Proctor, Richard A.: The Great Pyramid: observatory, tomb, and temple (New York, 1883)

THE HISTORY OF SUNDAY. 3Ì1

should be exact if the Sunday really has replaced

the Sabbath. I wonder, indeed, that some of the

superstitious abuses of the Jewish Sabbath should

not have commended themselves ere this to the

modern Sabbatarian, so closely does their spirit

accord with that in which he urges the observance

of the Lord's day. The Doritheans, for instance,

taking the precept of Moses, ' Abide ye every man

in his place,' interpreted it to mean that every man

should remain throughout the Sabbath day in

whatever attitude he chanced to be in on the

Sabbath morning : 'If he was sitting, he must

continue to sit ; if lying, he must continue to lie

down.' ' The rabbinical doctors,' we are told, ' met

this by saying that as a man's place was 2,000

cubits all round him, he did not break the Mosaical

command provided he kept himself within that

distance. The rabbins were unrivalled in such

sophistry. They invented thirty-nine negative

precepts relative to the Sabbath ; for instance,

people were not to walk on 'the grass, for walking

on it would bruise it, and such bruising amounted

to a kind of threshing. Shoes without nails might

be borne ; but shoes with nails were a burthen.'

And so forth.