 3. _The voluntary observance of memorable days._ In the Christian church, almost from the beginning, men voluntarily honored the fourth, the sixth, and the first days of the week, and also the anniversary of the Passover and the Pentecost, to commemorate the betrayal, the death, and the resurrection, of Christ, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, which acts in themselves could not be counted sinful. 4. _The making of tradition of equal authority with the Scriptures._ This was the great error of the early church, and the one to which that church was specially exposed, as having in it those who had seen the apostles, or who had seen those who had seen them. It was this which rendered the voluntary observance of memorable days a dangerous thing. For what began as a voluntary observance became, after the lapse of a few years, a standing custom, established by tradition, which must be obeyed because it came from those who had seen the apostles, or from those who had seen others who had seen them. This is the origin of the various errors of the great apostasy. 5. _The entrance of the no-law heresy._ This is seen in Justin Martyr, the earliest witness to the Sunday festival, and in the church of Rome of which he was then a member. 6. _The extensive observance of Sunday as a heathen festival._ The first day of the week corresponded to the widely observed heathen festival of the sun. It was therefore easy to unite the honor of Christ in the observance of the day of his resurrection with the convenience and worldly advantage of his people in having the same festival day with their heathen neighbors, and to make it a special act of piety in that the conversion of the heathen was thereby facilitated, while the neglect of the ancient Sabbath was justified by stigmatizing that divine memorial as a Jewish institution with which Christians should have no concern. CHAPTER XIX. THE SABBATH AND FIRST-DAY DURING THE FIRST FIVE CENTURIES.