# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1864_S338
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

338 The Teaching of the Lutheran Church concerning Sunday.

public convocation and awakening to heavenly things ought rather to be done diligently than to be postponed, because this is a part of the divine service instituted by an express word. Although, therefore, no particular day is required, yet a sufficient time is demanded." (Loc. cit., § 200, 201.)

Thus Conrad Dietrich (d. 1639) further writes in his great Catechism (Institutiones catecheticae): "How does it come about that you do not also recite all the words, syllable by syllable, of this (third) commandment as they are found at Exodus 20:8? Because most of it is ceremonial and typological, which does not bind Christians in the New Testament, but concerns only the Jews. What is this? It concerns namely three points: 1. the circumstance of the seventh day; 2. the circumstance that one should do no work; 3. the circumstance of the hallowing of the Sabbath day... Is the Sabbath, then, entirely abolished for us? By no means; for only the circumstance of the seventh day is abolished; the moral element, however, remains, which binds us all, namely that some time is to be devoted to divine worship. Yet we are not necessarily bound to any particular day, whether it be Sunday, or Thursday, or Wednesday, or whatever other day it may be, but this is left to Christian liberty. Thus the apostles often came together on the Sabbath day and still observed, out of Christian liberty, the legal distinction, Romans 14:5. But when it was urged by false apostles as something necessary to salvation, Galatians 2:4, they chose the first day of the week, namely Sunday. Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10. But why is the circumstance that one should do no work ceremonial, and why does it not bind us? Because, 1., the resting from work on the Sabbath was instituted in memory of the people's deliverance out of Egyptian bondage into the rest of the land of Canaan, Deuteronomy 5:16; Hebrews 4:3, from Psalm 94:11. Hence also, 2., there is no repetition in the New Testament of this same commandment: "Thou shalt do no work," etc. Also because, 3., Christ himself did not precisely observe this part of the law, nor, 4., did the apostles observe it. Therefore we too are not obligated to these ceremonial circumstances. Are we, then, to abstain from all work on the Lord's day? By no means; for the moral element binds all, namely that one is to abstain from such works as hinder the ministry of the church and divine worship, unless either necessity compels, or piety advises, or Christian love commands it." (Ad tertium praeceptum.)

Especially thoroughly has Johann Fecht, the famous Rostock theologian (d. 1716), set forth and defended the Lutheran teaching concerning Sunday in a work entitled: Schediasmata sacra seu exercitationum singularium liber, which appeared in Frankfurt in 1688. The higher