The distinction, however, between Moses as a lawgiver and Moses as a teacher, was one very apt to be overlooked by the multitude and disregarded in popular discourses by the clergy themselves. In England where the writings of tho reformers were less studied titan in Germany, the response after the fourth commandment in the liturgy (where the decalogue, adapted to general use by the omission of the words addressing it to the Jews, was insetted in 1552), "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law," must have greatly tended to instil the belief that this commandment imposed on them the duty of keeping, not a mystical, but a literal Sabbath. Accordingly, in the reign of Elizabeth it occurred to many conscientious and independent thinkers (as it had previously done to some Protestants in Bohemia), that the fourth commandment required of them the observance, not of the first, but ofthe specified seventh day of the week, and a strict bodily rest as a service then due to God; while others, though convinced that the day had been altered by divine authority, took up the same opinion as to the Scriptural obligation to refrain from work. The former class became numerous enough to make a considerable figure for more than a century in England under the title of " sabbatarians" —a word now exchanged for the less ambiguous appellation of "seventh-day Baptists." The other and much larger class were the Puritans (q.v.), who, justly offended by the vices and frivolity of the times, but also soured by persecution, applying to themselves the threats of Jehovah against the profaners of the token of the covenant between him and his chosen people—led astray by the mistranslation of Is. lviii. 13 above noticed— overlooking the incidents in Luke xiv. 1-12—and giving a narrower scope than the reformers had done to the teaching of Paul—added to Sunday-keeping an austerity by which neither it nor the Sabbath-keeping of the Jews had ever before been marked. (See Asconctsm). This great party, when predOminant for a time in the reign of Charles I., availed themselves of the opportunity to maintain and spread their sabbatarian opinions, not only in numerous treatises, but through what has proved to be the more lasting and influential means of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. (See ASSEM BLY OF DIVINES; CATECHISMS; CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS). Chiefly through these formularies was effectually introduced into Scotland that scrupulous abstinence from recreation as well as business on Sunday which still distinguishes the people. For it is a mistake to suppose that either sabbatarianism or asceticism was recommended by Knox. Agreeing with the other reformers, Knox, in setting forth in his Confession of' Faith (1560) "the works of the first table," says not a Word about the Sabbath. This Confe• sion and the Genera Catechism were adherpd to in Scotland till superseded in 1648 by the Westminster standards of faith. Nor is it only to the British Presbyterians that the opinions and habits of the Puritans have descended; as the colonists of New England they planted in that distant soil the rigid sabbatarianism which still survives in chusetts and Connecticut, and retains the Jewish peculiarity (which found its chief advocates in Prynne and Shepard, 1655) of being observed from sunset to sunset. Iu America, too, exists now the principal remnant of the sefenth-day Baptists. (See Rupp's Denom, in the United States, pp. 70-111; Mrs. Davis's History of the &thbatorian !?torches, Philad. 1851; and the publications of the American (seventh-day) Sabbath tract society, New York, 1852, etc.). They have nearly disappeared in England, though in the 17th c. so numerous and active as to have called forth replies from bishop White Warren. Baxter, Bunyan, Wallis, and others.
In Holland, though sonic English Puritan settlers gave birth to a controversy which, during the greater part of the 17th. c., engaged the pens of many of the most eminent divines (among whom were Gomarus, Walreus, Rivetus, Coeceins, and F. Burmann), the principles of the reformers, favored by Grotius among the laity, ultimately kept their ground, as they have done also in Protestant Germany. Yet in Holland were pro two bulkiest defenses of Sabbatarianism that have ever been published—one, in Latin, by John Brown, an expatriated Scotebruan who had been minister of Warn phroy, entitled Cansa Dei contra Anti-Sabbatarios (2 vols., Rotten 1674-76); and the other, in Dutch, by his friend James Koelman, on The Controversy, History, and Manner of observance of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day (hiss. 1685).
In England the earliest considerable treatise on the Puritan side was the Sabbaihum Veteris et .Novi Testamenti of Dr. Nicholas Bound, a minister in Suffolk (Lond. 1595; 2d ed. 1606). 'It is written in English, thdugh the title is partly Latin. Many converts were made by it and the similar works of Greenhani and Widley, his contemporaries; but till the heterodoxy of the Seventh-day Baptist Brabourne aroused, in 1632, the indigna tion of the bishops, little noise seems to have been made throughout the nation by the controversy; nor would it, perhaps, have ever attained prominence, had not Charles I. committed, in 1633, the blunder, and, as the Puritans believed, the gross impiety, of reviving his father's Declaration concerning Lawful Sports to be used [on Sundays]. (See
Sronvs, Boon or.) This the clergy were required by Laud (q.v.) to publish in their churches, and many who refused were punished severely. Hence arose the greatest English controversy about the Sabbath, between the high-church party on the one hand, and the Puritans on the other. Bishop White (Treatise of the Sabbath Day, 1635) and Dr. Ileylin (q. v.) (History of the Sabbath, 1636) took the lead for the former, and were ably supported by Sanderson (A Sovereign Antidote against Sabbatarian Errors, 1636), Iron sides (Seven Questions of the Sabbath briefly Disputed, 1637), Taylor (Holy Living, ch. iv. s. 6, and Ductor Dabitantiamrb. ii. ch. ii. rule 6, as. 43-62), and Bramliall (On the Contro versies about the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, in his Works, fol. p. 90?). On the Puritan side were Henry Burton (The Lord's Day the Sabbath Day, 1636), John Ley (Sunday a Sabbath,, 1641), Hannon L'Estrange (God's Sabbath before the Law, under the Law, and under the Gospel, 1641), Richard Bernard (A Threefold Treatise of the Sabbath, 1641), William Twisse, prolocutor of the Westminster assembly (Of the Morality of the Fourth Commandment, as still in force to bind Christians, 1641), and jointly Cawdrey and Palmer, two members of the same assembly, in their Sabbatam, liedivirum, or the Christian Sabbath Vindicated (2 vols. 1645-52), which is the most elaborate defense of Sabbatarianism in our language. A still more eminent writer on that side, and one of greater breadth of view, was Dr. John Owen, whose Erereitations concerning a Day of Sacred Rest (1671), since prefixed to his Exposition of Hebrews, gave, however. some offense to his friends by suggesting that the duration of the religious exercises of the day should be measured by the strength of the worshiper. Sin ce then, the Sabbatarian cause has been maintained by numberless writers, among whom may be mentioned bishop Hopkins, Willison, Jon athan Edwards; Dwight, Stopford. and others to be afterward named; while the opposite side is supported by Baxter, Milton, Barrow, Barclay, Borer, Michaelis, Paley, Evanson, Higgins, etc.
In the first half of the reign of George III., the comparative neglect into which the observance of the Lord's day had fallen in England aroused the anxiety of its friends, and many efforts were made to bring the people to a better disposition toward it. Paley did excellent service, especially by his chapter on the use of Sabbatical institutions (Moral Philosophy, b. v. eh. vi.); while bishop Porteus successfully exerted himself to check open indulgence in vicious and unseemly amusements. 'About the same time the new "evangelical" (q.v.) party began those efforts which it makes for the promotion o' a strict observance of Sunday according to the Puritan model. But what, perhaps, had most effect in turning the current of public opinion in that direction was the substitu tion of the decade (see DECA) for the week, and the abolition of public worship, by the national convention of France in 1793 (see CALENDAR); proceedings which brought to the, aid of the pious advocates of the Lord's day the political conservatism and anti-Gal lican feelings of the British people. In the next generation, the revival of the study of ancient Christian literature led to fresh advocacy of the Lutheran views concerning the Sabbath and the Lord's day, by bishop Kaye (On Justin Martyr, 1829), Dr. Whately f.,71ioughts on the Sabbath, 18:S0), Mr. Bannerman (The Modern Sabbath, Examined, 1832), and the Oxford " Tractarians; ' while Sabbatarianism had influential advocates in bishop alma (The Christian Sabbath, its Institution and Obligation, 1830), Dr. Daniel Wilson, afterward bishop of Calcutta (the Divine Authority and Perpetual Obligation of the Lord's Day Asserted, 1830). and Dr. 'Ralph Wardlaw (Discourses on the Sabbath, 1832)—in sup port of whose principles was founded in 1831 the London "society for promoting the ue observance of the Lord's day," which, aided by similar associations in Scotland and the United States, still keeps a jealous watch on behalf of the institution. For 17 year preceding his death in 1849, its most noted member. sir Andrew Agnew, M.P. for Wig. townshire, sought indefatigably both in and out of the house of commons for a stricter legal enforcement of rest OIL Sunday; and though he failed to get his bill passed, the agitation which he headed was not wholly fruitless. The attempts, however, which he and his friends have made to suppress all post-office action on Sunday, all stated convey ance of passengers on railways, and such recreations as walking in public gardens, lis tening to music in the London parks, and viewing works of nature and art in the national collections, have seemed, even to many friends of the institution, to display more zeal than wisdom or knowledge, and have led to the formation (in 1855) of " the national Sunday league"—a society which, while deprecating the conversion of any part of the day into a season for ordinary labor, or for frivolous or vicious amusement, conceives that a more cheerful mode of spending some of its hours is expedient, and that the open ing of public gardens, museums, and galleries of art, would promote alike the health and the moral and intellectual elevation of the people.