Friday, August 28, 2009

The Doctrine of the Fourth Commandement

Pastor Stanley Fox of the Yakima Seventh Day Baptist Church in Yakima, Washington, emails me that they have made available the text of James Ockford's 1650 work The Fourth Commandement: Deformed by Popery; Reformed and Restored to its Primitive Purity. Pastor Fox writes:
This is a great work on which I have spent much time as Nick Kersten of the Historical Society can verify. He was a lot of help in providing me with direction and editing the forward to this book. I would really like to see the work be made available. James Ockford put too much into it in hard times to see it fade from sight. His information is quite good and thought provoking and set the stage for all future defense of the Sabbath. The first known writing in support of the seventh day Sabbath by a Baptist was James Ockford.. He published a book in 1650 in London with the title, The Doctrine of the Fourth Commandement, Deformed by Popery, Reformed & Restored to its Primitive Purity. Its publication caused such a concern in Salisbury that the mayor asked the Speaker of the English Parliament what should be done about the book since it undermined the observance of the “Lord’s Day.” The mayor referred it to a committee of Parliament which recommended that all copies be burned and the author punished. Only one copy is known to have escaped the flames.
A Choosing People: The History of Seventh Day Baptists, Don Sanford, pages 58-59.

The SDB Historical Society has a copy of that book on microfilm. I received a copy of it from Don Sanford some years ago. It is hard to read and in Roman black print and early modern English. This has been retyped in 14 pt. modern print so as to be easily read although the spelling has not been changed which is explained in the forward. This is a great historical work on the seventh day Sabbath. This work is now available on our church web site: www.yakima7thdaybaptist.org.
Google Books also has it indexed but not available unless you have access to Early English Books Online through an academic library. [EEBO: "Provides full text, digital images of every book printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and every book in the English language printed abroad, from 1475 to 1700."]

The Fourth Commandement

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