Chapter 5—Liberty of Conscience Threatene
America’s precious freedom of religious belief and practice is in
danger of being destroyed by those who would force the conscience of
the minority to conform to the wishes of the majority.
In the movements now in progress in the United States to secure
for the institutions and usages of the church the support of the state,
Protestants are following in the steps of papists. Nay, more, they are
opening the door for the papacy to regain in Protestant America the
supremacy which she has lost in the Old World. And that which gives
greater significance to this movement is the fact that the principal
object contemplated is the enforcement of Sunday observance—a
custom which originated with Rome, and which she claims as the sign
of her authority. It is the spirit of the papacy—the spirit of conformity
to worldly customs, the veneration for human traditions above the
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commandments of God—that is permeating the Protestant churches
and leading them on to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which
the papacy has done before them.
If the reader would understand the agencies to be employed in the
soon-coming contest, he has but to trace the record of the means which
Rome employed for the same object in ages past. If he would know
how papists and Protestants united will deal with those who reject
their dogmas, let him see the spirit which Rome manifested toward the
Sabbath and its defenders.
Royal edicts, general councils, and church ordinances sustained
by secular power were the steps by which the pagan festival attained
its position of honor in the Christian world. The first public measure
enforcing Sunday observance was the law enacted by Constantine.
(A.D. 321) This edict required townspeople to rest on “the venerable
day of the sun,” but permitted countrymen to continue their agricultural
pursuits. Though virtually a heathen statute, it was enforced by the
emperor after his nominal acceptance of Christianity.
*
The Great Controversy, 573-579.
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