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Even Protestants acknowledge the Biblical support for the Saturday Sabbath: Anglican/Episcopal Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism , vol. 1, pp.334, 336. "And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day .... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it."
Canon Eyton, The Ten Commandments , pp. 52, 63, 65. "There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday .... into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters.... The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday ."
Anglican/Episcopal Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday , Article 12. THE RIGHT REV. GEORGE FRANKLIN SEYMOUR, S.T.D., LL.D “We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, catholic, apostolic Church of Christ.”
Phillip Carrington, quoted in Toronto Daily Star, Oct 26, 1949 [Carrington, Anglican archbishop of Quebec, spoke the above in a message on this subject delivered to a packed assembly of clergymen. It was widely reported at the time in the news media]. "The Bible commandment says on the seventh-day thou shalt rest. That is Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday."
Baptist Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, a paper read before a New York ministers' conference, Nov. 13, 1893, reported in New York Examiner , Nov.16, 1893. "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. "To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question . . . never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated. "Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history . . . . But what a pity it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!"
William Owen Carver, The Lord's Day in Our Day , p. 49. "There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance."
Congregationalist Dr. R. W. Dale, The Ten Commandments (New York: Eaton &Mains), p. 127-129. " . . . it is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath - . . 'Me Sabbath was founded on a specific Divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation to observe Sunday .... There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday." Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890 "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." Timothy Dwight, Theology:
Explained and Defended (1823), Sermon
107, vol. 3, p. 258. " . . . the Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive Church called the Sabbath."
Disciples of Christ Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, Feb. 2, 1824,vol. 1. no. 7, p. 164. "'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? when? and by whom? No man can tell. No; it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned must be changed before the observance, or respect to the reason, can be changed! It is all old wives' fables to talk of the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex officio - I think his name is Doctor Antichrist."
First Day Observance , pp. 17, 19. "The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change."
Lutheran The Sunday Problem , a study book of the United Lutheran Church (1923), p. 36. "We have seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish sabbath faded from the mind of the Christian Church, and how completely the newer thought underlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church. We have seen that the Christians of the first three centuries never confused one with the other, but for a time celebrated both."
Augsburg Confession of Faith art. 28; written by Melanchthon, approved by Martin Luther, 1530; as published in The Book of Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Henry Jacobs, ed. (1911), p. 63. Also in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christiandom, 4th Edition, vol 3, p. 64. "They [Roman
Catholics] refer to the Sabbath Day, as having been changed into the
Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it seems. Neither is there any
example whereof they make more than concerning the changing of the Sabbath
Day. Great, say they, is the power of the Church, since it has dispensed
with one of the Ten Commandments!"
Dr. Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and Church Henry John Rose, tr. (1843), p. 186. "The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic Church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday."
John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday , pp. 15, 16. "But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel .... These churches err in their teaching, for Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect."
Methodist Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, p.26. "Take the
matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the
church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but
there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer
the Jewish Sabbath to that day." John Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., John Emory, ed. (New York: Eaton & Mains), Sermon 25, vol. 1, p. 221. "But, the moral law contained in the ten commandments, and
enforced by the prophets, he [Christ] did not take away. It was not the
design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never
can be broken .... Every part of this law must remain in force upon all
mankind, and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any
other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the
nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each
other." Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, 1902 edition, pp 180-181, 171 [Binney (1802-1878), Methodist minister and presiding elder, whose Compendium was published for forty years in many languages, also wrote a Methodist New Testament Commentary]. "It is true that there is no positive
command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first
day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from
His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe
that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition." Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942 pg. 26 "Take the matter of sunday. There are indications in the new testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day."
Dwight L. Moody D. L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting (Fleming H. Revell Co.: New York), pp. 47, 48. The Sabbath
was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth
commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath
already existed when God Wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai.
How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when
they will admit that the other nine are still binding?"
"I honestly believe that this commandment [the Sabbath commandment] is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated [abolished], but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath' [mark 2:27]. It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was - in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age." Presbyterian T. C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp.474, 475. "The Sabbath is a part of the decalogue - the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution . . . . Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand . . . . The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath." Others William Dornville, “Examination of Six Texts”: "Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the sabbatical edict of Constantine in A.D. 321"
Prof. Brerewood: “Treatise on the Sabbath” "They know little who do not know that the
ancient Sabbath remained and was observed by the Eastern churches three
hundred years after our Savior's passion" Peter Heylyn, Church of England: “History of the Sabbath” "Take which you will, either the Fathers
or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord's Day instituted by any
apostolical mandate, no Sabbath set on foot by them on the first day of
the week" "Neither did he(Jesus), or his disciples, ordain another Sabbath in the place of this, as if they had intended only to shift the day; and to transfer this honor to some other time. Their doctrine and their practise are directly contrary, to so new a fancy. It is true, that in some tract of time, the Church in honor of his resurrection, did set apart that day on the which he rose, to holy exercises: but this upon their own authority, and without warrant from above, that we can hear of; more then the generall warrant which God gave his Church, that all things in it be done decently, and in comely order." Part 2, Ch.2, p.7
William Prynne, a 17th century Puritan: “Dissertations on the Lord's Day.” "The seventh-day Sabbath was solemnized [i.e. observed] by Christ, the Apostles and the primitive Christians - until the Council of Laodicea did, in a manner, quite abolish the observance of it. The Council (A.D. 364) first settled the observance of the Lord's Day"
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