“If we would have the Lord’s day so bound to time that it
shall be wickedness to transfer it to another time, in which
resting from our labors equally as in that, we may hear the
word of God, if necessity haply shall so require, this day so
solicitously observed, would obtrude on us as a ceremony. For
we are no way bound to time, but time ought so to serve us,
that it is lawful, and permitted to each church, when necessity
urges (as is usual to be done in harvest time), to transfer the
solemnity and rest of the Lord’s day, or Sabbath, to some other
day.”[955]
Zwingle could not, therefore, have considered Sunday as a divinely
appointed memorial of the resurrection, or, indeed, as anything but a
church festival.
John Calvin said, respecting the origin of the Sunday festival:—
“However, the ancients have not without sufficient reason
substituted what _we_ call the Lord’s day in the room of the
Sabbath. For since the resurrection of the Lord is the end and
consummation of that true rest, which was adumbrated by the
ancient Sabbath; the same day which put an end to the shadows,
admonishes Christians not to adhere to a shadowy ceremony. Yet
I do not lay so much stress on the septenary number that I
would oblige the church to an invariable adherence to it; nor
will I condemn those churches, which have other solemn days
for their assemblies, provided they keep at a distance from
superstition.”[956]
It is worthy of notice that Calvin does not assign to Christ and his
disciples the establishment of Sunday in the place of the Sabbath. He
says this was done by the “ancients,”[957] or as another translates it,
“the old fathers.” Nor does he say “the day which _John_ called the
Lord’s day,” but “the day which _we_ call the Lord’s day.” And what is
worthy of particular notice he did not insist that the day which should
be appropriated to worship should be one day in every seven; for he
was not tied to “the septenary number.” The day might come once in six
days, or once in eight. And this proves conclusively that he did not
regard Sunday as a divine institution in the proper sense of the word;
for if he had, he would most assuredly have felt that the festival must
be septenary, that is, weekly, and that he must urge “the church to an
invariable adherence to it.” But Calvin does not leave the matter here.
He condemns as “FALSE PROPHETS” those who attempt to enforce the Sunday
festival by means of the fourth commandment; and who to do this say
that the ceremonial part, which requires the observance of the definite
seventh day, is abolished, while the moral part, which simply commands
the observance of one day in seven, still remains in force. Here are his
words:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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