which congregated numbers are so well fitted to afford-in short, of partaking in common of love-feasts and the Eucharist? Nay, is it not likely that even before his crucifixion our Lord frequently met his disciples at this convenient season, in order to sup with and instruct them? Here, then, might be the beginning of a custom which in the space from A.D. 33 to A.D. 41 had ample time to become established, and to which, first the converted “devout Gentiles," and next the converted idolators, would naturally conform when received into Churches where they found it existing. The notion would soon occur even to the Jewish Christians, that the first day of the week deserved above all others to be thus signalised; and they would readily concur with their Gentile brethren in setting apart (if the early Churches did set apart) a whole day, ending at sunset on Sunday, in honour of their Lord's resurrection. The Gentiles probably took the lead in this; for, seeing the Jews abstain from work on the seventh day, and spend a portion of it in their synagogues, they would naturally wish to hold similar meetings for Christian worship and instruction. The forms adopted by the Christian Church were accordingly, as is well known, those of the Jewish synagogue. Thus may the supposed early and universal custom of holding assemblies on Sunday be completely accounted for.* That the following of any such custom by the Apostles in common with the other members of the Church, was either equivalent to an ordinance by them, enjoining the sanctification of the first day of the week as the Sabbath or as a prayer-day, or sufficient to stamp with divine authority any subsequent ordinance of the Church for its observance, is by no means universally admitted.-The Whole Doctrine of Calvin about the Sabbath and the Lord's Day; extracted from his Commentaries, Catechism, and Institutes of the Christian Religion, by ROBERT Cox, F.S.A. Scot.: with an Appendix, containing the opinions of Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, Beza, Cranmer, and Knox (Edin. 1860; 8vo, pp. 92). Here is collected all that Calvin has written about the Sabbath and the Lord's-day, from the English version of his Works, printed by the Calvin Translation Society.-Sunday: Its Origin, History, and present Obligation, considered in Eight Lectures, preached before the University of Oxford in the year 1860, on the Foundation of the late Rev. John Bampton, canon of Salisbury, by JAMES AugusTUS HESSEY, D.C.L., Head Master of Merchant Taylors' School, Preacher to the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn; sometime Fellow of St John's College, and Select Preacher in the University (Lond. 1860; 8vo, pp. 504; 2d ed., with a copious index, 1861). Whether regarded historically or theologically, this is a work of great value, being the fruit of extensive and careful research by an accomplished

The explanation above proposed appears to supply the defects of all previous theories that I am acquainted with-such as those stated by Neander, Hist. of the Planting of the Church, p. 159 (Bohn's ed.) Domville, i. 332; Hengstenberg, p. 47; and Hessey, p. 210. The views of the first three writers are considered in Sabbath Laws, pp. 536-9.

scholar, who thinks with discrimination, reasons acutely, writes in a clear and manly style, and treats the subject with good sense and much knowledge of mankind. There are eight Lectures, bearing the following titles:-1. General statement of the Sabbath and Lord'sday question. 2. The history of the Lord's-day to the end of the third century. 3. Its history to the end of the fifth century, and the growth of ecclesiastical Sabbatarianism in the Church of Rome. 4. History of the Sabbath to our Lord's resurrection. 5. What the Sabbath is since our Lord's resurrection. 6. The Lord's-day on the Continent since the Reformation. 7. The Lord's-day in England since the Reformation. 8. The Lord's-day viewed practically. Dr Hessey states that he was induced to treat of the Lord's-day in such a place and before such an assembly, by the belief" that great confusion of thought exists on this deeply important subject, and that the institution in question, though sufficiently venerable in itself, has been regarded as identical with, instead of at the most analogous to, one of greater antiquity indeed, but of more limited application, the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment. I believe that from this confusion have arisen not merely misapprehensions of a speculative nature, but errors affecting practice, and productive of misunderstandings among brethren. I see that the result has been, on the part of the more learned Clergy, an avoidance of a topic which they cannot treat of logically and historically without being exposed to obloquy, and which they cannot treat of popularly without apologising to their self-respect and sense of duty: on the part of the better informed Laity, a distaste for a doctrine, which, treated (as it generally is) illogically and with want of historical precision, they condemn together with its advocates, and dismiss summarily, either as a clumsy artifice or as a burthen too heavy to be borne. But I see, further, that this was not always so; that there was a time when Kugiann and Záßßarov [Lord's-day and Sabbath] respectively had their meanings accurately and sharply defined. Hence I venture to hope that an attempt to re-state those meanings, and to clear up certain difficulties connected with them, may not be altogether in vain. I will only make two requests; the first, that the liberty of candid inquiry, so readily allowed in other matters, may be as readily allowed here; the second, that my audience will carefully discriminate between two things, which, though essentially distinct, are often confounded in popular nomenclature, a respectful desire to set an institution on its true basis, and a disrespectful desire to undermine it." (Pp. 3-5, 1st ed.) He classifies the holders of opinions concerning the Lord's-day into, 1. Those who admit of no distinction of days, and recognise no Sabbath but that so often spoken of by the Fathers-namely, the Christian's rest on every day from evil works here, to be followed by the better Sabbath in heaven hereafter; 2. The Seventh-day Baptists, who observe Saturday as the Sabbath appointed at the Creation and enjoined in the Fourth Commandment to be kept by all men for ever (see above, i. 157, and other places referred to in the index under

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the head "Seventh-day Baptists"); 3. Those holding the Puritan view propounded in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms (i. 231-4); 4. Those holding the milder but perplexing Sabbatarianism of Sharp, Secker, Horsley, Mant, Stopford, and others (ii. 141, 213, 325, 336, 339); 5. Those who regard the Sabbath as a purely Jewish institution now abolished, and the Lord's-day as an institution for which no other than an Ecclesiastical origin can be found (such are White, Heylin, Sanderson, Taylor, Morer, and Whately, i. 166, 173, 184; ii. 10, 119, 333); and, 6. Archbishop Bramhall (i. 203) and others, whose notions agree in the main with the purely Ecclesiastical view, but invest the Sunday with a more imposing origin than it does, or rather bestow upon the word 'Ecclesiastical' itself a deeper significance. "What was the authority by which this change was made? If it was not made by our Lord's authority, which there is no cause to doubt, at least it was made by that of the apostles. It is undeniable that the Lord's Day is an apostolical tradition, and it is not so clear that there is no precept for the change in Holy Scripture. As for the manner of observing the Lord's Day, we obtain a guidance for this, not in set terms, but from considerations of the law of nature, and of the evangelical law, and also from the positive law of the old Sabbath; not by force of its terms or by preceptive obligation, but by its being explanatory of the law of nature.' Thus writes Archbishop Bramhall-and to the extent of holding 'the assembling upon the first day of the week for the purposes of public worship and religious instruction to be a law of Christianity of Divine appointment,' Archdeacon Paley supports him [above, ii. 257]. Bishop Prideaux and Bishop Cosin [above, i. 164, and Supp. to the same vol.] had anticipated him, and avoided that confusion between change and superseding into which he fell. But the venerable author of The Saint's Rest, I mean Richard Baxter (though he also is partially Sabbatarian, and indeed holds that the Sabbath was communicated to Adam), is perhaps the clearest expositor of the main points of this view" [above, ii. 28].* This enumeration Dr Hessey does not present as an exhaustive one, such authors being purposely omitted as embrace in their systems features belonging to very different schools -Hooker, for instance, and Bishop Stillingfleet (above, i. 141; ii. 6); “but on the whole," says he," so far as I have been able to classify them, these are the leading opinions upon the relation of Sunday to the Sabbath, which have struggled for mastery in England since the Reformation to the present hour. They have caused and are causing great contention, partly indeed by the principles supposed to be involved in them, but more, perhaps (such is the practical character of the English people), by the results to which one class of them leads, and to which the other

* Dr Hessey gives a summary of the opinions of these five classes of thinkers, which I have omitted, partly for want of room, but chiefly because it seems enough to refer as I have done to what is already stated pretty fully in the present work.

one ' and 'the

is supposed to have a tendency to lead. I say other,' for we may reduce the six to two. The no Sabbath or perpetual Sabbath opinion, and that which advocates the Saturday Sabbath, may be omitted from our estimate altogether; they are rarely to be found now, at least in a substantive shape, though the former of them has reappeared as an excrescence of the purely Ecclesiastical view. Of the remainder, the third and fourth may be called-I do not use the word in an invidious sense-the Sabbatarian, and the fifth and sixth the Dominical set of opinions.

Which of these two antagonistic opinions has greater reason on its side-whether either of them is entirely free from objection or to be admitted without qualification-whether they have any, and if so, what elements in common, I now invite you to inquire, not indeed directly, but indirectly, by examination, that is, into the origin, history, and present obligation of that Holy Day which we have every interest in honouring, but which is very likely to be dishonoured, if advocated on grounds inconsistent with Scripture, and with the facts of the world without and within. We live in an age in which the titles, so to speak, of our ordinances are examined into with the most exact and juridical strictness. Men, rightly or wrongly, (for my own part I believe rightly), demand that no weaker evidence should be given of the right of the Lord's-day to succeed, in whatever degree, to the honours of the Sabbath, than of the right of a family to possess the temporal honours or the estates of a family which has preceded it. And, let me add, if they find it laying claim to a sanction which cannot be satisfactorily substantiated, they are inclined to look incredulously upon, or not to examine at all, the sanctions which it really possesses.' Dr Hessey then proceeds to state the positions maintained in his subsequent Lectures, the chief of which are these :"[1.] That the Lord's-day (a festival on the first day in each week in memory of our Lord's resurrection) is of Divine institution and peculiarly Christian in its character, as being indicated in the New Testament, and having been acknowledged and observed by the apostles and their immediate followers as distinct from the Sabbath (or Jewish festival on the seventh day in each week), the obligation to observe which is denied, both expressly and by implication, in the New Testament. [2.] That in the two centuries after the death of St John the Lord's-day was never confounded with the Sabbath, but carefully distinguished from it, as an institution under the law of liberty, as observed on a different day and with different feelings; and moreover, that, as a matter of fact, it was exempt from the severity of the provisions which had been the characteristic of the Sabbath in theory, or in practice, or in both. [3.] That after the first three centuries, a new era in the history of the Lord's-day commenced; tendencies towards Sabbatarianism, or confusion of the Christian with the Jewish institution, beginning to manifest themselves. These, however, were slight, until the end of the fifth century, and are traceable chiefly to and in the civil legislation of the period.

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Afterwards they developed themselves more decidedly; Sabbatarianism became at length systematised, in one of its phases, in the ante-Reformation Church both in England and on the Continent by the later Schoolmen, probably in their desire to lay down exact rules for consciences, and under a fancied necessity of urging the precedent of Jewish enactments in support of Christian holy-days. [4.] That Sabbatarianism, of every phase, was expressly repudiated by the chief reformers of almost every country (even by Calvin, the friend of Knox, and by Knox himself, who is supposed, though incorrectly, to have introduced it into Scotland), and in particular that it does not appear in the fully authorised documents of the Church of England. [9.] That the position that the Fourth Commandment is binding in the very letter, and par excellence the ground for the observance of our weekly festival, proves too much, for it would drive us either to the observance of Saturday (as the advanced and more consistent Sabbatarians urged), or, at the very least, to a Judaic observance of the Lord's-day. [10.] That Sabbatarianism, the strange varieties of which really demand serious notice, is a return not merely to Judaism but to theoretic Romanism. [11.] That the mention of God's rest after the Creation in the Fourth Commandment, and the introduction of the word 'Remember,' do not prove that the Patriarchs observed or even knew of a Sabbath before Moses used the words,To-morrow is a Sabbath,' &c. [12.] That this assertion is quite compatible with the existence of an hebdomadal division of time anterior to the days of Moses. [13.] That it is strengthened by the fact that the heathen were never reproached with the non-observance of the Sabbath, which we may presume they would have been, had the obligation to observe it been a moral one, i.e., a matter of natural law. . . . [20.] That though the Sabbath, as an ordinance, has passed away, and though neither apostles nor early writers allude to it or to the Fourth Commandment as a precedent or as the ground for observing the Lord'sday, we may conceive the analogy of them to have been among the reasons which determined the proportion of time which should be the Lord's. [21.] That the same analogy may direct us, though in a much fainter degree, because of the different characters of the two dispensations, to the employments and enjoyments suitable or not unsuitable to the Lord's-day. [22.] That on the Sabbath itself there appears to have been a greater liberty of employment and enjoyment than is generally supposed; and that our Lord, so far as He dealt with it, concerned Himself, not with proving that it was about to expire (this it was to do, of course, when the ceremonial and political laws generally were to expire), but in purifying it from superstitions, in making it practically useful so long as it should last, and in redeeming it from the charge of enjoining absolute inactivity. [23.] That still, though the Lord'sday is not to be Judaic in the way of over-strictness, it is not to be Judaic (in the sense in which the later Jews were often reproached by the Fathers for the use of their Sabbaths) in the way of license;