The British Isles and China
Sabbath-keeping also had a long history in the British Isles. Some claim that the Apostle Paul brought in there--while that is hard to prove, Sabbath-keeping was clearly occuring in the Celtic regions until at least 886:
1. EARLY CIVILIZATION OF THE BRITISH ISLES...
Gildas the earliest British writer of history, born A. D. 520, says of the introduction of Christianity into the islands: "Meanwhile these islands, stiff with cold and frost, and in a distant region of the world, remote from the visible sun, received the beams of light, that is, the holy precepts of Christ - who is the true Sun, and who shows tothe whole world his splendor, nor only from the temporal firmament, but from the height of heaven, which surpasses everything temporal - at the latter part, as we know, of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, by whom his religion was propagated without impediment." Comparing this with the previous passage, the events mentioned appear to be limited by the 'meanwhile' to a period between the defeat of Boadicea, A.D. 61, on the one hand, and on the other to events not far distant - such as the defeat of Caractacus, A.D. 51. Therefore the testimony of Gildas is to the effect that the gospel was preached in Britain before the year 61. (Yeowell, p. 22.)
TESTIMONY OF THE FATHERS.
Irenaeus, A.D. 178, says that the church in his time was spread throughout the World; and especially mentions the churches in Germany, Spain, Gaul, and Britain. He adds: "There is no difference of faith or tradition in any of these countries."...
The credit of introducing Christianity into this region has been claimed not only for Paul, but also for Peter, Philip, John, Simon Zelotes, and Joseph of Arimathea...
Venantius Fortunatus, A.D. 560, says: "St. Paul passed over the ocean to the Island of Britain, and to Thule, the extremity of the earth." (Ireland)
...In the biography of Augustine who came from Rome A.D. 596, to convert the heathen Saxons, we are told that he found the people of Britain in the most grievous and intolerable heresies, "being given to Judaizing, but ignorant of the holy sacraments and festivals of the church." That is to say, they kept the Bible Sabbath and were ignorant of the Roman "Sunday-festival." (Mrs. Tamar Davis : "History of Sabbatarian Churches," p. 108. Phila 1851.) ...
John Price, in "The Ancient British Church," (pp 90, 94. Note), says: "The original difference (about Easter) was that the Western church, followed herein by the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch and Alexandria, observed Good Friday either on the 14th of the month Nisan, if it fell on Friday, or, if not, on the next Friday; and Easter on the following Sunday. The Eastern church did not do that way." and then he adds, "There is, however, an unfair insinuation that the British Christians were Judaic in their observance of Easter day, in a letter of Pope elect, John (A.D. 634), to the Scoti; and in Aldhelm's Epistle to Geruntius." This "insinuation," far from being unfair, is rather the more a true statement of the Sabbath observance of the Celtic church, which even celebrated its Easter or resurrection festival on the day which the Scriptures point out as the one on which the Saviour rose from the grave, (which was "late on the Sabbath." Matt. 28:1-4) (Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America" Volume 1, 1910 pp 21-39).
The Celtic Church which occupied Ireland, Scotland, and Britain, had the Syriac (Byzantine) scriptures instead of the Latin vulgate of Rome. The Celtic Church, with the Waldenses and the Eastern empire, kept the seventh-day Sabbath...
“Adomnan’s use of sabbatum for Satur*day, the seventh day of the week, is clear indication from ‘Columba’s mouth’ that ‘Sabbath was not Sunday.’ Sunday, the first day of the week is ‘Lord’s day.’ Adomnan’s attitude to Sunday is important, because he wrote at a time when there was controversy over the question whether the ritual of the Biblical Sabbath was to be transferred to the Christians’ Lord’s-day.’ — A.O. and M.O. Anderson (editors) Adomnan’s Life of Columba, Thomas Nelson’s Medieval Texts, 1961, pages 25-26.
“The Old Testament required seventh-day Sabbath observance and, reason Adomnan’s editors, since the New Testament nowhere repealed the fourth commandment, the seventh-day was observed by all early Christians. The evidence they adduce suggests that no actual confusion between Sunday and ‘the Sabbath’ occurred until the early sixth century, and then in the writings of the rather obscure Caesarius of Arles. (Ibid., page 26.)...
The Roman ‘movement’ to supersede the Celtic Sabbath with Sunday ‘culminated in the production of an (apocryphal) ‘Letter of Jesus’, or ‘Letter of Lord’s day’, alleged to have been found on the altar of Peter in Rome; and is said in the annals to have been brought to Ireland by a pilgrim (c. 886). Upon this basis laws were promulgated, imposing heavy penalties for those that violated on Sunday certain regulations derived from Jewish prohibitions for Sabbath. . . . There is in fact no historical evidence that Ninian, or Patrick, or Columba, or any of their con*temporaries in Ireland, kept Sunday as a Sabbath.’ (Ibid., page 28.) (Celtic Sabbath-Keeping Study No. 264, from Cherith Chronicle, April-June 1998, pp. 46-47.
Celtic Sabbath-keeping 6/24/06).
People in the British Isles, including Ireland, may be shocked to learn this, but the Sabbath was kept in them by many until an English woman married Malcom III king of the Scots, and later forced Sunday upon her husband's subjects.
Noted theologian James Moffat reported:
It seems to have been customary in the Celtic churches of early times, in Ireland as well as Scotland, to keep Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, as a day of rest from labor, and Sunday, commemorative of the Lord's resurrection, as one of rejoicing, with exercises of public worship. In that case they obeyed the fourth commandment literally upon the seventh day of the week…
The queen insisted upon the single and strict observance of the Lord's Day. People and clergy alike submitted, but without entirely giving up their reverence for Saturday, which subsequently sank into a half-holy day preparatory for Sunday (Moffat , James Clement. The Church in Scotland: A History of Its Antecedents, it Conflicts, and Its Advocates, from the Earliest Recorded Times to the First Assembly of the Reformed Church. Published by Presbyterian Board of Education, 1882. Original from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Digitized Mar 13, 2008, p. 140).
The queen mentioned above was Margaret who died in 1093. Margaret (who was technically "the Queen consort of Malcolm III") was canonized a Roman Catholic saint in the year 1250 by Pope Innocent IV. Thus, once again political power was used to try to stop people from following the biblical practices of early Christianity.
Thomas Bampfield…contended that the seventh day had been kept in England in unbroken succession until the thirteenth century (Ball B. Seventh Day Men: Sabbatarians and Sabbatarianism in England and Wales, 1600-1800, 2nd edition. James Clark & Co., 2009, p. 21).
It should be noted that because of practices of a few of the Lollards in the British Isles, some Sabbath-keeping would have apparently occurred from the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries (Ball, pp. 30-31 ), so it would havce been unbroken for even more centuries that Thomas Bampfield contended about
Notice a that in 1719 England, John Ozell, a non-Sabbath-keeper wrote the following about some of the Sabbath-keepers:
…People, who…go by the name Sabbatarian make Profession of expecting a Reign of a Thousand Years…These Sabbatarians are so call’d, because they will not remove the Day of Rest from Saturday to Sunday…They administer Baptism only to adult People…The major part of them will not eat Pork, nor blood…their outward conduct is pious and Christian-like (Ozell J. M. Mission Observations in His Travels over England. 1719. As cited in Ball, p. 9).
There even was Sabbath-keeping in China probably beginning no later than 635, as well as beyond:
"It was in the year 1625; the Jesuits had infiltrated the fabric of the Chinese cultured classes, when a sensational discovery was made. A large monument stone inscribed with nineteen hundred Chinese characters, and fifty Syrian words, was unearthed just outside the walls of Chang-An, the ancient capital of the Tang Dynasty. The news of this discovery caused a bustle of excitement in the ancient metropolitan city, and thousands were anxious to know what information about their cultural heritage was hidden in the writing.
The Jesuits, who were regarded as the teachers and scholars, were immediately summoned to decipher the inscriptions. To the astonishment of these haughty priests, there before their eyes, was a description of the prestigious position, and vast extent of the seventh-day Sabbath-keeping Christian Church of the East of a millennia before!
The ancient Chinese characters were inscribed in 781 AD, at the command of Emperor Tae-Tsung, to honor the arrival of an Assyrian missionary and his companions to the capitol in the year 635 AD from Ta Tsin, or Judea. The stone revealed beliefs and practices of the primitive Christian church, which were unrelated and out of harmony with the Roman Catholic beliefs. ...
1837...The Taipings also learned from the Bible that they should observe the Sabbath. It is amazing that although Monday is called Day One and Saturday is called Day Six by the Chinese, yet the Taipings were able to recognize Saturday as the correct Seventh Day Sabbath...The Taiping Christians were asked why they observed the seventh day Sabbath, replied that it was, first, because the Bible taught it, and second, because their ancestors observed it as a day of worship." - A Critical History of the Sabbath and Sunday...Due to their resolute stand for biblical truths the Taipings were confronted by opposition on every side. The Manchurian dynasty regarded them as rebels and fought against them. In abolishing idols, the Taipings naturally destroyed the images of Mary and the saints as well as those of the Buddhists. The Jesuits became angry at them. They persuaded the French forces in China to support the ruling Manchus to crush them. (Wong P. THE SEVENTH DAY SABBATH MOVEMENT IN CHINA. Sabbath Sentinel. September-October 2000
THE SEVENTH DAY SABBATH MOVEMENT IN CHINA 6/24/06).