Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

SABBATARIANISM 1 73
the fourth commandment in its significance among
the ten eternal words.
§24. Puritan.—The separation of the Puritans
from the Anglican Church was inevitable. It was
the logical result of the Lutheran movement, and
British vigor was equal to producing that result.
When men turned away from the Church to the
Bible, the eternal verities of the Decalogue acquired
meaning.
The first denominational result of Puritanism was
the English Seventh-day Baptists. There had always
been some Sabbath-keeping dissenters during
all the centuries back to Christ, and the English
Seventh-day Baptists were their spiritual heirs.
Their Puritanism was logical, and they returned
to the observance of the Sabbath. The discussion
immediately became warm, and the
Puritans were
obliged either to become Sabbath-keepers, or find
a compromise, or return to the Catholic position.
Compromise gained the day, but not until many
books were published by the Sabbath-keepers, and
civil authority tried to suppress the new sect.
Fines,
imprisonment, proscription, and even martyrdom
were the fate of the Seventh-day Baptists.
The Puritan compromise was formulated by
Nicholas Bownde, whose "Doctrine of the Sabbath
Plainly Laid Forth and Soundly Proven" appeared