also wear off from the minds of many a sense of the obligation of worshipping God at all? And would it not thus, in an insensible manner, introduce more practical atheism than now exists?" (P. 61.)

The author concludes by pointing out the tendency of social worship to promote at once the honour of God, the improvement of mankind, and the religious advancement and edification of the worshippers.

310. EVANSON, EDWARD, M.A. (born 1731; died 1805). Arguments against and for the Sabbatical Observance of Sunday by a Cessation from all Labour, contained in the Letters of sundry writers in the Theological Repository; with an additional Letter to Dr Priestley, in continuation of the same subject. Ipswich, 1792. 8vo. Pp. 175.

This is a collection of controversial letters, of which all but the concluding one had appeared in the last six numbers of Dr Priestley's Theological Repository, published at Birmingham in 1786 and 1788 (vol. v. p. 342, and vol. vi. pp. 22, 113, 331, 352, 366, 465). It contains, (1.) Observations on the Sabbath, by Eubulus, i.e., Mr Evanson; (2.) A paper on the Observance of the Lord's Day, in answer to Eubulus, by Philander, i.e., Dr Priestley; (3.) The Observance of the Lord's Day vindicated, in Remarks on Eubulus, by Subsidiarius, a writer unknown; (4.) Objections to a Weekly Day of Rest, in reply to Philander, by Eubulus; (5.) Reply to Subsidiarius, by Eubulus; (6.) The Observance of the Lord's Day vindicated, by Hermas, who is Dr Priestley again; and (7.) A Letter to Dr Priestley, by Mr Evanson.

To the last of these Dr Priestley replied in his Letters to a Young Man (No. 311); and Mr Evanson briefly rejoined in A Letter to Dr Priestley's Young Man (Ipswich, 1794, 8vo, pp. 120).

Evanson's career resembled that of Mr Wakefield. He studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; and in 1768 and 1770 became Vicar of South Mimms and Rector of Tewkesbury. A change of theological opinion made him resign his livings in 1778; and in 1792 he published a work which gave great offence to the orthodox part of the community, entitled, The Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, and the Evidence of their respective Authenticity Examined; with that of other Scriptures deemed canonical. It was answered by Dr Priestley in his Letters to a Young Man, Part II. (Lond. 1793), and also by Thomas Falconer, M.A., of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in the Bampton Lectures for 1810. But I do not find that he ever renounced Christianity itself, so as to merit the title of "infidel" (in the scriptural sense of the word), which was generally applied to him.*

*In the days of Jesus and his apostles, all who accepted him as the Messiah were accounted "believers." There was no question as to the

In the first of the articles above enumerated, he opposes, in the discharge of what he considers to be "the duty of a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, and of a real friend to the welfare of his fellow-creatures," the religious observance of the first day of the week as a Sabbath, or day of cessation from all worldly business. The so-called Christian Sabbath he regards as "an institution which cannot be productive of any valuable ends, but such as are easily to be attained without it, and which not only occasions a loss to individuals and to the community at large of one-seventh part of the industry of manufacturers and labourers of every kind, but, what is infinitely more important, induces a very large majority of that most useful and most numerous part of the people to misspend that seventh of their time in dissipation and intemperance, which too naturally, and too certainly, lead them to vicious immoralities and crimes of every degree." (P. 14.)

He proceeds to contend that not only is there (as all admit) no positive precept in the New Testament for keeping a Sabbath, but no such duty can with reason be inferred from anything either in Scripture or in the works of the earliest post-apostolic Christian writers. He denies that we have any proof of the Lord's Day having been observed by the Apostles or other primitive Christians as a Sabbath. To admit that there is no precept on the subject is, he thinks, in effect to give up the point in dispute: "For surely, under any religious law whatsoever, to establish so important an institution as annihilates, at one stroke, the seventh part of all human industry, nothing less can be requisite than the express command of the lawgiver himself. And to him who recollects that the fatal apostacy from true Christianity, and the entire structure of idolatrous antichristian superstition which hath for so many ages usurped its place, were effected by means of fallacious inferences from particular passages of Scripture, and a zeal for magnifying the honour of the Messiah, the very mode of argument used in its defence will suggest strong suspicions of fallacy and error." (P. 16.)

He maintains that the Apostles and first disciples of Jesus Christ are nowhere said to have distinguished the first day of the week in any way whatsoever, and that the texts usually referred to (John xx. 19, 26; Acts xx. 6, 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2; Rev. i. 10) are quite inadequate to establish that conclusion. His arguments on this subject are mainly those employed by Heylin, Milton, the Seventhday Baptists, and others. (See above, i. 158, 181; ii. 51, 198–202, 261.) In two of the passages, Acts xx. 7, &c., and 1 Cor. xvi. 2,

inspiration or authority of the Hebrew Scriptures, nor do the Gentile converts appear to have been expected-far less required-to acknowledge their divine origin. In regard to the New Testament Scriptures, it is evident that as these were not written till afterwards, none of the earliest believers could have any opinion whatever about them. Since Evanson's time the subject of his treatise on the Evangelists has been much more adequately discussed. One of the most valuable contributions to our knowledge of it is the work of Mr Smith of Jordanhill on The Origin and Connection of the Gospels; Edin. 1853.

he finds not only no proof of the opinion controverted, but positive arguments against it. The meeting spoken of in Acts xx. was, says he, “evidently in the very beginning of the first day of the week, that is, in the evening, after the business of the preceding day was over. And if their 'coming together to break bread means their participating of the Lord's Supper, as from the general term 'the disciples' is highly probable, it shows us that St Paul thought it better to use the evening for the purpose of celebrating that sacred institution, as well as of instruction, than to break in upon the daily occupations of the Gentile converts. And as the historian assures us that he both intended and did actually set out on his journey at break of day, this passage of Scripture affords us a decisive proof that St Paul had no idea of keeping the first day of the week as a Sabbath." (Pp. 17, 18.) Again: " In Acts xx. 7, the historian, by mentioning the purpose of the assembly of the disciples, informs us clearly also of the time of the day when it was held; for, he tells us, it was to break bread.' That is, it was either to partake of one common farewell-meal with the Apostle before his departure, or else to celebrate together with him the Lord's Supper. If it was the first, all writers, both sacred and profane, teach us that the customary time of their chief and only fixed meal was in the evening, on the beginning of the Jewish day. If the latter, still, from what St Paul writes to the Corinthians upon that subject, we know it was, in those days, celebrated, according to its first institution, in the evening, at the hour of 'supper.' If, therefore, this breaking bread of the disciples was, as St Luke assures us it was, on the first day of the week,' it must have been on our Saturday evening; for the next evening would have been, according to the Jewish computation of time, on the second day. And I leave it to any person of common sense, who has read the passage, to judge whether St Paul preached to them one whole night, and set out on his journey on Sunday at break of day, as I understand him to have done; or whether he continued to preach to them two whole nights and the intervening day, and set out on Monday morning, as Philander and his auxiliary suppose. Subsidiarius indeed avoids the absurdity of so preposterous a predication, by making the disciples assemble on Sunday evening; but as the hour of breaking bread' on our Sunday evening was on the second day of the week, and not the first, he thereby flatly contradicts St Luke, and, if he could be right, the assembly would have no reference to the subject of the present debate. As to the difficulty which he suggests about the word 'morrow,' the quibble would really have amazed me, if I did not well know the omnipotence of habitual prejudice. I only beg that gentleman will take the trouble of reading the first six verses of the fourth chapter of the very same history, and he will there find the same word 'morrow' indisputably used twice, in opposition to the preceding evening, though, with the Jews, the evening and the morning were the same day." (Pp. 96, 97.) And in the injunction to the Corinthians to lay by them in store, on the first

day of the week, as God had prospered them, he finds implied direction to every disciple of those times to settle his accounts on that day for the preceding week, that he might proportion his contribution to the state of his circumstances-a business quite incompatible with the idea of a Sabbath-day." (P. 18.)

By Dr Priestley and "Subsidiarius," however, not only is the justice of these inferences disputed (the latter of them being indeed obviously strained, while the former is admitted by at least one eminent Sabbatarian to be well founded*), but they persist in maintaining the soundness of their own opposite conclusion from the passages under discussion. Mr Evanson's final rejoinder as to those in Acts xx. and 1 Cor. xvi. is somewhat pungent:"If the arguments deduced from the two passages in my former letters are not sufficiently intelligible, as I must suppose from your manner of replying to them, I have to regret that it is not in my power to make them more so. But I would as soon misspend my time in attempting to prove that the sun shone at noon-day, to a person who should persist in affirming it to be then midnight darkness, as I would contend with any one who will assert, that an express precept for a man to lay by money in his own custody, signifies that he should deposit it in the custody of another person,—or who, well knowing that, in the times of the apostles, the hour of assembling together, both for their ordinary chief meal and for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, was in the evening, at the beginning of the Jewish day, persists in main"The language of Acts xx. 7, On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached to them, and continued his speech until midnight,' and, as afterwards appears, 'even till break of day,' most naturally leads our minds to the evening as the time of meeting. I am persuaded that, in this case, it was so;-that the remarkable incident recorded as the consequence of Paul's long preaching, the historian means to say, took place at that particular time of the day, when the disciples came together for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. I do not doubt that they had met before, at other times of the day; but if I were called to prove, in point of fact, that they had done So, I should feel myself at a loss for evidence." (Discourses on the Sabbath, by Ralph Wardlaw, D.D., p. 93.)

6

A plea for the opposite opinion may be seen in the Rev. T. S. Hughes's Letter to Godfrey Higgins, p. 37. He questions whether it was the practice of the Christians at Troas to observe the day from sunset to sunset; but as most of the Christians of that time were converted Jews or proselytes, I see no reason to doubt that they retained the national custom. Now that the text has been amended by the critical editors, however, so that it now stands, "we [i.e., Paul and Luke, with their companions] being come together" (see above, i. 85, note), the question is no longer as to the assembling of disciples of Troas, but as to that of a company of travellers. Mr Hughes, it ought to be added, denies that, even if Paul travelled on a Sunday, he committed any offence in doing In that writer's opinion neither Paul nor the disciples of Troas kept the Sunday as a Sabbath; they were bound, he thinks, only to observe the day religiously, as he holds the patriarchs to have done, but not to rest wholly from labour upon it. On this point he advocates the view taken by Grotius, as mentioned above, vol. i. p. 221.

So.

taining that a predication which St Luke informs us took place at that particular time did not commence then, but at an hour when they never assembled for those purposes. I will, therefore, only remark, on the latter instance, that I am sorry to appear so ignorant to Dr Priestley as not to have known that amongst the Jews, as in every other nation, the word day was used sometimes to denote the periodical revolution of twenty-four hours; at others, to express daylight, in opposition to darkness or night. I am sure the force of my argument required that it should be so understood. And I only quoted the beginning of Acts iv. to convince Subsidiarius, whose head seemed to be prepossessed with modern English ideas, that though the word 'morrow,' or 'morning,' in our language signifies the next civil day, because our evening and subsequent morning are in different days, yet, amongst the Jews, when opposed to the preceding night or evening, it meant the same civil day, because, with them, the evening and following morning were in the same day.

"With respect to the passage quoted from the Epistle to the Corinthians, I must observe, that though I doubt not St Paul's exhortation, in this instance, being misunderstood by the Christians of after times, gave rise to their weekly collections both for charitable purposes and the defraying the necessary expenses incurred in the economy of their several assemblies, yet, in the times of the apostles themselves, no such custom was instituted. And the collection proposed by St Paul was not an usual practice, as Mr Locke and you, Sir, seem to imagine, but an extraordinary contribution, which St Luke tells us (Acts xi. 29) 'the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send,' to relieve the Christians of Judea under the pressure of that famine which the prophet Agabus had predicted would happen; and which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar.' And so far was the apostle from supposing, with you, that their destined contributions were deposited weekly in a charity-box, or in the hands of a treasurer, that in his Second Epistle, chap. ix., written a full year afterwards, he mentions same charitable contribution, hopes they are ready with it, and exhorts them to contribute liberally and cheerfully." (Pp. 155–157.)*

* Dr Priestley, in his Letters to a Young Man, p. 59, acknowledges that the Greek phrase wag' laury in 1 Cor. xvi. 2, if understood in its usual sense, must imply that the money was to be kept in the private custody of the benefactors; but he is so possessed by the idea, which has been shown to be groundless (above, p. 179), that the purpose for which Paul wrote could not have been answered by this method, and so influenced by the fact that in later times collections were made in assemblies on the first day of the week, that he is driven to the conjecture, "either that the Apostle did not express himself accurately, or that the common is not the universal sense of the phrase." He adds, however, that "very little depends upon this passage with regard to the main argument; and Mr Evanson's reasoning would have no less force if it was unmixed with such contempt for that of his adversary."