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Thomas Rogers and the English Sabbath: The Case for a Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Kenneth L. Parker
Affiliation:
Bankhead Fellow in European History in the University of Alabama, University, Alabama.

Extract

From the publication of Peter Heylyn's History of the Sabbath in 1636 to the most recent studies of this doctrine, sabbatarianism has been treated as an important and controversial issue in the post-Reformation period. These studies portray sabbatarianism as a puritan innovation, which that party introduced in an effort to reform the church from below, having failed to covert the English church to presbyterianism. This doctrinal innovation has been described by Professor Collinson as “something more than a certain ethical and social attitude to the use of Sunday: it implies the doctrinal assertion that the fourth commandment is not an obsolete ceremonial law of the Jews but a perpetual, moral law, binding on Christians; in other words, that the Christian observance of Sunday has its basis not in ecclesiastical tradition but in the decalogue.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1984

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References

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