energies, or rested from his labors on the seventh period,
corresponding to the first of the Autumn months. Hence, deriving the
suggestion from the apparent septenary rest in nature, they taught that
God ordained the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath or rest day for
man.

In conformity to this ordinance the founders of ancient Judaism
enforced the observance of the seventh day Sabbath in the fourth
commandment of the Decalogue, which, found in Gen. xx. 8-11,[1] reads
as follows, viz: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days
shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the
Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou,
nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant,
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six
days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is,
and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day
and hallowed it." Thus was the seventh day of the week made the Sabbath
of the Old Testament; but the authors of the Jewish or ancient
Christianity, looking for the immediate fulfillment of the prophecies
relative to the second judgment, ignored its observance, as may be seen
by reference to Mark ii. 23, 27; John v. 2-18; Romans xiv. 5; and Col.
ii. 16; and the founders of modern Christianity, perpetuating the
belief in the speedy fulfillment of those prophecies, made no change
relative to the Sabbath in their version of the New Testament.

After Constantine's pretended conversion to Christianity, and the time
for the fulfillment of the prophecies had been put off to the year
10000, as previously stated, the hierarchy of the church appealed to
the Emperor to give them a Sabbath, and although they knew that the
seventh day of the week was the Sabbath of the Old Testament, and that