PART III
THE THIRD COMMANDMENT
THE Third Commandment is: " Remember that them keep holy the sabbath day." [1] This precept of the Old Law is partly ceremonial, and in so far it has been abrogated by the preaching of the Gospel, and partly it belongs to the law of nature, which binds at all times and in all places. The sabbath, the day of rest, 'was the last day of; the week under the Old Dispensation, and the manner of observing it was strictly regulated. The natural law prescribes that we should occasionally offer to God an external and public worship, inasmuch as he is the Creator of body and soul and the Author of human society. The necessity, too, of keeping up within us a lively sense of God's existence and of our dependence on him compels us to give outward expression to our religious instincts, otherwise they will quickly evaporate. The Christian Church, using the power given to her by her divine Founder, and asserting her independence of the yoke of Jewish legalism, determined the natural law in this matter by assigning a definite time and mode for its observance. Instead of the last day of the week she chose the first, the day on which Christ rose from the dead, and the day on which the Holy Spirit came down on the Apostles. This she called the Lord's Day, and commanded her children to keep it holy by hearing Mass and resting from servile work.
CHAPTER I
ON HEARING MASS OF PRECEPT
i. ECCLESIASTICAL laws of the early Christian centuries show us that the precept of hearing Mass on Sundays dates from the earliest times. This obligation is grave, for Innocent XI condemned a proposition [2] which asserted the contrary.
