The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-22 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY

TO THE EDITOR OF TILE SUN.
SIR,—As you have had the goodness to insert my
short letter, proposing the employment of clerhs of
the Jewish persuaqian for the Sunday dutifs in the
Post Office if it will be the means of liberating any
conscientious dissenters from the faith given to
Christians, you will perhaps not be unwilling to add
some elucidations and corroborations on the subject.
Is it or is it not the creed of Christians in general,
and of the Church of England and most of the Dis-
senting sects in particular, that the Apostles are our
last and final authority for what is and is not the
Christian rule and law, so far as sincere though im-
perfect judgment can interpret their decisions?
Is it not, for instance, notorious and palpable, that
the great head and fountain of Christianity left many
points undetermined and untouched, which the
Apostles who succeeded him, undertook both to touch
and to determine f For example, is it not plain that
Christ never forbade the observance of the Jewish
rites and ceremonies, circumcision included ; but on
the contrary submitted to them all himself ? And is
not the reason why we are not at this moment cir-
cumcised, and do not submit to the Jewish law in
matters of meats and drinks and other observances,
simply and nakedly because the Apostles, upon
authority they doubtless believed sufficient, undertook
afterwards to prohibit what their leader had not for•
bidden ?
Is it then, or is it not, a simple matter of record,
and to be settled by reference to documents in the
same manner as if the dispute were whether the read-
ing of "thou shalt" or "thou shalt not" commit
adultery was the right one—that the Apostle who is
sometimes called the Great Apostle, as having taken
the lead in settling all points relating to the part of
the church which was not of Jewish origin, has dis-
tinctly enumerated the keeping " the Sabbaths," or
as our version has it, " the Sabbath-days," along with
restrictions in " meat or in drink, or in respect of an
holiday, or of the new moon," as what the Christians
he addresses were not to allow man to enforce upon
them, and they refused to allow accordingly ?
But perhaps it was only a transfer. Perhaps the
Apostles have said, " What you are not to be judged
in on the last day of the week, allow yourselves to
b 3 judged in on the next. Abstain from your
worldly callings on the first day of the week. Do no
manner of work, thou and thy son, and thy daughter;
and go no more than a Sabbath•day's journey upon
it." If they did, where is it ? Every man knows in
his heart that there is no such direction in any part
of the Apostolic writings; that though minute to the
utmost on almost every point of Christian doctrine
and deportment, they never attempted to instil this
modern great commandment ; that all which is to be
collected is, enat they called the first day of the week
" the Lord's" or Christ's Day, in commemoration of
the Resurrection, and assembled and made charitable
collections on it ; and that all the rest is forgery.
I wait for a reply, from that dignitary of the
Church of England who has chosen to put himself
forward most prominently on the present occasion, to
tell us why and on what authority he undertakes to
abrogate the authority of St. Paul, and intimate that
Divine judgments will fall upon us unless we con•
sent to put the authority of James of London in its
place.

Does the Church, of which he professes to be a
member, acknowledge anything like his tenets ?
Examine her Catechism and Articles, and see. The
Church of England in its Catechism gives the Ten
Commandments of Moses, and then proceeds to com-
ment upon and impress such of them as it conceived
to be binding on those under its instruction. No-
body can charge the composers of the Church Cate-
chism with being averse to impress anything which
tended to parochial discipline and rural order; and
their work was clearly executed under an enlightened
consciousness, that it would come to a great many
more apprentices than Princes of the blood. Yet the
Church of England in its Catechism as utterly ignores
the whole Fourth Commandment, as it does the pro-
hibition of the arts of statuary and design delivered in
the First. A man must be mad, who in his waking
moments would maintain that this is not a distinct
declaration that the Church of England denies the
obligation of Sabbatical observance. If it believed in
a transfer of the day, why did it never say
so ? Why did it so utterly omit and re-
fuse to utter, upon a point which a sec
tion of its professing followers would persuade us
was at the root of all morality and civil discipline ?
In the Articles it is all the same. The only Article at
all bearing on the subject is the Seventh ; where it is
laid down that neither the Ceremonies and Rites nor
the Civil precepts of the Law given to Moses are
binding on Christian men, " yet notwithstanding no
Christian man whatsoever is free from the
obedience of the Commandments which are
called Moral." Which taken in conjunction with
the Church's refusal to impress the duty of
obedience to the Fourth Commandment in her
Catechism, is declaring as plainly as honest words
can do it, that she considers this Commandment as
making part of the " Ceremonies and Rights or Civil
precepts," and not of " the Commandments which are
called Moral." As I have not the Homilies before me,
I can only say that there is no Homily on Sabbath-
breaking in the list. Her Table of Feasts she heads
with " All the Sundays in the Year," which is
as decidedly hostile to the notion of ascetic restric-
tions on those days, as" All the Fridays in the Year,
except Christmas Day, in the Table of Feasts, is
indicative of something like the opposite.
And what said the early Protestant Reformers on
this point ? The men who drew up and signed
the Confession of Augsburg, the earliest declaration
of Protestanism in a public or political form, enume-
rates the attempt to enforce the observation of the
Sabbath on the first day of the week, among the
Anti-Christian corruptions they were prepared to resist
with their lives. If any doubt this, let him consult
the copy in the British Museum, printed at the period.
Luther, too, whose example would be brought
heavily to bear against us if it had been the other
way, made a point of purchasing some article or other
on the Sunday, to prove his Christian liberty, on the
same principle that the Spaniards and Portuguese to
this hour make a point of eating pork. Such at least
is the account given, but as I have not the means of
reference at the time of writing, I shall dwell on that
no further.

To descend from the Reformers and the Fathers of
the Church of England to our own times. It is noto-
rious that men of the highest character in the Church,
whose position placed them above the fear of mobbish
outcry, have given their undisguised adherence to the
Apostolic prohibition of Sabbatical observance, though
they readily admitted the uses which might be derived
from the examples of devotional and charitable exer-
cises on the first day of the week, bequeathed to us
by the early Christians. Paley, Arnold, Whately,
will occur to the recollection of your readers. While
on the other side will be found only a collection of
what it is no uncharity to call quibblers and time-
servers, who would have quibbled and time served
just as well in support of the Pope's right to depose
kings, if it had been set before them.
I should like to know what proportion of those
against whom the fulminations of the Anti• Christian

party in the Church of England have been directed—
Ministers of State and Members of Parliament in•

eluded—know or have any idea of these three facts :
" That the last and greatest Apostle of Christianity
prohibits the enforcement of Sabbatical observance.

" That the early Protestant Reformers included it
in their list of grievances.
" That the Church of England officially ignores
the existence of any such duty, and refuses so much as
to intimate to a parish-boy, that there is such a thing
as Sabbath-breaking in the list of juvenile temp-
tations."

And now for the motives which have operated to
Iroduce the present storm against the Christian rule.

It is not etiquette to impute— motives to individuals;
but no man with a touch of philosophy will give up
the right of sa3ing that motives are in the world.
" First, then, the desire:of ecclesiastical domination,
and the never-to be neglected pleasure of enforcing
opinions on others.
" Secondly, the wish to embarrass a Ministry,
which has already earned the thanks of the honest
followers of Jesus of Nazareth, by refusing to recog-
nize those on whom the cholera fell; as sinners above
all the inhabitants of our Galilee.

"Thirdly, a desire to obstruct the system of im.
provement in the Post Office, and, if possible, to re
turn to the old ways of darkness, if that eye of the
public can be wholly or partially closed. And here I
happen to have knowledges which some have not ;
but which many will be able and ready to confirm.
I happened to represent in Parliament a town of some
standing in a commercial view; and it came to light
that there had been great contests going on upon the
questions of cheap postage and acceleration of the
mails. The leading men were found saying, "Two
things we licg of the Government;—that our letters
may be dear, and that they may be long in coming
to us." And how, on examination, did this aversion
solve itself ? The leading men, on the occurrence of
a sharp turn in the course of trade, the safe arrival of
a fleet which they might otherwise have been tempted
to insure, and other cases which may be conceived,
thought nothing of twenty pounds, which was the
cost of a chaise and four, with an
express from London, so long as it
gave them the advantage of the little men being kept
in ignorance. Another still more naked reason was
assigned for another quarter. Certain commercial
establishments had been in the habit of charging ten-
pence each for letters supposed to be written for their
numerous customers ; the substance of which they
finally communicated by perhaps making one letter
serve for all, and the difference of course went into
their pockets. Exactly the same feeling is at work
in London. To a leading house it is as nothing, to
have to pay for the transmission of an important
piece of news on the Sunday. The very fact of its
being withheld from the little men, pays for it over
and over at the year's end. There is no use in blus•
tering; this is the reason why the great helms in