THE LITERATURE OF THE SABBATH QUESTION. BY ROBERT COX, F.S.A. ScOT. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN AND STEWART; MDCCCLXV. PREFACE. THIS work is designed chiefly as a help to those who wish to study the Sabbath Question in a thorough and impartial manner-but also professes to be a contribution to the discussion itself, and to the history of opinion about the weekly day of rest in Jewish and Christian times. After collecting at the outset those portions of Scripture upon which all varieties of belief on the subject are based, I have given a copious list, in chronological order, of the principal books in which those varieties are set forth and maintained, or which afford the evidence relied on by disputants. To the titles of the most remarkable treatises are subjoined notices and samples of their contents, the extracts being sometimes of considerable length, especially when selected from rare or voluminous works, or relating to topics of peculiar interest at the present time. Some of the discussions introduced may perhaps be regarded as obsolete; yet these are still interesting historically, and deserve to be recorded as curious relics of by-gone theological days. As originally planned, the work was to consist of a single volume of moderate size. But when, in its progress through the press, I became more minutely acquainted than at first with the great controversy in the reign of 66 Charles I., the expediency of enlarging the scale of the book became apparent. The earlier articles being thus comparatively meagre, I have embraced many subsequent opportunities of supplying their defects. This has been accomplished chiefly in the Supplement to Volume I., in preparing which I have derived important aid from the Bampton Lectures" of Dr Hessey, published after most of the following sheets had already been printed. Of late, I have been hoping for the additional advantage of perusing the continuation of Mr James Donaldson's "Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council." Of that very able work, however, only the first volume has yet appeared; but in those which are to follow, a clear and accurate account of the opinions of the Fathers about the Sabbath and the Lord's Day may be confidently expected. My thanks are due to those literary friends and others who have promoted my researches, and favoured me with information and advice. Such readers as desire to make a methodical use, in study or discussion, of the materials here collected, are referred to the articles "Sabbath" and "Lord's Day" in the Index, where the subjects of inquiry are systematically arranged. EDINBURGH, 3d October 1865, CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE ADDUCED IN CONTRO- PAGE 4. The Period of Christ, and of Christians exclusively Jewish, 47, 108 5. Period of the Jewish and Gentile Christians, TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE SABBATH AND THE LORD'S-DAY, WITH REFERENCES TO THE TEXTS RELIED ON BY THE DIFFERENT PARTIES, NOTES ON THE QUESTION, WHETHER THE EARLY GENTILES |