“The Papacy changed the Sabbath.” (Replies to Canright, p. 119) This is a leading tenet in the Seventh-day Adventist faith, strongly urged in all their teachings. Here is a sample in their own words from Words of Truth, Series No. 33: “They believe that the change of the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day of the week was brought about by the Papacy, and that this change of the Sabbath is foretold in prophecy (Dan. 7:25), and that it constitutes the sign, (Dan. 7:25), or mark of the Papacy.” All their literature, specially that of Mrs. White’s, abounds in these strong assertions. Nothing could be farther from the truth than this claim. All history is against it.
It should be carefully understood that the Papacy is distinctly and wholly a product of the local Church at Rome, the Latin Church, the Church in the west, in Italy. The “Papacy,” in no sense of the word, began to exist at the very earliest till four or five centuries after Christ. At first it was confined entirely to Italy, then was gradually extended over the Western Churches. It was not fairly established even there till A.D. 600. It never was recognized in the East by the great Eastern Greek Church, not even up to this day. The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Article “Papacy,” says: “During the first period after the foundation of the Christian Church, the Bishops of Rome exercised no primacy. The Council of Nice (325) knows nothing of a primacy of Rome over the rest of the Church.” This is well into the fourth century.
Johnson’s New Universal Cyclopaedia, Article “Pope,” says: “No supremacy was either claimed or recognized during the first, second, and third centuries, and when, in 343, at the Council of Sardica, the supremacy of the Roman See over the Christian Church was spoken of for the first time in undisguised terms, the Oriental (Eastern) bishops protested and left the council.” This is near the middle of the fourth century again, but even here it was opposed and that council was never recognized in the East.
But Adventist authorities themselves will settle this point. Elder J. H. Waggoner says: “Sylvester was Bishop of Rome during the most of the reign of Constantine [312-336]. He decreed that Sunday should be called the Lord’s Day. [There is no such decree. D. M. C.] But this could affect the Church of Rome only, for the Bishop of Rome had not then yet attained to any authority whatever above the other bishops.” “It was Constantine himself who laid the foundation of the Papacy.” (Replies to Canright, pp. 143, 148)
Elder Waggoner admits what history abundantly proves, namely, that up to the fourth century the Bishop of Rome had no authority over other bishops, and that the foundation of the Papacy was not laid till A.D. 325 at the Council of Nice. Certainly then the Papacy did not exist before the foundation for it was laid. But, in Chapter 6 of this book, we have given plenty of proof that Sunday was observed by all Christians as early, at least, as A.D. 140, or nearly two hundred years before even the foundation of the Papacy was laid, as Waggoner admits. Turn back to page 137 and read where Justin Martyr says: “On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place,” and then describes their meetings nearly the same as we conduct them now. Again he says: “But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly,” etc. Here we have Sunday observed by all Christians two hundred years before the Papacy existed, before the Bishop of Rome could exercise authority over other bishops. This shows the folly of attributing the beginning of Sunday-keeping to the Papacy two hundred years later.
Coming down still further to the middle of the fifth century, Waggoner quotes with approval the following from McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia: “Leo I, saint and Pope, surnamed the Great, noted as the real founder of the Papacy.”
This was as late as the middle of the fifth century. In the same article McClintock and Strong say of Leo’s attempt to rule other Churches: “A strong opposition was speedily organized both in the West and in the East, and soon assumed the attitude of open defiance.” Only a small part of even the West paid any heed to Leo’s claims. The East defied him. How much influence could the Papacy at that date have in changing the Sabbath the world over? None at all. The Catholic monthly, The Ecclesiastical Review, February, 1914, page 237, speaking of the controversy over Easter, A.D. 154, says: “Shy then, as it always has been, of introducing Western observances, the Eastern Church sent St. Polycarp to Rome” to protest against this meddling with the Eastern custom. As this Catholic author admits, that has always been the attitude of the Eastern Greek Church towards Rome the attitude of opposition. How, then, could the Papacy impose on those great independent Eastern Churches a pagan day which they had never kept? Adventists take their stand at the Council of Laodicea, A.D. 364, and claim that the Sabbath was changed there. Of the decree of this council Waggoner says: ” I have shown the time, the place, and the power that changed the Sabbath.” (Replies to Canright, p. 151.)
Here is his proof that the Papacy changed the Sabbath and he stakes all upon it. But in Chapter 9 we have shown that this was an Eastern Greek council, held in Greek territory, Asia Minor, by the Greek Church, attended only by Greek bishops. Not one single person was there from the Roman, or Latin, Church in the West. Neither Pope nor Papacy had the slightest thing to do with it. Hence, the attempt to prove that the Papacy changed the Sabbath here is a failure. Moreover, neither Pope nor Papacy yet existed. The Bishop of Rome at that time had no authority over other bishops of equal rank with himself of which there were many. The Papacy was entirely a Roman affair, limited for centuries to Italy, then gradually gaining influence over the Western Churches. But in the East, among the millions of Greek Christians, who for centuries were far greater in number, intelligence, and influence, any such thing as a Papacy was wholly unknown. There no one centralized authority has to this day ever been acknowledged. Four patriarchs of equal authority nominally govern there. These are in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries when the Roman Papacy undertook to claim some jurisdiction there, it was hotly resented by all the Eastern Churches. The opposition between these two great sections of the Church grew with increasing bitterness till A.D. 1052, when the East excommunicated Rome because it would never acknowledge any authority of the Roman Papacy. They are separate now. The Greek Church now claims a membership of about one hundred and fifty million. With the Protestant Churches, who number over one hundred and fifty million and who all repudiate the Papacy, one-half, or more, of all Christendom is outside the Roman Papacy and opposed to it. So it must be remembered that the Roman Catholic Church, or the Papacy, or the Pope, has never had rule over more than a divided part of the Christian Churches. Yet all the Churches which were never subject to Rome keep Sunday and always have. This proves that Sunday observance did not come from Rome.
Another very important fact is to be noticed here; namely, that in the first four centuries during which the observance of the Lord’s Day was fully settled in all Christendom, the Roman Church was greatly in the minority both in numbers, in great Christian leaders, in learning, and in influence.
Here is another fact: All the fundamental doctrines of orthodox Churches, whether Protestant, Papal, or Greek, were first wrought out and settled in their present form by the Eastern Greek Christian scholars, church leaders, and ecumenical councils dominated by the Eastern Church. These include the canon of our Holy Scriptures, the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the passing of the Jewish Sabbath, the observance of the Lord’s Day, etc. The Papal Church accepted all these from the Eastern Church and later endorsed them, but originated none of them. This cuts up by the roots the Advent theory that Sunday-keeping originated with the Papacy.
The Greek General Council, 680, excommunicated Pope Honorius. On this the Schaff- Herzog Cyclopedia, Article “Councils,” says: “A fact rather embarrassing to the dogma of papal infallibility.” This shows what little influence the Popes or Papacy had as late as 680, and how little attention the Greek Church paid to Rome. Schaff’s History of the Church, Vol. Ill, p. 325, says: It consisted of five hundred and twenty bishops, only five of whom were from the Western or Roman Church all the rest were Greeks and Orientals, and that is the date when Leo I was Bishop of Rome, the one who is said to be the first founder of the Papacy. It shows how little influence in the great councils of the Church that infant had then.
Stanley says: “The Council of Constantinople was avowedly only an Eastern assembly; not a single Western bishop was present.” (Hist. East., p. 102.) Yet this was a general council and accepted by Rome.
But according to the arguments of the Adventists themselves, the Sabbath was changed by the Greek council at Laodicea, A.D. 364, eighty-seven years before the Papacy was so much as founded! In view of the above facts what becomes of the assertion that the Sabbath was changed by the Papacy? Adventists cannot produce a single witness saying that the Papacy changed the Sabbath. Yet it is the main prop of their theory.
The arguments of the Adventists themselves put together overthrow their own position. Thus of the year A.D. 300, their History of the Sabbath, pp. 373, 374, edition of 1912, says: “We have now followed the history of Sunday from the time it was first mentioned by the Gnostic Pseudo-Barnabas, A.D. 120, as the mysterious eighth day, until it stands out clearly and definitely as the first day of the week called the Lord’s Day.” Here then, A.D. 300, it was clearly and definitely “the Lord’s Day.” This they have admitted. Coming to the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, the Advent Review, February 26, 1914, says: “The Council of Nice instituted the first day Sabbath to displace the seventh day Sabbath.” So here as early as A.D. 325, they have the Sabbath changed by this great Eastern Greek council.
So their History of the Sabbath, edition of 1912, of this council says: “By this Canon 20, the council set its seal upon the Sunday law of Constantine passed by the State. Henceforth Sunday was not only the legal holiday of the State, but its observance was acknowledged and regulated by the action of the first general council of the Church.” “Thus the highest civil and ecclesiastical authorities enforced Sunday as the universal, legal weekly holiday for all the subjects of the vast empire” (page 406). All right. Now if the observance of Sunday was thus firmly established both by the State and the Church, A.D. 325, was not its observance settled forever? Surely. How then could the day be changed by the Papacy which was not founded till over a hundred years later? And if the change of the Sabbath was made and settled both by the Church and the State in all the vast empire A.D. 325, how could the Sabbath be changed again at Laodicea A.D. 364, about forty years later?
Their various and contradictory theories eat each other up. As we have seen both the Encyclopedia and Waggoner agree that Leo was the real founder of the Papacy. But, as above, Waggoner himself definitely locates the change of the Sabbath in A.D. 364, or at least seventy-six years before the founder of the Papacy came into office!
But when was the Papacy really established? Adventists themselves locate it in A.D. 528. Smith in Thoughts on Daniel and Revelation, on Dan 7:25, says: Justinian “issued that memorable decree which was to constitute the Pope the head of all the Churches, and from the carrying out of which in 538 the period of papal supremacy is to be dated.” This was in the sixth century. That great work, Bower’s History of the Popes, (Vol. I, pp. 426, 427) locates the establishment of the Papacy in A.D. 600.
For two hundred years previous to this the Bishop of Constantinople had held the title of “universal head of the Catholic Church.” It had been confirmed to him by emperors and a great council (See Bower as above, same page.) Dowling’s History of Romanism is another high authority on this subject. On page 39 read: “The papal supremacy not established in the fourth century.” On page 41 he says that the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) decreed the equality of the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople. The great patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were made subject to the Bishop of Constantinople who was thus greater than the Bishop of Rome and opposed him bitterly. On page 51 Dowling says: “During the last few years of the sixth century, the contest for supremacy between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople raged with greater acrimony than at any previous period. The Bishop of Constantinople not only claimed an unrivalled sovereignty over the Eastern Churches, but also maintained that his Church was, in point of dignity, no way inferior to that of Rome. “It will be seen that Rome had no influence over the Eastern Churches, and hence could not have effected any change in their day of worship if it had tried.
Is there any statement anywhere in any history that the Pope or the Papacy ever tried to change the keeping of the day in the Eastern Church? There is not the remotest hint of such a thing. Roman Catholics never mention it, never claim it. It is useless to follow the history of the Lord’s Day this side of Laodicea, A.D. 364, for even Adventists admit that the change of the day had been made by that time. All agree, and Adventists admit, that the Papacy was not formed till after this – long after. So the Papacy could not have changed the Sabbath when it had already been changed hundreds of years before there was any Papacy.
But Adventists try to get over this difficulty this way; They say “The spirit of the Papacy existed ages before the actual founding of the Papacy occurred.” Answer: What is the spirit of the Papacy? It is to centralize all authority of Church and State in one person, the Pope of Rome. Then this centralizing, one-man, autocratic personage, with despotic power, crushes out all opposition to his will. This is the spirit of the Papacy. But in the great Eastern Church composing the great majority of Christendom for four or five hundred years, there was from the very beginning a deadly opposition to any such spirit of centralized authority. To this day it has never been tolerated there. From the first council in Jerusalem (Acts xv.) to the present a democratic spirit has existed and has been dominant there. Stanley says: “A similar turn is given to the institution of the Eastern clergy by the absence of the organizing, centralizing tendency which prevailed in the West.” (History of the Eastern Church, p. 83.) Again: “The Eastern patriarchs speak in their solemn documents of the papal supremacy as the chief heresy of the latter days ” (page 90).
There was never any Papacy or spirit of Papacy in the Eastern Church, or any recognition of the Roman Papacy, but a bitter hostile opposition to it till finally it caused a separation of the two in 1052. Hence, “the Spirit of the Papacy” never has existed in the Eastern Church where the Sabbath was changed. Specially mark this fact: The observance and sanctity of the Lord’s Day was fully established throughout all the great Eastern Churches long before the Roman Papacy could rule even in the West, much less in the East.
Adventists make this mistake: Beginning right after the apostles, wherever they find Christians falling into false notions or heretical doctrines, or adopting worldly ways, they pronounce that “the spirit of the Papacy.” All their books on the history of the Sabbath and Sunday are largely made up of this kind of argument. But it is a fallacy. At present we have numerous Churches which are neither orthodox nor evangelical, such as Universalists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, Swedenborgians, etc. But none of these have any of the spirit of the Papacy. So we have many worldly Christians and worldly churches, but they do not favor any Papacy.
So in the early centuries, those in the Eastern Church who fell away from the faith, or lapsed into worldliness, did not thus become papists, nor have the spirit of the Papacy. The Papacy, from its very earliest inception to its full establishment, was entirely of the local Church at Rome and the bishops of that Church. Because it was the imperial city, these bishops finally became ambitious to rule over other Churches. They schemed and worked till after long centuries they gradually subdued Church after Church, bishop after bishop, and see after see, till about A.D. 600 the Roman Papacy was established in the West, but never in the East.
The “spirit of the Papacy ” was born at Rome in the Bishops of Rome and was wholly confined to the Roman Catholic Church in the West. It was never tolerated in the Eastern Church, nor has it ever had the slightest thing to do with the Sabbath question there. But the Lord’s Day was firmly established in all Christendom, East and West, centuries before the Papacy succeeded in establishing itself even in Rome. Hence it is utterly false, absurd, and contrary to the plainest statements of all history to claim that the Lord’s Day originated with the Papacy at Rome, and was then forced on the great Eastern Churches over which the Papacy never had any authority.
“I have read this chapter and find it correct.”
BISHOP RAPHAEL
Bishop Raphael was educated in three seminaries: Damascus, Constantinople, and Kiev, Russia. He has twice received the degree of “Doctor of Divinity.” He is the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in America. Hence, he is well qualified to state correctly the position of the Eastern Church on this question.
In 1867 he married Lucretia Cranson who had been orphaned and partially reared by Ellen G. White. Together they had two surviving children, but in 1879 Lucretia died of tuberculosis. Two years later Dudley remarried. He and his second wife, Lucy Hadden, had three surviving children.
For 20 years Dudley worked as a minister and evangelist for the Adventists and was a frequent writer for the official Adventist magazine Review and Herald (now the Adventist Review). He was also often called on to debate Christian ministers, defending the seventh-day Sabbath.
Canright gradually became unable to support the “autocratic” behavior of James and Ellen White. He grew to disbelieve Ellen White’s visions and realized that according to Scripture, the Ten Commandments were not binding upon the church. He believed the Adventists were putting the law above Christ, and in 1887, Canright and his wife Lucy left the Seventh-day Adventist organization. He pastored two Baptist churches after he left, first in the Otsego Baptist Church in Michigan, and then, in 1890, he became the Pastor Emeritus of the Berean Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
During these years Canright wrote Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, and two months after his death in May, 1919, his critique The Life of Mrs. E. G. White was published.
The Adventist organization invented a story that members still believe—that Canright repented of his “apostasy” from Adventism before his death and returned to the Adventist fold. In fact, he never "repented" nor returned. According to a close friend, E.S. Ballenger, who was with Canright days before he died, "He said he was so disgusted with the deceptions of Mrs. White, James White and other leaders that he wanted to wash his hands entirely clean of the whole system. He died very quietly and peacefully and never made any confession or expressed any regrets regarding his course after leaving the denomination."
- 23. Appendixes - September 23, 2021
- 22. The Nature of Man - September 16, 2021
- 21. Forty-Seven Prominent Texts used by Sabbatarians Examined - September 9, 2021