In 1671 the
first Sabbatarian church in America was formed in Rhode Island.
Evidently this movement created a stir; for the report went over to
England that the Rhode Island colony did not keep the "Sabbath"--meaning
Sunday. Roger Williams wrote to his friends in England denying the
report, but calling attention to the fact that there was no Scripture
for "abolishing the seventh day," and adding:
"You know yourselves do not keep the Sabbath, that is the
seventh day."--_"Letters of Roger Williams," Vol. VI, p. 346
(Narragansett Club Publications)._
Through the following century numbers of Seventh Day Baptist churches
were founded in America.[F]
Sabbath keepers were springing up also on the continent of Europe, in
Bohemia, Moravia, Transylvania, and Russia, where here and there Bible
believers saw that tradition had made void one of the commandments of
God. Then, as the events at the end of the long period of papal
supremacy had moved Bible students to the earnest study of the
prophecies, and as the predicted signs of the near approach of Christ's
coming began to appear, there arose the great advent awakening in the
earlier decades of the nineteenth century.
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