History of the Sabbath and First Day of the Week - John N. Andrews

did this out of respect to the authority or the law of
God. But we have shown from the fathers that
those who hallowed the Sabbath did it as an act of
obedience to the fourth commandment, and that the
Decalogue was acknowledged as of perpetual
obligation, and as the perfect rule of right. As
Bishop T. denies that this was their ground of
observance, he should have shown some other,
which he has not done. Thus he says:--
"The Lord’s Day did not succeed in the place
of the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was wholly
abrogated, and the Lord’s Day was merely an
ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by
virtue of the fourth commandment, because they
for almost three hundred years together kept that
day which was in that commandment; but they did
it also without any opinion of prime obligation, and
therefore they did not suppose it moral."[11]
That such an opinion relative to the obligation
of the fourth commandment had gained ground
extensively among the leaders of the church, as
early at least as the fourth century, and probably in
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