THE CHURCHES COMMENT

BAPTIST

“There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day but that Sabbath day was not Sunday… It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week… Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament – absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.”
From a paper by Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, author of The Baptist Manual

 CATHOLIC

“You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we (Catholics) never sanctify.”
James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, p. 111

CHRISTIAN

“There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a charge.”
First-day Observance, pp. 17,19

CHURCH OF CHRIST

“I do not believe that the Lord’s Day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day.”
Alexander Campbell, Washington Reporter, October 8, 1821

CONGREGATIONALIST

“The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.”
Dr. Lyman Abbott, Christian Union, January 19, 1882

EPISCOPAL

“Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None.”
Manual of Christian Doctrine, p. 127

METHODIST

“Take the matter of Sunday … there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day.”
Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942

LUTHERAN

“The observance of the Lord’s Day (Sunday) is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church.”
Augsburg Confession of Faith, quoted in Catholic Sabbath Manual, part 2, Chapter 1, Section 10

PRESBYTERIAN

“The Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is not in the Scriptures and was not by the primitive church called the Sabbath.” Dwight’s Theology, vol. 4, p. 401

DICTIONARY

“The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord’s Day (meaning Sunday) for the Jewish Sabbath (or the first for the seventh day) … and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the Fourth Commandment, has no basis whatever either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity.”
Sir William Smith & Samuel Cheetham, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 182, Article “Sabbath”

ENCYCLOPEDIA

“It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day.”
M’Clintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. 9, p. 196

NOTE: Though some individual pastors may argue the point, we have not found one single Sunday-keeping organization yet, which did not in its official literature plainly admit that there is no Scripture to support Sunday observance.