# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1864_S337
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Teaching of the Lutheran Church concerning Sunday. 337

would have had, if he had had no one to whom he could preach in a public assembly. For Luke says in verses 3 and 4 that Paul spoke throughout the whole Sabbath and worked on the other days. And Christ did many things with particular diligence on the Sabbath day.... and at Matthew 12:8 adds the reason: The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath, to show that by his presence the legal character of the Sabbath was abolished." (Part II, loc. de lege Dei, fol. 51, 52.)

The foregoing testimonies will suffice as a representation of our Church's teaching concerning Sunday in the sixteenth century. Although already in the seventeenth century some of our theologians departed from this teaching, we nevertheless have in this century as well many representatives of the pure evangelical teaching on this point in our Church.

Thus, among others, the Rostock theologian Dr. J. G. Dorscheus (d. 1659) writes in his Theologia moralis, which J. F. Meyer published in 1685: "The Sabbath commandment contains something moral (namely, the hallowing of God's name in public church assembly), which Thomas Brodäus, following Smalcius, wrongly denies. But it is disputed whether the commandment concerning the hallowing [of the Sabbath], by virtue of a moral positive right, binds indeterminately to a certain time to be set apart from the succession of natural days — and that not for the idle setting-aside of divine worship, but for one fitting and convenient for its wholesome furtherance; or whether, rather, one of the weekdays, whichever it may be, must be fixed as the day devoted to public worship, so that the variableness lies only in the number, not in the form itself. The former view is held by Chemnitz, Melanchthon, Brenz, Wigand, Heerbrand, Dietrich, and Fink, because this suffices to distinguish this third commandment from the first and second, which bind for all times, and because for the public service that is to be rendered to God's honor, no one day in particular out of the regularly recurring weekdays is required, Romans 14:5-6, Colossians 2:16; and finally because from the divine law no sufficient ground appears which would indicate God's will regarding any one weekday in particular. The other view is the opinion of most of the Calvinists, which Walaeus, Eatonus, and before them Perkinsius, cite. Rivetus is of a different opinion. Yet the divine moral element of a certain time to be set apart for public and solemn worship — although it is not, by virtue of a divine commandment, restricted to one fixed day of the week — is not, as regards its application, left so entirely to our freedom that it could, against the love of God and of neighbor, be extended to the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, hundredth, etc. day, or be omitted altogether. For the former would plainly conflict with the divine moral law; the latter would be ruinous to the salvation of souls, whose