THE EARLY CHRISTIAN SABBATH - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

The Early Christian Sabbath
this case, however, we find human laws suppressing that which God has expressly
commanded, the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath. We find men putting in its place a
day for which God has made no provision whatever at any
Time. Namely, the day of the sun. Surely here we have a mark, an evidence, of the desire
of willful men to set up their own wishes against the wishes of God, and to establish their
own traditions instead of the things which God has commanded.
The Sunday stands therefore in a most unfortunate situation, and the Sabbath,
although it has for centuries been flouted, still remains the rest day of God, the day of
which Christ Himself is Lord and Master.
12. Sunday Supported by Superstition
WE do not know what were the feelings of the common people of the early
centuries of the Christian Era concerning the observance of Sunday. The constant
repetition, for hundreds of years, of Sunday blue laws indicates that it was accepted
reluctantly.
This entirely human institution, forced upon the people by ecclesiastical and civil
authorities, evidently met with resistance, probably stubborn in many places. However,
the pressure of laws by church and state governing the keeping of Sunday had effect. The
substitution of the Sunday for the Sabbath was, in the main, accomplished by the tenth
century after Christ.
In the West, where Rome wielded its most direct influence, the Sabbath was more
readily disregarded than in the East. On the other hand, the ritual of the Creek Orthodox
Church shows that throughout the medieval centuries worship on the Sabbath was
provided in the churches.
Since the blue laws proved difficult to enforce, another method of Sunday
emphasis was developed. Superstition was brought to its aid. We know of this through
stories of people supposedly crippled for desecrating Sunday. An eager chronicler of this
sort of thing was a man named Gregory, a sixth-century bishop of the city of Tours in
France.
Two hundred years before Gregory's day, the bishop of Tours had been a man by
the name of Martin, important in the history of early Christianity. Because Martin was so
highly regarded he became a patron saint of France, the church over which he presided,
and where he was buried, became a shrine, patronized by those who believed in
intercession of the spirits of dead saints. To Tours came people from all over France to
worship and pray, to seek protection from their enemies, and to be healed of their
infirmities.
Gregory of Tours felt highly honored in being made bishop of a church once
presided over by so great a churchman and saint as Martin, and went to great lengths to
show St. Martin's power in caring for those who sought his aid. In presenting the record,
Bishop Gregory describes, among other cases, the healing of people who, he would have
us believe, were crippled for working on Sunday, and then, we are told, successfully
solicited St. Martin for healing. Here are a few cases from Gregory's writings.
42