A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath and the Commandments of God

In your second article you offer as proof Luke iv: 18-20. There certainly is no proof of the law's being annulled here. You then quote xvi: 16. “The law and the prophets were until John,” &c. This in your whole argument for annulling the fourth commandment. Read the next verse, “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail.” Now don't a law fail when it passes away? Yes. How then can this law fail till heaven and earth passes? This was virtually showing how impossible it would be for one tittle of the law of God to fail. Here Jesus reverts to the seventh commandment, 18th verse, and shows that the law of the decalogue was what he meant. But he does not say that any law was annulled here. If you say that any part of the law of Moses was abolished here, you upset all the foundation that infidelity raises to overthrow the whole law of God. I wonder that all the second advent editors are not out against you, for if this be true they have no more foundation for their no-law and no-commandments of God system to stand upon than many who are hung on the gallows for venturing to practice after such teaching, by violating the eighth and sixth commandment. I am aware that their Judge Advocate, Joseph Marsh of Rochester, N. Y. has filed in his plea, (see Advent Harbinger, Nov. 9th,) that we are under the law of grace, the new testament, and not the law of Moses, which he asserts embraced the ten commandments. Why does not the law of grace save thieves and murderers and liars from the gallows here, and eternal death hereafter. (Rev. xxi: 8.) Answer – because there is no precept by which it can be done out of the law of commandments, which was made for all men, Jew and Gentile. How would murderers and robbers understand their sentence, viz. You are to be hung until you are dead for violating the law of the new testament, and may the Lord have mercy on you for violating his law of grace. Stop, says the American, you are bound to show me the precept. I ask where it is to be found if the commandments are abolished? Oh, sir, but you have violated the spirit of them. Well, but do tell me, sir, how I have violated the spirit of a law that you say was abolished and forever done away more than eighteen hundred years ago. I am ignorant, I never professed religion, I do not understand the meaning of grace in the new testament – I pray you, sir, don't hang an innocent man.

I have already shown what they tell us that their foundation is for the abolition of God's law; it is in Gal. ii.; Cor. iii, and Col. ii: 14-17. The very day that our Lord was nailed to the cross – (every writer that I remember to have read before on this subject begins at the cross, where Paul directs us to look for the abolition of offerings and oblation, Moses' ceremonial mode of worship) – but you have attempted, without proof, to show that this was done three years before, and that without a shadow of proof that the fourth commandment, or any of them, was done away.

In this second article, you cite us for the same proof to Col. ii: 8-17. How unfortunate for your argument; first that Christ annulled the law, and of course the Sabbath, when he began to preach, according to Luke iv: 18-20, and xvi: 16. And then in another place quote Col. ii: 8-17, for the same point of time. How could Christ annul any law twice. First, at his preaching and second at his death, three and a half years apart. Your argument is groundless and futile; therefore the uncalled for blasphemous language of yours, that the Jews were right in killing him (the Son of God) as a notorious Sabbath breaker, will fall on your guilty head. Hear the proof: “They that forsake the law praise the wicked. – He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.” See also James ii: 10. Once more, the law that Jesus says shall not pass away, &c. Luke xvi: 17, is proved to be the same as in ch. x: 25-28. Jesus says, how readest thou? what is written in the law? He answers by quoting the two great commandments in the law, in Matt. xxii: 36-40 – the same as given in ch. v: 17-19, the keeping of which then and thenceforward would make them of great esteem in the reign of heaven. Compare also xix: 16-19 with Luke xviii: 18-20. If Jesus' promise of eternal life by our keeping the law of – or, and commandments fails us here, then all his new testament teaching, the “law of grace,” so termed, will fail with it.

In conclusion, you call us foolish adventists, and wish to know who has bewitched us? Answer – not the strictly keeping the holy Sabbath and other commandments, but by listening to, or following such unrighteous and deceptive teachings as you set forth. No marvel that you would like to preach it in all the sectarian synagogues in the land, if they would hear you. Fallen Babylon is a more suitable place for such teaching than you will ever find any where else. John describes their condition, Rev. xviii: 2. But I pass. There is but one more remark of yours that I deem worthy of a reply, and I should not most probably have reviewed your articles, only for the defence of God's law and the suffering little flock, my brethren, who are endeavoring to stand where John, in his vision, saw them at this present hour, viz. In their patient waiting time, “keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”

You say, “If a tree may be known by its fruits, we have a woeful tree here. First, shut door; next, seventh-day Sabbath, or the bondage of the law; next, Oh, it would be a shame to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. God grant them repentance which is unto life.” That we believe in the shut door, and seventh-day Sabbath, is true; that we wash one another's feet, as Jesus taught, and greet one another as Paul has taught, is true of a great portion of those who keep the Sabbath and believe in the past and present truth. If you mean these, that it be a shame to speak of, we answer that we do it openly and avowedly, and teach and practice the same wherever we go, and prove it clearly by the scriptures. If there is any thing secretly practiced by us, it is as much unknown to the church as it is to you. The days of J. Turner and some other leaders of fanaticism in Maine, I trust, have about all subsided, since they have crawled into the Laodocean state of the church. If you know of any thing that we secretly practice in our worship or service of God, that which is a shame to us, we are not unwilling for you to make it as public as you please. We have no faith nor fellowship for any such thing, neither have we any claim on them.

As the editor of the Bible Advocate and yourself are aiming at the one object, viz. the abolition of God's holy Sabbath, and the treading down God's truth seeking children; he is approbating and upholding you in your disguise; we are therefore left to conjecture. From some marks which I have seen under your two coverings, I am very strongly inclined to believe that your real name is Jacob Weston of New Ipswich, N. H. If I am wrong, then what I am about to state will not apply to Barnabas. If I am right in the real character, then I shall discharge another duty by exposing an enemy to both God and man, under the cloak of the apostle Barnabas, and beneath that a sheepskin laced round the body of a wolf, “speaking great words against the most high, thinking to change times and laws.” Your unrighteous thrusts, to put down and destroy God's honest children, who are endeavoring to live by every word of God, seems to be in perfect keeping with your wayward, backslidden course. It is you, sir, that have been practising things in secret, which are a shame, and a disgrace, and a stigma upon the cause which you profess. Now lay off that apostolic cloak which you have taken to cover your deformed and deceptive arts. The reason why you have assumed this garb to oppose your opponent, C. Stowe, is to some very obvious. You knew that she was acquainted with some of your ungodly proceedings. You had not forgotten the false promises and pretences which you had resorted to, first, to obtain her money, and then to keep her out of it. After repeated calls for it, you at length sent it to her, stating that the reason why you did not answer her letters, was, because you had not the money, and you did not write her, because it would subject her to pay the postage, as you could not! and then in an insulting manner to dictate a letter, teaching her how she should write to you.

After this squall had blown over and things had become more settled, a mysterious letter is presented to sister Stowe, signed Lydia B. Weston, setting forth your helpless condition – not actually asking for money, because it would not comport with her severe remark about “dying first,” – but to draw still more on her sympathy, it states that her husband had fell and lamed, or sprained his ancle, &c. &c. Sister S., although about forty miles from this scene of suffering and distress, requested a friend and neighbor of yours to ascertain what was needed, and she was ready to assist, notwithstanding all the past. Your house was visited and inquiry made for the lame man, but he was away. “Well, you have heard from Washington?” Your wife. L. B. Weston, replied, “she did not know how?” [Another statement is, “have you heard from Washington?” “No.” “Have you not written to Washington?” (or sister Stowe.) “No.”] The messenger was much surprised! “Well, are you in need of any thing?.” “No, we have all that we need at present!” and she then proceeded to enumerate all the comfortable things she had.

From this it is evident that your wife was an entire stranger to this letter and its contents. Who wrote this forged letter? The capitals, it was said by those who examined it, were J. Weston's, but the hand-writing was rather finer than his. When you have been told of this your reply has been that sister Stowe lies if she says that I wrote that letter! It is all in vain for you to reiterate such assertions. The question is, where is the person in New Ipswich, whose hand-writing will compare with this letter, and who is so interested in your behalf that they will even contradict your wife, who manages your household affairs; and state falsehoods, and then commit the high crime of forgery, by affixing her name to their assertions, to obtain for you what you did not need; and among other things, what could they mean by lying so about your lame leg? If you can find this daring, loving, and insultingly magnanimous person in your neighborhood, do, for the sake of the community at large, expose him, and let this sister and others whom you have maligned, have their real name. And then if you go to Nelson again, to preach the doctrine of the second advent by a notice in the Bible Advocate of July 30th, or Aug. 5th, “Squire Hale will not refuse you the use of the meeting house, because of said forgery.” And possibly they may then sympathise with you more in respect to your poverty in having but one feather bed in your house, &c. &c., when it is well known that you have three, and other things in proportion.

That must have been rather a stirring exhortation that you gave the man who called to see you, a short time since; that the Lord was coming in about three weeks. Did you cite him to the Bible Advocate of Dec. 9, and tell him to read the caption that your old friend Timothy Cole had published for you; that the time for the Lord's coming was revealed, and that you felt so impressed with the truth of the above that you could not hold your peace any longer, &c. Well, possibly he did feel the force of the truth, that the Lord would soon come, but it soon vanished from him when you read the note for twenty dollars, in his favor, which he now presented, and which you told him was not negotiable, and that there was no law by which he could collect it. Did you not feel rather singular, for a professed ambassador of Christ, to be told by this man “how strange it appeared to him that you should go and put such a note on to an old woman.” [This is an old lady, partially deranged, who having a little money, finally consented to loan it to him on a note for interest.] It seems you had consulted a lawyer, to know whether it could be collected in her life time for her.

Are you aware of the heinousness of these things? Did you ever read the life of the pious Dr. Dod of England, who was hung for forgery; people no doubt liked his preaching. I know a professed minister, who, not many years since, was elected pastor of a church, with but two or three dissenting votes, in a place situated in North latitude 41° 33', and longitude 70° 53' W., who was told by one of his members, in a church meeting, that he had committed the high crime of forgery, which he did not attempt to deny. The member for daring to utter this and connected things, was suspended from their communion until he should make ample satisfaction. The minister was retained, and a great revival, by his exertions, immediately followed, and numbers were added to their church. So, you see, ministers are not to be known by their great preaching and revivals. “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” So, I trust, the second advent believers will know you hereafter. They will also know that God never employed a righteous man to stigmatize and attempt to make void his Sabbath and commandments. That is, and ever has been, the work of “the Devil and his angels.” “Surely the Lord God will do nothing but he reveals his secrets unto his servants, the prophets.” Amos. But “he that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.” All men are liable to err and make mistakes, but when persevered in, under disguise, they are to be rebuked.

To The Editor Of The “Advent Harbinger.”

Sir: – After your repeated and unsuccessful attempts to stigmatize, put down, demolish, and forever abolish the TEN WORDS, the law and commandments of the living God, the only foundation for the bible, you come forth in the A. H. of Nov. 9th, and say “We are not under the law (of Moses,) but under (the law of) grace, the New Testament, and now all we want to know is, does the New Testament either by precept or example require us to keep any day as a SABBATH?.. We do not want your inferences, but plain, direct New Testament testimony; nothing else will do in a case of this character and importance.” Your term, law of Moses, according to all your teachings on this subject, includes the law of commandments. We have given it to you in our work on the Sabbath, and again in the Way Marks, pp. 76-78. Why do you still continue to demand proof, until you have found out some new method to explain those texts away. It is evident that your object on this point is to confuse the minds of your readers and not give them the clear word of God. What would Christ and his apostles have done for proof from the old testament, if your new restricted rule had been laid before them? and you had told them seven months previous, (April 28th,) that the law of commandments, when they were abolished, were incorporated into the new testament, or law of Christ. And now we are under the law of grace. It appears to me that Jesus would have replied as he did on one occasion, “Get thee behind me Satan.” Is the law of Christ and the law of grace, synonymous terms? or are you so privileged now in the high station which you have assumed, that you can change the name of your new law once in seven months, and make Christ and grace the same. It is impossible for any man to depart from the clear word and abide in the truth. Call the commandments of God what you will, and incorporate them where you will, you are bound, as I have told you before, to show the precept, (i. e. how they read,) and then if you refer us to the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and the Revelation of John, you will only point us directly to the ten commandments of God, which as clearly proves that they are not, nor ever have been abolished, any more than the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah or Ezekiel; and just so sure as Jesus has spoken the truth, that eternal life is obtained by the keeping of them, and that James wrote by inspiration, we are to be judged by them; and not by what you have misnamed them, the law of grace. How can the commandments of God be abolished, and yet the keeping of them give us an entrance into the city. Rev. xxii: 14. And yet if they are abolished, as you assert, who can ever know when they fail in one precept or when they keep the whole? Your attempt to incorporate God's law, after – as you say – it has been abolished, and now enforce it without a precept, because it is all incorporated in the new testament, is a thousand times more inconsistent than a temporal millenium. “Grace is the gift of God.” Then, according to your logic, this is the law that we are now under. How shall we enumerate all the gifts of God, and incorporate them into the new testament? One thing I know, you will never mend the law of God: It is as immutable as the sun in the heavens! and it would be far easier work for you and all of like faith to blot out that luminary than to prove that one jot or tittle of the ten commandments had failed by being changed or abolished. I intend to prove this from the new testament as I pass on, and if you and your adherents will still misrepresent the plain teaching and lead others to do so, then the words of Jesus will surely condemn you, and you “will be in no esteem in the reign of heaven.”

First Pillar For No Sabbath

There are four Pillars in the temple of your no-Sabbath, no-commandment system, which we are always referred to as positive proof that you are right. Now if I can prove from the new testament that they and all others that you may present, are only your “inferences,” (and you say you don't want any,) what will you do? Further – these pillars of yours, be it forever remembered and never forgotten, are fixed at the day of the crucifixion of our Lord. Say, if you like, it was in A.D. 33. This is the point where you have to bring your scripture to prove any thing of the kind, i. e., if you go one week on either side of the death of our blessed Lord, your arguments or pillars, all fall to the ground. Now, by this plain rule, we will try the first two no-Sabbath texts: First – 1 Rom. xiv: “One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike; let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord.” Read the whole chapter; Paul's whole argument here is against their feasts, and this of course included their feast days, which some esteemed and others did not. “Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died,” says Paul, 15th verse. Compare this with the first, third, and last four verses, where he closes with “He that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith,” 23d verse, and then tell me if you can, what other day or days is here brought to view than feast days, as in Lev. xxiii chapter, which Hosea said were to cease. This same chapter, 3d and 38th verses, positively designates and separates the Sabbath of the Lord God from all these feast Sabbaths, or days; also Num. xxviii: 9. Now as God's Sabbath was not a feast Sabbath, it was impossible to connect it with these. And that is not all – it is not even alluded to here – only guessed at from among the feast days. Once set such a rule as this at work and there is not a law in christendom that would restrain men. For all will have one day for a holy, or holiday in the week. Now give them, by your bible rule, their choice, and I don't believe that Satan himself would bring them to order. Oh, but we have a law that the first-day shall be regarded as the Sabbath. Well, that is what you now contend for, and so does almost all christendom, and still it is an unrighteous and an unscriptural law, because the first day is not, nor never was, the Sabbath. You have no right by this rule to fix on any day, and yet every body would be right if every day was kept. But, you may say, it means we shall have no day for the Sabbath. It does not read so. It says, “let every man be persuaded in his own mind,” and if that were the case, what kind of order would there be in God's house. I ask if there be a rational being on earth that for a moment would believe that God ever intended to give the whole human family such a choice as this, after he had required them to keep the Sabbath day. No, he is a God of order, and he sanctified and set apart the seventh day for man and beast. Does not the beast require rest now as much as he did 1900 years ago? Who is to advocate for them, if man does not? The great mass of professed christians are insisting on the first day for one of these days, and it is not at all likely that they would ever refer to this test for this purpose were it not to destroy the idea of a seventh-day Sabbath. See work on the Sabbath, pp. 11-12. This subject is continued from the xiiith chapter, where the apostle had been enforcing the commandments, and one is equally binding as the other, except the fourth, which is more insisted upon than the rest. This letter is dated Corinthus, A.D. 60.

Second Pillar For No Sabbath

Col. ii: 14-17. – “Blotting out the hand writing of ordinances that was against us; which was contrary to us, taking it out of the way; nailing it to his cross.” Now Paul says it was the hand-writing of ordinances that was blotted out. You say it was the Sabbath, because he further says, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come,” &c. Now I say that the Sabbath of the Lord God is not included in this text. 1st. Because it never did belong to the hand-writing of ordinances. 2d. It never is called an ordinance in the scriptures; it is a commandment. 3d. God's Sabbath never was taken out of our way because it was against us. Jesus says it was made for us, (for man.) Then pray tell me, if you can, why Jesus has taken away from us the very thing, (the Sabbath) he had said was made for us? You see this is impossible; but he did take away at the very hour that he yielded up his life, the ceremonial worship of sacrifice and oblation, because his blood was now shed once for all for the whole world, therefore the shedding of bullocks blood, here at this hour, ceased forever; see also Heb. x: 1-10, particularly the 9th verse. The angel Gabriel's testimony is directly to this point; Dan. ix: 27. Therefore the mode of worshipping God, in the law of Moses, ceased forever. But all of this no more affected God's code of laws, the ten commandments, than the shining of the sun would upon the inhabitants of Massachusetts after he had gone down below the western horizon. The “hand-writing of ordinances” is what Moses wrote with his hand in a book and put it into the ark with the tables of stone: which tables were not the hand-writing of either God, or man, but written by the finger of God. Deut. xxxi: 25-26. Neither can it ever be proved that God's law on these tables of stone, was a shadow – it is a substance. Paul says the things that were nailed to the cross here, were shadows; see 17th verse. Now if the Lord's Sabbath, the fourth commandment, was taken out here, and forever erased from the tables of stone —where is the evidence? Further, if it was a shadow, as you say, would not all the other nine commandments be shadows too? See if you can make the first and second ones, shadows; if you can, the worship of idols is just as valid as the worship of God; and so of the third – where would be the penalty of taking God's name in vain, or to steal, or murder, or commit adultery? You see the idea itself is ridiculous. I know you say the spirit of them is as binding as ever. I ask how are we to know what the spirit of any thing is, without the precept (the letter) to guide us? It is impossible for any human being to know that it is wrong to worship idols and bow down to them unless it read so in the scriptures. If the apostle has taught it so, he has quoted from the decalogue. Thus you see the commandments can no more be abolished than salvation. In the 20-22d verses, Paul further explains, and says, “Why are ye subject to ordinances which are to perish?” Why perish? because “they are after the doctrines and commandments of men.” “Touch not, taste not, handle not.” Now, if these are not the ordinance of the ceremonial law, the hand-writing of Moses, they are nothing; see also Eph. ii: 15, and Heb. vii: 16. The holy day, new moon and Sabbath days were their holy convocation, which, with the new moon and Sabbaths is the same that is connected with their feasts, as in Rom. xiv, and as distinctly separate, as I have shown in Lev. xxiii: 3, 38, and Num. xxviii: 9. Now I say God's law containing the Sabbath is not even mentioned here. Their Sabbath days, and not God's Sabbath days is here abolished; as Hosea said they should be, ii: 11. It would be far more reasonable to assert that Paul had abolished all the ordinances in 20-22 verses. But who undertakes to say that baptism and the Lord's Supper are abolished here. Nobody. Why? Because neither of them are the hand-writing of ordinances, but they are equally as much so, and as certainly made for us as the Sabbath is. Jesus says it was made for man. You say it was made for the Jews only. Shall the scriptures decide this, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.” “Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost and where is he – So man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more.” – Job. “And as it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment.” – Paul. Now just as certain as the Jews and Gentiles are the “man” alluded to here, just in the same sense and no other, is he alluded to by Jesus in Mark ii: 27 – “The Sabbath was made for man,” – Jew and Gentile, for every living human being. Therefore it is impossible, yea it is a contradiction of terms to say that the Sabbath of the Lord God, which was made for man, just as much as the day of judgment is to judge him, was taken out of his way, because it was contrary to him, and against him, or that the Sabbath is an ordinance or a shadow, but all the seven Jewish convocation Sabbaths that were nailed to the cross, were shadows, as in Heb. x: 1-10. The woman was also made for man, in the same sense. See how your rule will work here. This letter is from Rome, A. D. 64.