page_title: Sabbatarianism
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sabbatarianism / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of a Ethiopian Icon showing St. George. Possibly early 20c, possibly older.
context_page_description: Sabbatarianism is a view within Christianity that advocates the observation of the Sabbath, in keeping with the Ten Commandments. Its historical origins lie in early Christianity, later in the Eastern Church and Irish Church, and then in Puritan Sabbatarianism, which delineated precepts for keeping Sunday, the Lord's Day, holy in observance of Sabbath commandment principles. This observance of Sunday as a day of worship and rest is the purest form of first-day Sabbatarianism, a view which was historically heralded by nonconformist denominations, such as Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, as well as many Episcopalians. The impact of first-day Sabbatarianism on Western culture is manifested by influences that remain today, such as Sunday blue laws.
  Seventh-day Sabbatarianism is a movement that generally embraces a literal reading of the Sabbath commandment that provides for both worship and rest on the seventh day of the week. It is also a memorial of creation Seventh-day Baptists leave most other Sabbath considerations of observance to individual conscience.
context_section_description: The Biblical Sabbath is informed by the Genesis creation narrative and has a formal origin before the giving of the Ten Commandments. Most Christian Churches, including the Roman
  Catholic Church, Methodist Churches and Reformed Churches, have traditionally held that law in the Old Covenant has three components: ceremonial, moral, and civil. They teach that while the ceremonial and civil (judicial) laws have been abolished, the moral law as contained in the Ten Commandments still continues to bind Christian believers. Among these Ten Commandments, which are believed by Jews and Christians to be written by the finger of God, is "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy."
  According to the New Testament, after the resurrection of Jesus he appeared to his disciples on the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1-19), the Holy Spirit was sent to the Church on the first day of the week (Pentecost Sunday), the disciples celebrated the Eucharist and took up collections on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:1-2); in addition the first day of the week is referred to as the Lord's Day in the Revelation 1:10—these findings, for Christians, served as the divine institution of the Lord's Day as a fulfillment of the Jewish Shabbat, a change that these Christians believed was foreshadowed in Isaiah 65:17. In distinguishing the observances performed on the Christian Sabbath from those performed on the Jewish Sabbath, Jonathan Edwards thus wrote:
  We are taught by Christ, that the doing of alms and showing of mercy are proper works for the Sabbath-day. When the Pharisees found fault with Christ for suffering his disciples to pluck the ears of corn, and eat on the Sabbath, Christ corrects them with that saying, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice;” Mat. 12:7. And Christ teaches that works of mercy are proper to be done on the Sabbath, Luke 13:15, 16, and 14:5.
  
  The Apostolic Constitutions (ca. 380), in Section II, reveals that the early Church kept both the seventh-day Sabbath, observed on Saturday, as well as the Lord's Day, celebrated on the first-day (Sunday): "But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day festival; because the former is the memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection." Section VII reemphasizes this: 
  Be not careless of yourselves, neither deprive your Saviour of His own members, neither divide His body nor disperse His members, neither prefer the occasions of this life to the word of God; but assemble yourselves together every day, morning and evening, singing psalms and praying in the Lord’s house: in the morning saying the sixty-second Psalm, and in the evening the hundred and fortieth, but principally on the Sabbath-day. And on the day of our Lord’s resurrection, which is the Lord’s day, meet more diligently, sending praise to God that made the universe by Jesus, and sent Him to us, and condescended to let Him suffer, and raised Him from the dead. Otherwise what apology will he make to God who does not assemble on that day to hear the saving word concerning the resurrection, on which we pray thrice standing in memory of Him who arose in three days, in which is performed the reading of the prophets, the preaching of the Gospel, the oblation of the sacrifice, the gift of the holy food?
  In the Didache, the Twelve Apostles commanded believers to "Gather together each Sunday, break bread and give thanks, first confessing your sins, that your sacrifice may be pure."
  Until the Council of Laodicea, "the Sabbath had been kept in many Christian Churches." It was upheld in the fourth century by the ancient Church of the East, as well as in the sixth century by the Celtic Churches. Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth century Church Father, implored the faithful to observe both the seventh-day Sabbath and the Lord's Day: "With what eyes do you regard the Lord's Day, you who have desecrated the Sabbath? Do you know that these two days are related, that if you wrong one of them, you will stumble against the other?" Nevertheless, Johann Lorenz von Mosheim stated that the practice o
caption: Ethiopian Orthodox icon depicting St. George, the Crucifixion, as well as the Madonna and Child
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