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

doctrines and decrees; everything heretical,
whether persons or writings, by which the faithful
would be liable to be contaminated and led astray.
In conformity to this their fixed determination, all
books and records of their opposers were hunted up
and committed to the flames. Before the art of
printing was discovered in the fifteenth century, all
books were made with the pen; the copies, of
course, were so few that their concealment was
much more difficult than it would be now; and if a
few of them escaped the vigilance of the
inquisitors, they would soon be worn out and gone.
None of them could be admitted and preserved
in the public libraries of the Catholics, from the
ravages of time and of the hands of barbarians with
which all parts of Europe were at different periods
overwhelmed."[3]
The first five centuries of the Christian era
accomplished the suppression of the Sabbath in
those churches which were under the special
control of the Roman pontiff. Thenceforward we
must look for the observers of the Sabbath outside
694