principle of all Papal, Puseyite, and Pedobaptist observances. I saw
clearly enough, that if Neander was right, I had no better foundation
for Sunday-keeping than hierarchists have for their Easter, Ascension,
and Christmas Festivals, which I had always repudiated; or than
Pedobaptists have for sprinkling infants. I therefore determined to
give the subject
A THOROUGH EXAMINATION.
I commenced with human authors, and read Fuller, Buck, Doddridge,
Paley, Wilson, Humphrey, Nevins, Kingsbury, Phelps, Whateley, and
others; and I was astonished to find every one of them admitting, that
there is no express command, precept, or passage of Scripture, to
authorize the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day
of the week. They all attempt to support the practice by inferences
and analogical reasonings from particular events. Not having
veneration large enough to bow to their great names and acute
reasonings, I was landed upon a lonely shore, without pilot or
compass, with no guide but the truthful chart of Revelation. As I had
often vowed in my heart to the Lord, that I would be a Bible Christian
so far as I could discover the meaning of the divine Word, or know the
revealed will of God; and had more than once told my Pedobaptist
friends, when accused of sectarianism, that I would leave all for the
truth's sake, if I could discover that I was wrong; I was greatly
perplexed, for _I found a great fact_--The Sabbath was changed. The
greater part of the world, the most estimable of Christians, do keep
their weekly Sabbath on the first day! Can they all be wrong? I
conversed with some, and found them more inconsistent in their reasons
than the authors I read. For a time, to sanction the change of the
Sabbath, I took what may properly be called prelatical ground. It may
be stated as follows, viz: "The thing exists; and in the New Testament
we find some things which appear to us so like it, that, we conclude
this and they are identical; though we cannot find the particulars of
the change. And besides, we find some occurrences mentioned in the New
Testament which seemingly happened in accordance with it and which
afford reasons for it, and so we think, they should be considered
satisfactory evidences of the change existing at the time." But my
confidence in this fact was overturned by discovering _another great
fact_, viz: That the first day was not honored as a Sabbath during the
first two centuries of the Christian era; and that when it did come to
be so observed, it was not on the considerations that are now
alledged, but on what appeared to me a wicked reason--mere spite to
the Jews. I therefore commenced anew,
A THOROUGH EXAMINATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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