THE FIRST THOUSAND DOLLAR OFFER
It was Thomas Enright, a Roman Catholic priest, who was the first to offer a reward for a Sunday sacredness text. In the late 1880s, he traveled around the Central States, holding lectures and offering a thousand dollars for the missing text. In his day, that amount of money was equal to more than ten thousand today; yet he was not afraid to offer it.
Thomas Enright, C.S.S.R, was the president of Redemptorist College, a Roman Catholic educational institution in Kansas City, Missouri. A strong-minded public speaker, he openly challenged Protestants to either return to the Mother Church or show proof that they were not its renegade daughters.
He repeatedly issued public statements, in which he challenged anyone to produce just one text of Scripture stating that the Sunday is the only weekly day of worship. The $1,000 was for anyone who would present him with the missing Bible passage. But the money was never claimed.
So the offer is not new; it has had nearly a 120-year history! This one dates back to early 1884:
" ‘I will give $1,000 to any man who will prove by the Bible alone that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep . . The observance of Sunday is solely a law of the Catholic Church . . The Church changed the Sabbath to Sunday and the world bows down and worships upon that day in silent obedience to the mandates of the Catholic Church.’ "—Hartford, Kansas, Weekly Call, quoting Priest Thomas Enright, C.S.S.R., February 22, 1884.
Hartford is about 80 miles southwest of Kansas City, where Enright was president of that Catholic college.
The next quotation comes from Harlan, Iowa, located in the western part of the state, about 120 miles north of Kansas City. The wording of the third paragraph indicates that this lecture was delivered in a public meeting of townspeople, and not to a closed Catholic gathering.
"My brethren, look about you upon the various wrangling sects and denominations. Show me one that claims or possesses the power to make laws binding on the conscience. There’s but one on the face of the earth—the Catholic Church—that has the power to make laws binding upon the conscience, binding before God, binding under the pain of hellfire.
"Take for instance the day we celebrate—Sunday. What right have the Protestant churches to observe that day? None whatever. You say it is to obey the commandment, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy’ [Exodus 20:8].
"But Sunday is not the Sabbath according to the Bible and the record of time. Every one knows that Sunday is the Sabbath, the day consecrated as a day of rest. It is so recognized in all civilized nations. I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who will furnish any proof from the Bible that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep—and no one has called for the money. If any person in this town will show me any Scripture for it, I will tomorrow evening publicly acknowledge it and thank him for it.
"It was the Holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday to Sunday, the first day of the week. And it not only compelled all to keep Sunday, but at the Council of Laodicea, A.D. 364, anathematized those who kept the Sabbath, and urged all persons to labor on the seventh day under penalty of anathema."—Priest Thomas Enright, C.S.S.R., in a speech at Harlan, Iowa, reported in the Industrial American, December 19, 1889.
Enright knew church history well. Not only had the pope dared to change the day of worship from the Bible Sabbath to Sunday,—but he pushed through a council action, demanding that Christians stop keeping the true Sabbath!
But Enright did not stop there. He uttered a most powerful statement attacking the Protestant defense of Sundaykeeping.
"Prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the Holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ The Catholic Church says, No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week. And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the Holy Catholic Church."—Priest Thomas Enright, C.S.S.R., President of Redemptorist College, Kansas City, Missouri, in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, February 18, 1884, and printed in the Hartford Kansas Weekly Call, February 22, 1884; and later reprinted in the American Sentinel, a New York Roman Catholic journal, June 1893, p. 173.
Now these statements are founded on an important event in Roman Catholic history. Note that the authority of the Church is said to be based on the fact that it changed the day and got most everyone to accept the change. It did this, not by a command of God—either in the Bible or outside of it,—but by Vatican authority alone.
You will find a strange similarity in Roman Catholic statements about the change. The authority to do so is consistently said to be based on the fact that the Church did it, without asking God for permission. But there is no original thinking in such statements. Catholic leaders are stating Roman Catholic law, as approved on January 18, 1562.
The Council of Trent (1545-1563) was convened in order to establish Roman Catholic doctrine for the first time in the history of the Church. The Biblical claims of the Protestant Reformers forced the Vatican to codify their beliefs. But Catholic beliefs were based on Tradition, not on the Bible. Tradition was the sayings of men, that is, the decrees of popes and church councils.
The crucial problem was whether Tradition or the Bible was the highest authority. If it was the Bible, then the Reformers were right in their claims. If it was Tradition, then Rome must be obeyed.
How could the assembled bishops figure out a way to bypass Scripture? That was the question. Earlier sessions at Trent had been baffled by the problem. Solving it was the pivotal challenge of many sessions of the Council of Trent.
There had been much bickering over this matter. Since Catholic beliefs, based on Tradition, were nothing more than a hodgepodge collection of confused sayings, many of the archbishops and cardinals naturally hesitated to officially announce that Tradition was the foundation of the Church.
Then came the deciding point—and it came as a surprise. What is not generally known is that it was settled in one day,—and the change of the Sabbath was the key to solving it.
When Gaspar del Fosso, the Archbishop of Reggio, Italy, stood up and spoke on January 18, 1562, he decided—once and for all—the entire future course of Catholicism.
Rising to his feet, and calling for attention, he wholeheartedly praised Tradition and then made bitter jibes at those who wanted to lessen its authority in the Church.
Since others had already spoken in defense of Tradition, what could Del Fosso say that could be so decisive? Here it is:
He reasoned that the Church of Rome was founded on Tradition—and that it would perish if Tradition was not upheld. Then he gave his punch line: He told the assembled delegates that the great proof that the doctrine of "Tradition above Scripture" must be right—was the fact that, centuries earlier, the Church of Rome had changed the seventh-day Sabbath, which God Himself had commanded, to Sunday, the first day of the week.
God had commanded the Sabbath and, on His authority, given the Bible. But Rome had abolished that command; and, in its place, she commanded Sunday, and, on her own authority, given Tradition. So, Del Fosso explained, it was this change that placed Rome above God’s express Word, as given in the Bible.
Del Fosso declared that this proved Tradition to be more important than the Bible—for Church leaders had presumed to change the very laws of God Himself—and had apparently succeeded!
And, what is more? Del Fosso climaxed his speech by declaring that Protestants were obeying Rome, by keeping Sunday holy. That rendered the Protestant Reformation invalid. It was obvious, Del Fosso said, that Sunday sacredness was the pivotal proof of Catholic doctrine, the foundation on which Catholicism had the right to rule the consciences of men.
Without saying so, his point was this: "We challenged God to His face and changed one of His Ten Commandments,—and we apparently got away with it; for everybody obeys our changed law." But do you see the logical flaw in this thinking? In the Sixth Commandment, God says we should not murder anyone. If I kill someone and command that others do the same—and they obey me,—have I really changed a commandment of God? Or am I just fooling myself? Can we change the commandments of God just by disobeying them?
Del Fosso’s speech settled the matter. The tone of the gathering changed. Never again in the councils of Rome was a question ever again raised about the supremacy of Roman Catholic Tradition over the Bible. Sundaykeeping had settled it. The fact that Rome had apparently been able to change the Sabbath to Sunday, and the fact that Protestants carefully obeyed the papacy by keeping it, was the "proof" needed to forever establish Rome’s authority.
"Finally, at the last opening [session] on the eighteenth of January, 1562, their last scruple was set aside; the Archbishop of Reggio made a speech in which he openly declared that Tradition stood above Scripture. The authority of the Church could therefore not be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the Church had changed the Sabbath into Sunday, not by the command of Christ but by its own authority. With this, to be sure, the last illusion [of Bible supremacy] was destroyed, and it was declared that tradition does not signify antiquity, but continual inspiration."—J.H. Holtzman, Canon and Tradition, p. 263 (R.C.).
Now you can understand why Roman Catholic leaders claim that Sunday observance is the MARK of their authority.
"Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act . . AND THE ACT IS A MARK of her ecclesiastical power."—from the office of Cardinal Gibbons, through Chancellor H.F. Thomas, November 11, 1895.
"Sunday is our MARK of authority! . . The Church is above the Bible, and this transference of sabbath observance is proof of that fact."—The Catholic Record, London, Ontario, Canada, September 1, 1923.
Here are additional Roman Catholic statements:
"Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claim to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles . . From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first."—Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August, 1900.
"Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the [Roman Catholic] Church, has no good reason for its Sunday theory, and ought logically to keep Saturday as the Sabbath."—Priest John Gilmary Shea, in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, January 1883.
"It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and all other Christians that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church."—Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, N.J. News of March 18, 1903.
"Ques.—Have you any other way of proving that the [Catholic] Church has power to institute festivals of precept [to command holy days]?
"Ans.—Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her: She could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority."—Priest Stephen Keenan, Doctrinal Catechism, p. 176.
"Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these two alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible."—The Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893.
"God simply gave His [Catholic] Church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days, as holy days."—Priest Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations, p. 2.
"Protestants . . accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change . . But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that in accepting the Bible, in observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope."—Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950.
"We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty."—Pope Leo XIII, in an Encyclical Letter, dated June 20, 1894.
"Not the Creator of Universe, in Genesis 2:1-3,—but the Catholic Church can claim the honor of having granted man a pause to his work every seven days."—S.C. Mosna, Storia della Domenica, 1969, pp. 366-367.
"The Pope is not only the representative of Jesus Christ, but he is Jesus Christ, hidden under veil of flesh."—The Catholic National, July 1895.
"If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church."—Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal, in a letter dated February 10, 1920.
"We define that the Holy Apostolic See (the Vatican) and the Roman Pontiff hold the primacy over the whole world."—A Decree of the Council of Trent, quoted in Philippe Labbe and Gabriel Cossart, "The Most Holy Councils," col. 1167.
"It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest [from the Bible Sabbath] to the Sunday . . Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] Church."—Monsignor Louis Segur, Plain Talk about the Protestantism of Today, p. 213.
"We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."—Peter Geiermann, CSSR, A Doctrinal Catechism, 1957 edition, p. 50.
"We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy instead of Saturday as we have for every other article of our creed, namely, the authority of the Church . . whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it [Sunday sacredness] in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else."—The Brotherhood of St. Paul, "The Clifton tracts," Volume 4, tract 4, p. 15.
"The Church changed the observance of the Sabbath to Sunday by right of the divine, infallible authority given to her by her founder, Jesus Christ. The Protestant, claiming the Bible to be the only guide of faith, has no warrant for observing Sunday. In this matter the Seventh-day Adventist is the only consistent Protestant."—The Catholic Universe Bulletin, August 14, 1942, p. 4.
Protestant leaders are very much aware that Rome changed the day from Sabbath to Sunday, and that there is no Biblical basis for such a change.
BAPTIST: "There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament—absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week."—Dr. E.T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual.
Congregationalist: "It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath . . The Sabbath was founded on a specific divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday . . There is not a single line in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday."—Dr. R.W. Dale, The Ten Commandments, pp. 106-107.
Protestant Episcopal: "The day is now changed from the seventh to the first day . . but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the church."—The Protestant Episcopal Explanation of the Catechism.
Baptist: "The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath . . There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course, any Scriptural obligation."—The Watchman.
Presbyterian: "There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters."—Canon Eyton, Ten Commandments.
Anglican: "And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day."—Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, pp. 334, 336.
Methodist: "It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition."—Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, pp. 180-181.
Episcopalian: "We have made the change from the seventh to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, catholic, apostolic church of Christ."—Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday.
Southern Baptist: "The sacred name of the seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument [Exodus 20:10, quoted] . . On this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages . . Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week,—that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh."—Joseph Judson Taylor, The Sabbatic Question, pp. 14-17, 41.
American Congregationalist: "The current notion, that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament."—Dr. Lyman Abbot, Christian Union, June 26, 1890.
Christian Church: "Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath is changed, or that the Lord’s Day came in the room of it."—Alexander Campbell, Reporter, October 8, 1921.
Disciples of Christ: "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day ‘the Lord’s Day.’ "—Dr. D.H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, January 23, 1890.
Baptist: "To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years’ discussion with His disciples, often conversing upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from its false [Jewish traditional] glosses, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, no such thing was intimated. Nor, so far as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question. Nor yet did the inspired apostles, in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counseling and instructing those founded, discuss or approach the subject.
"Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism."—Dr. E.T. Hiscox, report of his sermon at the Baptist Minister’s Convention, New York Examiner, November 16, 1893.
Historians agree that Rome made the change after the Bible ended, and that Sunday was the pagan worship day of the sun god, Mithra (also called Mithras).
"It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day."—McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. 9, p. 196.
"Rites and ceremonies, of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institutions. [Church] officers for whom the primitive disciples could have found no place, and titles which to them would have been altogether unintelligible, began to challenge attention, and to be named apostolic."—William D. Killen, The Ancient Church, p. xvi.
"It would be an error to attribute [‘the sanctification of Sunday’] to a definite decision of the Apostles. There is no such decision mentioned the Apostolic documents [that is, the New Testament]."—Antoine Villien, A History of the Commandments of the Church, 1915, p. 23.
"Until well into the second century [a hundred years after Christ] we do not find the slightest indication in our sources that Christians marked Sunday by any kind of abstention from work."—W. Rordorf, Sunday, p. 157.
"The ancient Sabbath did remain and was observed . . by the Christians of the Eastern Church [in the area near Palestine] above three hundred years after our Saviour’s death."—A Learned Treatise of the Sabbath, p. 77.
"Modern Christians who talk of keeping Sunday as a ‘holy’ day, as in the still extant ‘Blue Laws,’ of colonial America, should know that as a ‘holy’ day of rest and cessation from labor and amusements Sunday was unknown to Jesus . . It formed no tenant [teaching] of the primitive Church and became ‘sacred’ only in the course of time. Outside the church its observance was legalized for the Roman Empire through a series of decrees starting with the famous one of Contantine in A.D. 321, an edict due to his political and social ideas."—W.W. Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, 1946, p. 257.
"The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a Divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday."—Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and Church, 1843, p. 186.
"The [Catholic] Church took the pagan buckler of faith against the heathen. She took the pagan Roman Pantheon [the Roman], temple to all the gods, and made it sacred to all the martyrs; so it stands to this day. She took the pagan Sunday and made it the Christian Sunday . . The Sun was a foremost god with heathendom. Balder the beautiful: the White God, the old Scandinavians called him. The sun has worshipers at this very hour in Persia and other lands . . Hence the Church would seem to have said, ‘Keep that old pagan name. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified.’ And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus. The sun is a fitting emblem of Jesus. The Fathers often compared Jesus to the sun; as they compared Mary to the moon."—William L. Gildea, "Paschale Gaudium," in The Catholic World, p. 58, March 1894.
"The Church made a sacred day of Sunday . . largely because it was the weekly festival of the sun;—for it was a definite Christian policy to take over the pagan festivals endeared to the people by tradition, and give them a Christian significance."—Authur Weigall, The Paganism in Our Christianity, 1928, p. 145.
"Remains of the struggle [between the religion of Christianity and the religion of Mithraism] are found in two institutions adopted from its rival by Christianity in the fourth century, the two Mithraic sacred days: December 25, ‘dies natalis solis’ [birthday of the sun], as the birthday of Jesus,—and Sunday, ‘the venerable day of the Sun,’ as Constantine called it in his edict of 321."—Walter Woodburn Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, p. 60.
"Sun worship was the earliest idolatry."—Fausset Bible Dictionary, p. 666.
"Sun worship was one of the oldest components of the Roman religion."—Gaston H. Halsberge, The Cult of Sol Invictus, 1972, p. 26.
"When Christianity conquered Rome, the ecclesiastical structure of the pagan church, the title and the vestments of the ‘pontifex maximus,’ the worship to the ‘Great Mother’ goddess and a multitude of comforting divinities, . . the joy or solemnity of old festivals, and the pageantry of immemorial ceremony, passed like material blood into the new religion,—and captive Rome conquered her conqueror. The reins and skills of government were handed down by a dying empire to a virile papacy."—Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, p. 672.
"The power of the Ceasars lived again in the universal dominion of the popes."—H.G. Guiness, Romanism and the Reformation.