We now inquire what that change is.  By the law of God, we mean the moral law, the only law in the universe of immutable and perpetual obligation, the law of which Webster says, defining the terms according to the sense in which they are almost universally used in Christendom, “The moral law is summarily contained in the decalogue, written by the finger of God on two tables of stone, and delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai.”

If, now, the reader will compare the ten commandments as found in Roman Catholic catechisms with those commandments as found in the Bible, he will see in the catechisms that the second commandment is left out, that the tenth is divided into two commandments to make up the lack of leaving out the second, and keep good the number ten, and that the fourth commandment (called the third in their enumeration) is made to enjoin the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath, and prescribe that the day shall be spent in hearing mass devoutly, attending vespers, and reading moral and pious books.  Here are several variations from the decalogue as found in the Bible.  Which of them constitutes the change of the law intended in the prophecy? or, are they all included in that change?  Let it be borne in mind that, according to the prophecy, he was to think to change times and laws.  This plainly conveys the idea of intention and design, and makes these qualities essential to the change in question.  But respecting the omission of the second commandment, Catholics argue that it is included in the first, and, hence, should not be numbered as a separate commandment.  And, on the tenth, they claim that there is so plain a distinction of ideas as to require two commandments.  So they make the coveting of a neighbor’s wife the ninth commandment, and the coveting of his goods the tenth.

In all this they claim that they are giving the commandments exactly as God intended to have them understood.  So, while we may regard them as errors in their interpretation of the commandments, we cannot set them down as intentional changes.  Not so, however, with the fourth commandment.  Respecting this commandment, they do not claim that their version is like that given by God.  They expressly claim a change here, and also that the change has been made by the church.  A few quotations from standard Catholic works will make this matter plain.  In a work entitled, Treatise of Thirty Controversies, we find these words:—­

“The word of God commandeth the seventh day to be the Sabbath of our Lord, and to be kept holy; you [Protestants], without any precept of Scripture, change it to the first day of the week, only authorized by our traditions.  Divers English Puritans oppose, against this point, that the observation of the first day is proved out of Scripture, where it is said, the first day of the week.  Acts 20:7; I Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10.  Have they not spun a fair thread in quoting these places?  If we should produce no better for