In the April 2015 General Conference, President Russell M. Nelson, who was then serving as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, explained that he did not need a list of dos and don’ts to tell him how to behave on the Sabbath, a day that is traditionally honored on Sunday by Latter-day Saints and many other Christians.[1] He had learned from his study of the scriptures that his conduct and attitude on the Sabbath “constituted a sign” between him and his Heavenly Father. Elder Nelson explained that whenever he needed to decide whether an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath, he simply asked himself, “What sign do I want to give to God?” That question made his “choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.”[2]

Elder Nelson’s remarks are a good reminder that questions about the Sabbath day are asked by believers in every generation. As the previous chapters in this volume have shown, a variety of questions about the Sabbath day have been asked and discussed for centuries.[3] In this chapter, I will explore sixteenth-century protestant, or evangelical, Sabbatarian[4] teachings in Europe and England during the sixteenth century.[5] To make a complicated subject within a religiously tumultuous century easier to portray, I will frame my discussion around five common theological questions:

1. How should believers feel about the Sabbath day?
2. What are the benefits of Sabbath-day worship?
3. Why is the Sabbath day theologically significant?
4. What activities are appropriate for the Sabbath?
5. How do believers make the Sabbath day holy?

I will then examine theological teachings published between 1520 and 1600 to show that even though sixteenth-century religious reformers and theologians largely agreed that the fourth commandment should be obeyed by the Christians of their day, they disagreed on how the Sabbath day should be observed. Most early evangelical reformers strongly rejected strict obedience to formulated behavioral rules or legalistic interpretations of Sabbath observance in favor of maintaining what they called Christian liberty. However, later reformers began to support legalistic interpretations in reaction to what they saw as neglect or abuse of the Sabbath day, though they often differed in the degree of legalism they thought was appropriate.[6]

How Should Christians Feel about the Sabbath Day?

Robert Mannyng of Brunne [7] (ca. 1275–ca. 1338), a medieval English chronicler, poet, and Gilbertine monk, fervently desired to help English laypeople avoid sin.[8] In 1303 he wrote Handlyng Synne, a long Middle English poem composed to provide spiritually edifying and wholesome entertainment for those who could not read and who loved to hear stories and rhymes. In Handlyng Synne, Mannyng reviewed the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, and confession.[9] As he taught about each commandment in the Decalogue, he explained that “Holy Sunday men ought to spare, Holy Sunday is before all free.” Mannyng advised believers that they could keep the Sabbath “well” by praying, by performing God’s errands, and by seeking to be forgiven of their misdeeds. He also felt that believers should avoid going to the tavern, a place he expressively described as the “devil’s knife,” and should not engage in wrestling, field sports, carols, or plays on Sunday.[10] Mannyng was not alone in wanting believers to respect the Sabbath. A contemporary Dominican friar and preacher, John Bromyard (d. 1352), dispiritedly observed how little the Christians of his day were doing for their souls on Sundays and how burdensome they seemed to find it. He wrote,

They get up late, and come late to church, and wish to be so little there, that they will urge the priest to be quick because they have a friend coming to dinner. If there should be a sermon about their salvation, they excuse themselves from hearing it, by saying that it is getting too late for them to remain. . . . Even the short time that they cannot help remaining in the church they spend in unnecessary talk, forgetting that the house of God is the house of prayer. Then they go away to dinner or to the tavern, and there they are in no hurry for some spend the whole rest of the day and even till late at night, like the Amalecites “eating and drinking and as it were keeping a festival day.” (1 Kings xxv. 16)[11]

For Christians in the Middle Ages, resting on Sunday was a general law of the Catholic church and had been since the Decretals of Gregory IX were issued in 1234 A.D.[12] The law was designed to grant believers leisure time for worship in an economically hard-pressed society that easily distracted people’s minds away from God.[13] However, over time and in response to complaints that Sunday leisure was being abused, ecclesiastical and civic leaders became more insistent that Christians were morally bound to observe Sunday as a day dedicated to God[14] and that believers were supposed to follow “the spiritual exercises prescribed and enforced by ecclesiastical authorities on Sundays,”[15] including attending morning and afternoon church services, ceasing all servile work for twenty-four hours, and avoiding inappropriate recreational activities.[16]

Thomas Arundel (1353–1414), the Archbishop of Canterbury in England, was one religious leader who was very displeased with violations of the Catholic church’s Sabbath expectations. In 1414, he became so upset that the barbers around him were violating Sabbath rest that he complained to the mayor and aldermen of London. He claimed that because the barbers had no “zeal for the law of God,” they were pursuing their craft on the Lord’s Day “just as busily and in the same way as on any day in the week.” He threatened excommunication and wanted the city to levy heavy fines against these Sabbath breakers.[17] Arundel’s reactions show how easily deviation from the Catholic church’s expectations for Sabbath behavior could result in ecclesiastical and civic discipline. However, a growing number of Christians were becoming more and more frustrated with these penalties because they made the Sabbath feel like a heavy encumbrance rather than a day of rest.[18] A century later, the theological dissatisfactions of one Christian would lead to significant and widespread religious upheaval, generating heated debates about many doctrines, including the Sabbath day and how it should be observed.

Between 1518 and 1525, the German Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483–1546) successfully persuaded large lay audiences across Europe that the Catholic church had strayed from primitive Christianity and needed reform. Through a flood of printed materials primarily written in German,[19] Luther argued that scripture was “a source of authority independent of the church,” that the individual Christian was “an independent authority in the interpretation of scripture,”[20] and that believers had a right to “pronounce on doctrine.”[21] And pronounce he did. Luther’s theological teachings, including the supremacy of scripture over religious tradition and justification by faith rather than works, effectively shattered the Christian unity of Europe that had existed since 1054 AD, paving the way for the rise of religious pluralism. Because of Luther’s emphasis on sola scriptura (scripture alone), a phrase which essentially means that God’s word is sufficient for understanding all Christian truth,[22] interest in Old Testament laws and how those laws applied to contemporary Christians significantly increased.[23] Two of the many doctrines under discussion during the 1520s were (1) whether Christians were morally bound to observe Sunday as a day dedicated to God and (2) what believers were supposed to do or not do on Sunday.

As the central figure in the formative years of the evangelical reformation, Luther and his theological approach to Sabbath-day observance were extremely influential.[24] In his catechisms and other writings, Luther stated that the “commandment concerning the Sabbath” was still in effect and applied “to the whole world,” but he condemned the Catholic church’s decision to declare Sunday as the Christian Sabbath, and he rejected legalistic understandings that imposed burdensome rules such as fasting, praying, sexual abstinence, collecting on loans, or resting from daily labor.[25] He passionately declared that if anyone established Sabbath observance on a legalistic foundation, he wanted Christians to revolt. He ordered believers burdened with a legalistic Sabbath “to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do anything” that would remove what he felt to be an “encroachment on Christian liberty.”[26]

However, as much as Luther wanted Christians to be free of heavy Sabbath regulations, he also boldly denounced neglectful behavior on the Sabbath day, including failing to attend church “to hear God’s word”; failing to improve one’s understanding of God’s word; or wasting the day in greedy frivolities, idleness, or drunkenness.[27] In Luther’s mind, there was a middle way between punitive legalism and thoughtless neglect. The middle way involved devoting oneself to “the [w]ord of God . . . at home and especially in church.”[28] Luther believed that the word of God was “the sanctuary above all sanctuaries” and that it was “the treasure which sanctifies everything.” For Luther the Sabbath became delightful when one heard and studied the word of God because God’s word awakened “new understanding, pleasure, and devotion,” it constantly created “clean hearts and minds,” and it made Christians holy.[29] Thus, Luther declared that at whatever hour “God’s Word is taught, preached, heard, read or meditated upon, there the person, day, and work are sanctified” because the word “makes saints of us all.”[30] This perspective, along with his rejection of the Catholic church’s authority to declare Sunday as the Christian Sabbath, caused Luther to avoid designating one day of the week as the Sabbath, since one could “rest, celebrate, and keep the Sabbath on whatever day or at whatever hour God’s word [was] preached.” However, he willingly acknowledged that appointing a specific day, like Sunday, for Christians to gather for worship was an orderly, practical necessity that protected against unnecessary innovation. But more importantly for Luther, gathering in church on Sundays provided an essential learning environment because he knew that “God’s word cannot be heard or taught when one is preoccupied with something else or when one is not quiet.”[31]

As persuasive and vociferous as Luther was, he wasn’t the only Christian successfully advocating for religious reform in the early 1500s. In Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), a well-educated Catholic priest who taught himself Greek so that he could study and preach from the Greek New Testament, also revolutionized religious thought. In 1523, Zwingli wrote Sixty-Seven Articles, a document defending specific theological reforms that he felt should be made in the church in Zürich. Among other changes, Zwingli wanted Christ to be the sole remitter of sins and the center of salvation; he wanted the word of God to be the supreme authority; and he wanted priests to be able to marry.[32] Though many of his ideas closely resembled Luther’s, Zwingli claimed that he obtained his teachings from the holy scriptures and not from Luther’s writings which had been circulating around him.[33] One of Zwingli’s earliest biographers wrote that even though the name of Luther “became more celebrated as his books were more and more sedulously thumbed by all,” Zwingli “himself kept away from them” because he wanted people to “perceive the parity in spirit between himself and Luther” that came because both of them drew their ideas “out of the Divine Scriptures.”[34] Zwingli’s theological teachings were popular throughout Europe, spreading across Switzerland and southern Germany, into France and Holland, and across to England and Scotland.[35]

Regarding Sabbath-day observance, Zwingli believed the fourth commandment was a divine law that still applied to the Christians of his day.[36] From the teachings of Christ in the New Testament, Zwingli learned that “the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” He interpreted this to mean that “the Sabbath is in the power of man, not man in the power of the Sabbath.” In other words, if Christians wanted to take delight in the Sabbath, they needed to first comprehend that the day was “for the service of men, not for their oppression.”[37] In Zwingli’s eyes, the Sabbath was supposed to be a wonderful blessing because it freed Christians from day-to-day drudgery and allowed them time to “consider God’s kind deeds with thankfulness.” For him, the Sabbath became a holy day as Christians desired that which was holy and participated in holy behaviors, such as caring for their neighbors, hearing God’s word, praising him, serving him, and caring for their neighbors.[38] Zwingli accepted Sunday as both a traditional and convenient day of worship for Christians, but he wanted flexibility in its observation. He was quite happy for individuals or entire congregations to “transfer the solemnity and rest of the Lord’s Day . . . to some other day” when necessity required.[39] Though Zwingli believed that it was lawful for a Christian to pursue his or her daily labors on Sunday, he felt that attending worship services was a priority that should be attended to first and that doing so enabled and facilitated delight in the Sabbath.[40]

What Benefits Come from Sabbath-day Observance?

In 1524, Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) published the first evangelical treatise about the Sabbath day, entitled Regarding the Sabbath and Statutory Holy Days. Karlstadt was another early German religious reformer who began his career as one of Luther’s allies, but the two parted ways in the mid-1520s due to theological and liturgical differences.[41] Like Luther and Zwingli, Karlstadt argued that the fourth commandment was applicable in a literal sense to the Christians of his time. However, he differed from the other two by envisioning the Sabbath as a day of rest that followed any six consecutive days of labor. Karlstadt felt that God hadn’t dictated a specific day of the week in order to give believers the freedom to “select and set the seventh day” as they pleased.[42]

Despite his desire for weekly flexibility, Karlstadt was much more attentive to behavioral regulations than either Luther or Zwingli, and he placed a greater doctrinal emphasis on the physical and spiritual rest associated with keeping the Sabbath day holy. While Luther accepted that “menservants and maidservants who have gone about their work or trade all week long should also retire for a day to rest and be refreshed,” his main Sabbath focus was assembling to hear the word of God.[43] Karlstadt, however, fervently insisted that no one should work on the Sabbath, including servants and beasts of burden, because he felt that people and animals needed to revive and fortify themselves, “to refresh their bones and restore [their] strength." He also took a unique position in believing that Christians “ought to be idle” during the Sabbath day, “do[ing] nothing, and endur[ing] the long time.” In his mind the Sabbath had been instituted for a person’s “spirit to reach a point of boredom” so that the Christian could “learn something during the idle time.”[44] Additionally, Karlstadt begged Christians to “never forget that the Sabbath included forgiveness of sins” because they could not “be sanctified and enter into God's forgiveness” without it. He vividly described how “it would be good if on a Sabbath we were to put our head in our hands, bow down, and acknowledge our misfortune and weakness with great sorrow” so that Christians would “rush more quickly to the One (who alone cleanses and sanctifies.)” For Karlstadt, Sabbath observance provided essential physical renewal and the opportunity for a spiritual cleansing and sanctifying, an inward change involving a willing rejection of everything that “[was] unholy.”[45] It wasn’t long before another early reformer began elaborating on the importance of physical and spiritual rest on the Sabbath.

Towards the end of 1531, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) replaced Huldrych Zwingli as the main pastor in Zürich. While acting as chaplain, Zwingli had been tragically killed in a battle between evangelical and Catholic forces at Kappel on October 11, 1531. One scholar has described Bullinger as a “wise and patient man and a great preacher” who steered Zurich’s reformation back into stability by refusing to use violence against those who did not share his beliefs.[46] Bullinger exerted considerable theological influence through his preaching and Bible commentaries. He taught that the “Sabbath signifies rest” and explained that “we rest from servile work, in abstaining from sin, and doing our best not to have our own will found in ourselves, nor to work our own works.”[47] Like Karlstadt, Bullinger wasn’t shy about teaching that “outward rest” from physical labors was commanded on the Sabbath “so that spiritual work [would] not be hindered by bodily business.” He candidly wrote,

The Lord allows you sufficient time for your labour, in which to get a living for yourself and your household. For six days you may work, but the Lord claims the seventh day, and requires it to be consecrated to him and his holy rest. Every week has seven days: and of those seven the Lord requires but one for himself. Who then can rightly complain, I beseech you, or say that injury has been done to him? More time is allowed to work in, than to keep the sabbath holy: and the one who requires to have this sabbath kept is God: the maker, the father, and the Lord of all mankind.[48]

In addition to physical rest, Bullinger believed that “the spiritual sabbath is charged especially and above all things.” He argued that Christians should assemble and occupy themselves with four spiritual activities on the Sabbath: 1) hearing the word of God, 2) praising, thanking, and praying to God, 3) administering the sacraments, and 4) relieving the poor. For Bullinger, “these are the duties in which the Lord’s sabbath is kept holy even in the church of Christians. And it is kept holy so much the greater, if an earnest good will to do no evil all the day long is added to these.”[49]

Why is the Sabbath Day Significant?

An exiled English priest and evangelical reformer named William Tyndale (ca. 1494–1536) thought he knew why the Sabbath day had significance. As one of the many people who were inspired by Luther, Tyndale courageously began his own systematic vernacular religious printing campaign from the Low Countries.[50] As the prime spokesman of the first generation of English religious reformers, Tyndale provided the most serious threat to Catholic Christianity and political stability in England in the 1520s and 1530s.[51] Hoping to induce English laypeople to reform the Christian church in England, Tyndale published an English translation of the New Testament (1526), the first to be rendered into English from Greek source texts, followed by an English translation of the first five books of Moses (1530), also the first to be rendered into English from Hebrew source texts. With help from friends and supporters, Tyndale had both volumes ingeniously smuggled into England aboard merchant ships.[52] These illicit translations, along with many expository books written by Tyndale, helped extend European religious debates into England. Vernacular scriptures were particularly important to Tyndale because he believed that the Bible was the touchstone of all truth, and he wanted English laypeople to use it to judge the veracity of all other doctrines and ideas, including his own.[53]

In 1530, Tyndale explained in a marginal note for Exodus 31 that the Sabbath day had two essential purposes: hearing the word of God and spiritually reconciling with God’s will. Tyndale believed that the Sabbath was “a sign” unto Christians to “put them in remembrance that it was the Lord that sanctified them with his holy spirit and not they themselves with their holy works.”[54] In Tyndale’s understanding, signs were given to help Christians remember and understand the covenant of salvation, which was a promise between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost “to restore creation to its original state so man could once again have fellowship with God.”[55] Tyndale believed that Christians who obediently kept the Sabbath day holy demonstrated their belief and trust in God’s covenant promise. As the faithful attended Sabbath worship services and heard the word of God preached to them, God sanctified them through “his holy spirit and word,” making them new creatures, or children of God.[56] Much like Luther, Tyndale felt that the Catholic church’s legalistic behavioral restrictions made Christians superstitious servants of the Sabbath who believed that they were spiritually purified as long as they abstained from bodily labor on Sundays even while neglecting legitimate sanctifying activities like prayer, hearing the word of God, visiting the sick and needy, giving alms, or helping a neighbor.[57] Like other early reformers, Tyndale also rejected a rigid day of the week for the Sabbath, declaring that “we be lords over the sabbath and may yet change it” to a Monday, hold it every tenth day, or have it twice in a week if that were needed to teach Christians properly. Because the covenant was of paramount importance to Tyndale, he went a bit further theologically than other reformers by arguing that Christians didn’t need a specific holy day at all “if the people might be taught without it.”[58] As long as Christians were clearly and effectively instructed to believe that faith “in God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the covenants and appointment made between God and us, is our salvation,” Tyndale was satisfied and wasn’t overly concerned about when or where the instruction occurred.[59]

Tyndale was not alone in believing that the Sabbath was a sign of a perpetual covenant of sanctification. An associate, John Frith (1503–1533), who had a reputation in England and on the Continent for his outstanding learning and scholarly abilities, also advocated for religious reform and published an interpretation of the fourth commandment. Writing from the Tower of London in 1533 while imprisoned on charges of religious heresy, Frith explained that the Sabbath was “instituted and commanded of God to be kept of the children of Israel” as a sign “that it was God which sanctified them with his spirit, and not themselves with their holy works.” He believed that ceremonies, like the Sabbath, ceased after Christ came, explaining that the primitive church abrogated Sabbath observance to give Christians an example of Christian liberty: “that they might know that neither the keeping of the Sabbath, nor of any other day, is necessary.” Along with the continental reformers, Frith willingly accepted the practical realities of reserving a day “in the which the people might come together” to “hear God’s word, receive the sacraments, and give God thanks,” but once those things had been accomplished, he felt that Christians could “return unto their houses and do their business as well as any other day.”[60] In fact, Frith argued that anyone who taught that “a man sinneth which worketh on the holy day” was either weak, ignorant, or of the devil because such a person made “sin in such as God leaveth free.”[61]

Across the English Channel, an early French evangelical reformer named John Calvin (1509–1564) also valued the Sabbath as a perpetual covenant of sanctification. In 1536, Calvin unexpectedly set up shop in Geneva. Having just published the landmark and instantly bestselling text Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin was a wanted man by reformers and Catholics alike. The Institutes was Calvin’s early attempt to standardize the theories of reformed Christianity for those who wanted to know more about the faith. In the volume, he explained his views on such things as justification, the church, the sacraments, original sin, free will, and political governments. Calvin expanded and revised the Institutes many times before publishing the definitive edition in 1559. Calvin initially intended to pass through Geneva, but since the Catholic church and its bishop had been repudiated and no new church had yet been organized, the active reformers in residence quickly pressured Calvin to stay and help them. Calvin’s relationship with the city was long and ultimately fruitful, but it was also marred by theological conflict and his own three-year absence from 1538 to 1541.[62] When he returned to Geneva, Calvin introduced new forms of church government and liturgy and preached over two thousand sermons, many of which touched on the Sabbath day and its observance.[63]

Like Tyndale and Frith, Calvin argued that “the Sabbath was the symbol of sanctification” and that God “commanded the Israelites to rest on the seventh day” so that they would “acknowledge themselves separated by God . . . from the profane nations to be God’s peculiar inheritance.” He believed that God wanted the Israelites “to experience him for their Father in all things” so they would “know that he was their sanctifier.”[64] For these reasons, Calvin believed that the fourth commandment was applicable to the Christians of his day. He taught that Sabbath observance allowed Christians to put aside their own works so that God could perform “his own works” within them. Calvin explained that “God was not satisfied by the people’s resting from their occupations” because their “inward sanctification was always the chief end in view.” Thus he eloquently described the Sabbath as “an outward symbol” that “contained a spiritual mystery” and as “a sacrament” or “a visible figure of an invisible grace.”[65] Like Frith, Calvin felt that the Jewish Saturday Sabbath had been abolished by Jesus Christ at his Resurrection and that “the early Christians had substituted” Sunday, or “what we call the Lord’s day,” for the Saturday Sabbath. The substitution was made “to warn Christians against adhering to a shadowy ceremony.” However, like other reformers, Calvin understood the practical value of a designated day of worship. He declared, “Religious meetings are enjoined us by the word of God; their necessity, experience itself sufficiently demonstrates. But unless these meetings are stated, and have fixed days allotted to them, how can they be held? We must . . . do all things decently and in order.”[66]

What Activities are Appropriate for the Sabbath Day?

As the second generation of evangelical religious reformers slowly began to replace the first, and as the second generation continued to grapple with how to organize church practice, a “widespread practical concern for Sunday observance” with more attention to specific behaviors began to emerge, especially in England.[67] In 1547, for example, the young evangelical king of England, Edward VI (1537–1553), issued a series of injunctions that were intended to advance “the true honour of Almighty God,” suppress “idolatry and superstition,” and “plant true religion” throughout his realms. The twenty-fourth injunction stated that because there was too much “idleness, pride, drunkenness, quarrelling, and brawling” upon “the holy-day” the king wanted his “faithful and loving subjects” to keep the Sabbath “according to God’s holy will and pleasure,” not their own. Consequently, he ordered them to spend their Sabbaths “in hearing the word of God read and taught; in private and public prayer; in [ac]knowledging their offences to God . . . in reconciling themselves charitably to their neighbours . . . in visiting the poor and sick; in using all soberness and godly conversation.” However, the new king wanted all “parsons, vicars, and curates” to be sure to declare to their parishioners “that they may with a safe and quiet conscience, in the time of harvest, labour” upon Sunday so they could “save” their harvests. He did not want any Christian in his realm to “superstitiously abstain from working” on the Sabbath because that approach was inappropriately legalistic and would “grievously offend and displease God.”[68]

A year after Edward VI’s injunctions went into effect, John Hooper (ca.1500–1555), an English reformer, published A Declaration of the Ten Holy Commandments (1548). Because of doctrinal disagreements that got him into trouble with conservative members of the English clergy, Hooper moved to Zürich in the late 1540s, where he developed a close friendship with Bullinger. Hooper eventually returned to England and became the Bishop of Gloucester and then of Worcester. Bullinger’s influence on Hooper’s Sabbatarian thought is evident in Hooper’s prescriptions of what constituted holy works on the Sabbath; however, Hooper went further than Bullinger by also prescribing what shouldn’t be done on the Sabbath. Ironically, Hooper’s prohibitions resemble medieval Catholic restrictions and show how the theological pendulum was swinging back towards previously rejected elements of Catholic legalism.

In A Declaration, Hooper explained that even though the Sabbath day was not holier than any other day of the week, “God sanctified” it and “appointed it” to be separated from other days so it could be used for holy purposes, such as “study of the scripture, hearing of the word of God, [calling] upon God with ardent prayer, [using] and exercis[ing] the sacraments of God, confer[ing] and . . . giv[ing] . . . alms to the comforting of the poor.”[69] For him, “That day is always most holy in the which we most apply and give ourselves unto holy works.” Therefore, on Sunday, a Christian should “call his [intentions] & thoughts from the lusts, pleasures, vanities, and concupiscence of the world.” Hooper strongly objected to those who abused “the rest, and ease of the Sabbath with sports, games, and pastimes, keeping of markets & fairs . . . and unlawful plays.” He even went so far as to discuss the development of self-discipline, what he called mortification, by discoursing on the need to be patient in adversity and temperate in felicity, including with “meat, drink, and all other things.” In his mind, gluttony and drunkenness, especially on the Sabbath, could only be overcome by fasting and prayer. Hooper closed his discussion of the fourth commandment with a plea: “Would to God people would follow the scripture in this mortification, then the world would amend doubtless, but there is now nothing but a carnal liberty of the gospel which hindereth much the glory of God.”[70] Because Hooper was very popular as a preacher and lecturer, his published writings were widely read and thus influenced later Sabbatarian developments in Elizabethan England.[71]

How do Christians make the Sabbath Day holy?

Thomas Becon (ca. 1512–1567), a theologian, clergyman, and one of England’s leading evangelical writers between the 1540s and 1560s, believed that setting one day aside each week for God was a spiritually vital act of consecration. Once Queen Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne and made reformed religion acceptable in England again, Becon returned from continental exile where he had been living to escape Catholic Queen Mary I’s persecution of evangelicals. In 1564, Becon published a massive three-volume edition of his collected writings, which included the first printed edition of A new catechism, a dialogue between a fictional father and son that presented “Christ and his doctrine” so plainly that Becon felt “no man living” could be deceived.”[72] Becon’s fictional characters discussed many subjects, including education, the Decalogue, and the study of both the scriptures and classical works.

While addressing the fourth commandment, the fictional father asks his fictional son, “What is it to sanctify the Sabbath day?” Echoing both Bullinger and Hooper, who were early influences on Becon’s theology, the son answers, “Not to pass over that day idly in lewd pastimes,” which included feasting, throwing dice, playing cards, dancing, bear baiting, bowling, shooting, laughing, prostitution, bargaining, buying, selling, or going to fairs or markets. In Becon’s eyes, these activities profaned and defiled a day that was supposed to be holy. To make the day holy, Becon wanted “the mind utterly sequestered from all worldly things,” and he wanted the body “free from all servile works” so that Christians could apply their whole selves to “godly and spiritual exercises.” Becon believed that a deliberate and careful consecration of the Sabbath would lead to an individual consecration, which meant “the whole giving over of ourselves unto the good will of God, to work in us by his Holy Spirit, whatsoever his blessed pleasure shall be, that he alone may live, rule, reign and triumph in us.”[73] Becon utilized an Augustinian theological element by arguing that consecrated Christians who honored the day could experience “godly and everlasting quietness and rest,” which through Christ they “shall have after this life in the kingdom of God the father.”[74] This was because Christians who were “quiet with God” in their consciences after ceasing from evil works and submitting themselves fully to the will of God carried heaven in their breasts. In other words, consecration made “the Sabbath of Christians . . . spiritual and everlasting.”[75]

Thirty years later, another Church of England clergyman and religious writer, Nicholas Bownd (d.1613), published Doctrine of the Sabbath (1595), a work that one scholar describes as “the most influential and important treatise on the Sabbath among English Puritans.”[76] Bownd’s book made the Sabbath a potentially explosive issue because he argued that Christ himself appointed the first day of the week to be the “new Sabbath,”[77] a unique theological position, and because he adopted a legalistic interpretation by advocating for stringent behavioral rules and swift civic punishment for Sabbath breakers.[78] Bownd’s Sabbatarian theology was centered on a Sabbath that was consecrated by Christ himself after he completed the redemption of mankind and experienced a “new creation” through his Resurrection on Sunday morning. Quoting from Jerome Zanchius (1516–1590), an Italian evangelical reformer and one of the most learned theologians of the later sixteenth century, Bownd explained that the words sanctified and consecrated meant the same thing: “to be put apart from other things unto a holy use.” In Bownd’s mind, the Bible repeatedly commended the truth that God had sanctified, or consecrated, “unto himself the Sabbath day” when he originally selected Saturday as his day of rest after the creation of the world. Bownd insisted that the New Testament showed how Christ changed the Sabbath to Sunday, consecrating it as a new day of rest after completing the work of redemption with the Resurrection. Christ’s Resurrection was a second creation because it made all things new.[79] Such a consecration altered the very nature of Sunday, making it a completely different kind of day than the rest of the days in the week. Its sacred nature required Christians to “use it only to that holy end for which it was ordained, and so by the right use of it, to maintain . . . that holiness, which at the first was put upon it.” He explained that it was a divine law that consecrated things “may not otherwise be employed then [sic] to [God’s] use.”[80] Thus the consecrated Sabbath should “not be partly his” and “partly ours by doing our own work,” but the day should be “altogether [God’s].”[81]

Like many of his evangelical predecessors, Bownd wanted Christians to spend their Sundays in dedicated service to God. Appropriate service included attending “holy meetings of the Church” where they could hear God’s voice, “learn his most holy will,” and “make provision” for their souls that they “might be the fitter to serve him the whole week following.”[82] Bownd insisted that Christians cast away all “vain pretences (as that the weather is too hot, or too cold, the ways are too foul, the journey too long, and a thousand more)” that prevented them from attending church to engage with God’s word and participate in prayer, both of which were the “head and the foot” of keeping the Sabbath day holy. But he also wanted Christians to partake of the sacraments and participate in “all other parts of [God’s] holy discipline and government,” which included looking after the poor, a “work most acceptable unto God, profitable to our brethren,” and appropriate for the Sabbath.[83] Bownd recognized that there were instances of necessity that might require bodily labor to be performed on Sunday, such as seeing a physician, dealing with unexpected floods or fires, or attending to the needs of animals, though he also knew that “the wise men of this world make many things necessary, which indeed are not.” His rule of thumb was to determine if the work could be deferred to another day of the week. If it could be deferred, the work was not necessary and should not be performed on the Sabbath.[84]

However, unlike many of his evangelical predecessors, especially those who were writing about the Sabbath in the early sixteenth century, Bownd wanted “princes and [m]agistrates” to enact laws that would preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath, such as prohibiting public fairs, travel to fairs, shipment of goods from town to town, horse riding, and working in the fields at harvest. He also wanted magistrates to forbid people from visiting taverns, alehouses, inns, shoemakers, and tailors on Sunday; to end all buying and selling of food, along with the making of marriage dinners and other needless feasts on the Sabbath; and to provide stern and swift civic punishments for Sabbath breakers.[85] Bownd declared his strong belief that these laws would preserve the Commonwealth “from many grievous punishments and common plagues which either have already come upon it, or do most justly hang over the head of it” because people were neglecting the fourth commandment. He recognized that there were “many and mighty enemies” to his teachings about the Sabbath, even among other evangelical reformers, and remarked that he did not think “that there is any one point of our religion that is so in controversy among the learned of all sorts . . . wherein many friends do disagree.” However, he confidently supported his position by quoting Bullinger: “He that despiseth the Sabbath makes no great account of the true religion.”[86]

Bownd’s treatise was enormously influential, but because it was perceived by some as dangerously advocating for Puritan Sabbatarianism, it was recalled in 1599 by Archbishop John Whitgift (1530–1604), Queen Elizabeth I’s last and favorite Archbishop of Canterbury, and was then officially banned by the Lord Chief Justice in 1600.[87] However, an expanded version of Bownd’s book was reissued in 1606 when Sabbatarian controversy was once again flowing thick and fast thanks to a proclamation issued on May 7, 1603 by the newly crowned King James VI and I (1566–1625).[88] James declared, “We are informed that there hath been heretofore great neglect in the kingdom of keeping the Sabbath day.” To avoid “all impious profanation,” the king commanded “that no bear-baiting, bull-baiting, in their lewd common plays, or other like disordered and unlawful exercises and pastimes, be frequented, kept, or used at any time hereafter upon the sabbath-day.”[89] As the seventeenth century proceeded, one advocate remarked that “the Sabbath itself had no rest” because of the many and continuing debates about it.[90] In fact, the Sabbath became such an important issue in England that some seventeenth-century Dutch divines called it “Figmentum Anglicanum,” or “the invention of the Anglicans,” because English Puritans developed a Sabbatarianism that was unlike that of their European evangelical counterparts.[91] Puritan Sabbatarianism was distinguished by its belief in the morality of the fourth commandment, by its insistence that Sunday was a consecrated day of rest following Christ’s second creation, and by its rigorous behavioral expectations.[92] During the eighteenth century, Sabbatarian practice in England declined; however, by the nineteenth century, it again became such an important and controversial subject that one English theologian, though unsupportive of Puritan interpretations, proudly declared that England had “the best idea of the Sabbath-day which is to be found anywhere.”[93]

Conclusion

In this study, I have explored Sabbatarian teachings as expounded by evangelical reformers in Europe and in England primarily during the sixteenth century. Framing my discussion around five common theological questions, I have shown that while sixteenth-century religious reformers and theologians consistently believed that the fourth commandment in the Decalogue should be obeyed by the Christians of their day, they differed in their judgment of how the Sabbath day should be observed. In the early 1500s, reformers largely rejected legalistic interpretations of Sabbath-day observance in favor of maintaining Christian liberty. However, as the sixteenth century progressed and reformers worked to establish and refine reformed church practice, they became more concerned with behavioral violations of the Sabbath. As a result, many later reformers became advocates of legalistic interpretations, though they disagreed on the amount of legalism that was acceptable and continued to debate the matter into subsequent centuries, where the Sabbath day remained an important theological subject.

Notes

[1] See Jason Combs’s chapter in this volume.

[2] Russell M. Nelson, “The Sabbath Is a Delight,” Ensign, May 2015, 129–30.

[3] For a good overview of Sabbath day teachings over the centuries, see D. A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 1982).

[4] Sabbatarianism is defined as “the doctrine of those Christians who believe that the Sabbath (usually on Sundays) should be observed in accordance with the Fourth Commandment, which forbids work on the Sabbath because it is a holy day.” Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Sabbatarianism,” updated May 15, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sabbatarianism.

[5] Rather than using the word protestant to describe the reformers, I will use evangelical. Diarmaid MacCulloch astutely recommended evangelical in place of the often-anachronistic protestant because evangelical “was widely used and recognized at the time” and because “it also encapsulates what was most important to this collection of activists: the good news of the Gospel, in Latinized Greek, the evangelium.” Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700 (London: Penguin Books, 2003), xx.

[6] The Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED) defines legalism as “attribution of great importance to law or formulated rule; strict adherence to the letter rather than the spirit of law.” S.v. “legalism,” last modified June 2022, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/107010.

[7] Today Brunne is known as Bourne, Lincolnshire. The Gilbertine Order of Canons Regular was a religious order for men and women. It was founded in England by Gilbert of Sempringham in the 1130s.

[8] Raymond G. Biggar, “Robert Mannyng,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter ODNB; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), published online September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/17986.

[9] Handlyng Synne is a Middle English “translation, adaptation, and expansion of the Anglo-Norman Manuel des péchés [Manuel of Sin]” by William of Waddington written between 1250 and 1270. Because of the Fourth Lateran Council’s (1215) desire to reform the Catholic church, preaching and missionary work revived across Europe and England, influencing the production of literature that influenced individual religious improvement. See Biggar, “Robert Mannyng.”

[10] Robert Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, ed. Idelle Sullens (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1983), 23–29.

[11] Quoted in T. E. Bridgett, History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1881), 2:264.

[12] R. J. Bauckham, “The Lord’s Day,” in From Sabbath, 303.

[13] For an anecdotal description of the difficulties medieval peasants had in balancing Sabbath laws and necessary agricultural labor, see Craig Harline, “Sunday Middle-Aged: An English Village in 1300,” in Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007), 26–32.

[14] R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c.1515 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 93; and Kenneth L. Parker, The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 9–16.

[15] Parker, English Sabbath, 23.

[16] Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” 303; and Harline, “Sunday Middle-Aged,” 60–65.

[17] James Hamilton Wylie and W. T. Waugh, The Reign of Henry the Fifth, 1413–1415 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 1:243.

[18] P. Gerard Damsteegt, “The Sabbath and the Most Prominent Magisterial Reformers,” Andrews University (August 2011), https://works.bepress.com/p_gerard_damsteegt/33.

[19] Scholars estimate that approximately 10,000 pamphlets were printed in the German-speaking lands between 1500 and 1530 on a variety of topics, and that Martin Luther was responsible for roughly 20 percent of these. See Mark U. Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 17.

[20] Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 16, 30; Edwards argues that despite low levels of literacy in early sixteenth-century Germany, many people learned about Luther’s message by word of mouth; see Printing, 2–5, 21, 37–38.

[21] MacCulloch, Reformation, 132.

[22] Ralph S. Werrell, The Theology of William Tyndale (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2006), 24.

[23] Parker, English Sabbath,24.

[24] For example, Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) transformed earlier medieval theological thought by arguing that the moral obligations of the Ten Commandments were binding upon Christians but that the ceremonial aspects had been fulfilled in Christ; see Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide and Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 218; and Bauckham, “Sabbath and Sunday in the Medieval Church in the West,” in From Sabbath, 304–6.

[25] John W. Doberstein and Helmut T. Lehmann, eds., Luther’s Works, vol. 51, Sermons, American Edition (Philadelphia: Fortress and Concordia, 1955), 143; and Hans Wiersma, “On Keeping the Sabbath Holy in Martin Luther’s Catechisms and Other Writings,” Word & World 36, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 242.

[26] Martin Luther, quoted in James Augustus Hessey, Sunday: Its Origin, History, and Present Obligation, Considered in Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year MDCCCLX, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1861), 222. Luther was particularly against an extreme form of Sabbatarianism that developed in Silesia and Moravia under the direction of Oswald Glaidt (d. 1546) and Andreas Fischer. These men called for a return to a Saturday Sabbath and many other Jewish practices; see Martin Rothkegel, “Anabaptist Sabbatarianism in Sixteenth-Century Moravia,” trans. James M. Stayer, Mennonite Quarterly Review 87 (October 2013): 519–94.

[27] Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism,” in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 399; and Doberstein and Lehmann, Luther’s Works, 51:144.

[28] Doberstein and Lehmann, 51:143.

[29] Luther, “Large Catechism,” 398–99.

[30] Luther, 399.

[31] Doberstein and Lehmann, Luther’s Works, 47:91–92.

[32] Luther’s and Zwingli’s Propositions for Debate: The Ninety-Five Theses of 31 October 1517 and the Sixty-Seven Articles of 19 January 1523, trans. Carl S. Meyer (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1963), 36–51.

[33] Huldrych Zwingli, Writings, trans. H. W. Pipkin, vol. 2, In Search of the True Religion: Reformation, Pastoral, and Eucharistic Writings (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 116–17.

[34] Oswald Myconius, “The Original Life of Zwingli,” in The Latin Works and the Correspondence of Huldreich Zwingli, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson, trans. Henry Preble, Walter Lichtenstein, and Lawrence A. McLouth, vol. 1, Together with Selections from His German Works; 1510–1522 (New York: Knickerbocker, 1912), 9.

[35] John B. Payne, “Zwingli and Luther: The Giant vs. Hercules,” Christianity Today 2, no. 4 (1984): 2.

[36] Huldrych Zwingli, “Liberty Respecting Food in Lent,” in Latin Works, 81–82.

[37] Zwingli, “Liberty,” 81–82.

[38] Zwingli, Sämtliche Werke, Corpus Reformatorum 88–101, ed. Emil Egli et al. (Berlin: C. A. Schwetchke and Son; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1905–1956), 13:16.

[39] Zwingli, quoted in Hessey, Sunday, 446.

[40] Robert Cox, Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties: Considered in Relation to Their Natural and Scriptural Grounds, and to the Principles of Religious Liberty (Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1853), 287.

[41] Gordon Rupp, “Andrew Karlstadt and Reformation Puritanism,” Journal of Theological Studies 10, no. 2 (October 1959): 311–17.

[42] Andreas von Karlstadt, “On the Sabbath,” in The Essential Carlstadt: Fifteen Tracts, trans. and ed. E. J. Furcha (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1995), 319, 334.

[43] Luther, “Large Catechism,” 397.

[44] Karlstadt, “On the Sabbath,” 324, 332–33.

[45] Karlstadt, 333, 335, 338.

[46] MacCulloch, Reformation, 176.

[47] Heinrich Bullinger, Fiftie godly and learned sermons, divided into five decades, containing the chiefe and principall points of Christian religion, written in three severall tomes or sections, trans. H.I. (London: H. Middleton & J. Wolfe, 1584), 137, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=dul1.ark:/13960/t6f19z869; grammar and spelling modernized in all quotations from this source.

[48] Bullinger, Fiftie, 138.

[49] Bullinger, 141.

[50] For historical purposes, the Low Countries region is generally understood to refer to areas currently occupied by Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

[51] Andrew Hope, “Plagiarizing the Word of God: Tyndale between More and Joye” in Plagiarism in Early Modern England, ed. Paulina Kewes (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 103.

[52] Mary Jane Barnett, “Tyndale’s Heretical Translation: Lollards, Lutherans, and an Economy of Circulation,” Renaissance Papers (1996): 7.

[53] William Tyndale, The obedie[n]ce of a Christen man (Antwerp: J. Hoochstraten, 1528), fols. xvir, xxviiiv; and Tyndale, The exposition of the fyrst epistle of seynt Jhon (Antwerp: Martin de Keyser, 1533), sig. Fiiv.

[54] Tyndale, The Pentateuch (Antwerp: Johan Hoochstraten, 1530), fol. lixr, spelling modernized.

[55] Werrell, Theology of William Tyndale, 41, 46.

[56] Tyndale, An Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue: The Independent Works of William Tyndale, ed. Anne M. O’Donnell and Jared Wicks (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 66, 96, spelling modernized; and Werrell, Theology of William Tyndale, 44–45.

[57] Werrell acknowledges Tyndale’s theological debt to Luther but argues that Tyndale developed a unique reformed theology that differed from him in “most doctrines.” Theology of William Tyndale, 15–16.

[58] Tyndale, Answer to Sir Thomas, 66, 96, spelling modernized.

[59] Tyndale, The newe Testament, dylygently corrected and compared with the Greke (Antwerp: Martin Emperowr, 1534), sig. *iiiv, spelling modernized.

[60] John Frith, A myrroure or lookynge glasse wherin you may beholde the Sacramente of baptisme described (London: John Daye, 1548), sigs. Ciiiir-v, Cvv, Cvir, spelling modernized.

[61] Frith, Myrroure or lookynge glasse, sigs. Ciiiir-v, Cvv, Cvir, spelling modernized.

[62] MacCulloch, Reformation, 194–97.

[63] Dawn DeVries, “Calvin’s Preaching,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 106.

[64] John Calvin, The Whole Doctrine of Calvin about the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day: Extracted from His Commentaries, Catechism, and Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. Robert Cox (Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1860), 24–25.

[65] Calvin, Whole Doctrine, 26–27, 77.

[66] Calvin, 82–83.

[67] Parker, English Sabbath, 37; Bauckham, “Sabbath and Sunday,” 322.

[68] Edward Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church of England: Being a Collection of Injunctions, Declarations, Orders, Articles of Inquiry, &c. from the Year 1546 to the Year 1716; with Notes Historical and Explanatory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1844), 1:4, 15–16.

[69] John Hooper, A Declaration of the ten holy commandments of allmygthye God, wroten Exo. 20. Deu. 5. Collectyd out of the scripture Canonicall, by Joanne Hopper (London: Richard Jugge, 1548), fol. xliiir.

[70] Hooper, Declaration, fols. xliiv, xliiir, xlviiir-v, xlixv.

[71] D. G. Newcombe, “John Hooper,” in ODNB, published online September 23, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13706; and Parker, English Sabbath, 40.

[72] Thomas Becon, The worckes of Thomas Becon: whiche he hath hitherto made and published, with diverse other newe bookes added to the same, heretofore neuer set forth in print, divided into thre tomes or parts and amended this present [six] of our Lord 1564; perused and allowed, according to thorder appointed in the Quenes maiesties iniunctions. Works of Thomas Becon (London: John Day, 1564), fol. cclxxxviiir.

[73] Becon, Worckes, fol. cccxliv.

[74] Becon, fol. ccxliiir. Augustine (354–430) was a theologian and philosopher during the patristic age. Bauckham has described him as “the fountainhead of medieval theology in the West” whose “treatment of the ten commandments as the norm for Christian morality was to remain unquestioned in most subsequent theology.” “Sabbath and Sunday,” 300.

[75] Becon, Worckes, fol. ccxliiir; and Bauckham, “Sabbath and Sunday,” 300–301.

[76] Jon English Lee, “An Examination of the Origins of English Puritan Sabbatarianism,” Puritan Reformed Journal 7, no. 1 (2015): 118. English evangelicals who wanted more reformation within the Church of England were often called “precise” by those who disagreed with them, a term that was eventually replaced by “Puritan”; see MacCulloch, Reformation, 383.

[77] As we have seen, most evangelical reformers rejected the Catholic church’s designation of Sunday as the Christian Sabbath and argued that Sunday was merely a convenient day to gather for worship. By claiming that Christ designated Sunday as the new Sabbath, Nicholas Bownd could then insist that Sunday “must continue in his first honor of sanctification unto the end of all things.” The Doctrine of the Sabbath (London: John Porter & Thomas Man, 1595), 44–47; spelling and grammar modernized in all quotations from this source.

[78] Richard L. Greaves, “The Origins of English Sabbatarian Thought,” Sixteenth Century Journal 12, no. 3 (Autumn, 1981): 30–31.

[79] Bownd, Doctrine of the Sabbath, 45–47.

[80] Bownd, 150–52.

[81] Bownd, 158.

[82] Bownd, 164.

[83] Bownd, 171, 191.

[84] Bownd, 59, 113, 129.

[85] Bownd, 94.

[86] Bullinger, Jeremias fidelissimus et laboriosissimus dei propheta (Tiguri: Christophorum Froschouerum, 1575), 121, quoted in Bownd, Doctrine of the Sabbath, 284.

[87] Patrick Collinson, “The Beginnings of English Sabbatarianism,” Studies in Church History 1 (1964): 220. For a good discussion of the issues surrounding the suppression of Bownd’s treatise, see Kenneth L. Parker, “Thomas Rogers and the English Sabbath: The Case for a Reappraisal,” Church History 53, no. 3 (September 1984): 332–47.

[88] James acceded to the throne in Scotland as James VI beginning on July 24, 1567. He also became king of England and Ireland on March 24, 1603, ruling there as James I until his death.

[89] John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and Other Various Occurrences in the Church of England, during Queen Elizabeth’s Happy Reign: Together with an Appendix of Original Papers of State, Records, and Letters, vol. 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), 531, https://archive.org/details/annalsofreformat04stryuoft/page/531.

[90] Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain, from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year 1648, ed. J. S. Brewer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1865), 5:219.

[91] John Eliot, quoted in Cotton Mather, The Life and Death of the Reverend Mr. John Eliot, Who was the First Preacher of the Gospel to the Indians in America [. . .] (London: John Dunton, 1694), 29.

[92] Bauckham, “Sabbath and Sunday,” 324–26.

[93] F. D. Maurice, Sermons on the Sabbath-day, on the Character of the Warrior, and on the Interpretation of History (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1853), 49.