'The Seventh-day Men' was a title given by contemporaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to an emerging body of Christians who observed Saturday, rather than Sunday, as the divinely appointed day of rest and worship. This is an extensively revised edition of the first fully documented account of the Sabbatarian movement and how it spread over England and Wales in the two centuries following the Reformation. Drawing on many rare manuscripts and printed works, Dr Ball provides clear evidence that this Christian movement was far more widespread than is often recognized, appearing in more than thirty counties. "An impeccable work of historical scholarship which treats a subject long deserving of the intelligent attention it receives from Bryan W. Ball. . . . The book contains a wealth of detail." Winton W. Solberg, "Church History" "This definitive work provides us with the first coherent, well-documented examination of the Saturday Sabbatarians, their antecedents, origins, teachings, development and decline." Raymond Brown, "Journal of Ecclesiastical History" The author analyses the movement by tracking down its origins as far back as the Celtic tradition, showing its first appearance as 'modern' Sabbatarianism around 1402, and finally exploring its decline in the eighteenth century. As this first comprehensive study of the subject, Dr Ball establishes this movement as a significant strand of thought in the history of English Nonconformity, with considerable influence on the religious life of the period. Bryan W. Ball is a retired academic and the author of numerous books, including 'The Soul Sleepers: Christian Mortalism from Wycliffe to Priestley' and 'The English Connection'. He holds a PhD from the University of London and has contributed to the 'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography' and the 'Encyclopaedia of World Faiths'. He was Head of the Religious Studies Department at Newbold College, England, and then became Principal of Avondale College, Australia, where he is currently a Honorary Senior Research Fellow.
