| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
 Bad Advertisement? Are you a Christian? Online Store: |
PREVIOUS CHAPTER - NEXT CHAPTER - HELP 
EARLY APOSTASY IN THE CHURCH General purity of the apostolic churches — Early decline of their piety — False teachers arose in the church immediately after the apostles — The great Romish apostasy began before the death of Paul — An evil thing not rendered good by beginning in the apostolic age — How to decide between truth and error — Age cannot change the fables of men into the truth of God — Historical testimony concerning the early development of the great Apostasy — Such an age no standard by which to correct the Bible — Testimony of Bower relative to the traditions of this age — Testimony of Dowling — Dr. Cumming’s opinion of the authority of the Fathers — Testimony of Adam Clarke — The church of Rome has corrupted the writings of the Fathers — Nature of tradition illustrated — The two rules of faith which divide Christendom — The first-day Sabbath can be sustained only by adopting the rule of the Romanists. THE book of Acts is an inspired history of the church. During the period which is embraced in its record, the apostles and their fellow-laborers were upon the stage of action; and under their watch-care, the churches of Christ preserved, to a great extent;, their purity of life and doctrine. These apostolic churches are thus set forth as examples for all coming time. This book fitly connects the narratives of the four evangelists with the apostolic epistles, and thus unites the whole New Testament. But when we leave the period embraced in this inspired history, and the churches which were founded and governed by inspired men, we enter upon altogether different times. There is, unfortunately, great truth in the severe language of Gibbon: — “The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as; she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.” l What says the book of Acts respecting the time immediately following the labors of Paul? In addressing the elders of the Ephesian church, Paul said: — “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” (Acts 20:29,30.) It follows from this testimony that we are not authorized to receive the teaching of any man simply because he lived immediately after the apostolic age, or even in the days of the apostles themselves. Grievous wolves were to enter the midst of the people of God, and of their own selves were men to arise, speaking perverse things. If it be asked how these are to be distinguished from the true servants of God, the proper answer is: Those who spoke and acted in accordance with the teachings of the apostles were men of God; those who taught otherwise were of that class who should speak perverse things to draw away disciples after them. What do the apostolic epistles say relative to this apostasy? Paul writes to the Thessalonians: — “Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God…. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” (2 Thessalonians 2:3,4,7,8.) To Timothy, in like manner, it is said: — “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4; 2 Peter 2; Jude 4; 1 John 2:l8.) These texts are most explicit in predicting a great apostasy in the church, and in stating the fact that that apostasy had already commenced. The Romish church, the oldest in apostasy, prides itself upon its apostolic character. In the language of Paul to the Thessalonians, already quoted, that great antichristian body may indeed find its claim to an origin in apostolic times vindicated, but its apostolic character is most emphatically denied. And herein is found a striking illustration of the fact that an evil thing is not rendered good by the accidental circumstance of its originating in the days of the apostles. Everything, at its commencement, is either right or wrong. If right, it may be known by its agreement with the divine standard; if wrong at its origin, it can never cease to be such. Satan’s great falsehood, which involved our race in ruin., has not yet become the truth, although six thousand years have elapsed since it was uttered. Think of this,. ye who worship at the shrine of venerable error. When the fables of men obtained the place of the truth of God, he was thereby dishonored. How, then, can he accept obedience to them as any part of that pure devotion which he requires at our hands? They that worship God must worship him in Spirit and in truth. How many ages must pass over the fables of men before they become changed into divine truth? That these predictions of the New Testament respecting the great apostasy in the church were fully realized, the pages of ecclesiastical history present ample proof. Mr. Dowling, in his “History of Romanism,” bears the following testimony: — “There is scarcely anything which strikes the mind of the careful student of ancient ecclesiastical history with greater surprise than the comparatively early period at which many of the corruptions of Christianity, which are embodied in the Romish system, took their rise; yet it is not to be supposed that when the first originators of many of these unscriptural notions and practices planted those germs of corruption, they anticipated or even imagined they would ever grow into such a vast and hideous system of superstition and error as that of popery…. Each of the great corruptions of the latter ages took its rise in a manner which it would be harsh to say was deserving of strong reprehension…. The worship of images, the invocation of saints, and the superstition of relies, were but expansions of the natural feelings of veneration and affection cherished toward the memory of those who had suffered and died for the truth.” Robinson, author of the “History of Baptism,” speaks as follows: — “Toward the latter end of the second century, most of the churches assumed a new form, the first simplicity disappeared; and insensibly, as the old disciples retired to their graves, their children, along with new converts, both Jews and Gentiles, came forward and new-modeled the cause.” The working of the mystery of iniquity in the first centuries of the Christian church is thus described by a recent writer: — “During these centuries, the chief corruptions of popery were either introduced in principle, or the seeds of them so effectually sown as naturally to produce those baneful fruits which appeared so plentifully at a later period. In Justin Martyrdom, within fifty years of the apostolic age, the cup was mixed with water, and a portion of the elements sent to the absent. The bread, which at first was sent only to the sick, was, in the time of Tertullian and Cyprian, carried home by the people, and locked up as a divine treasure for their private use. At this time, too, the ordinance of the supper was given to infants of the tenderest age, and was styled the sacrifice of the body of Christ. The custom of praying for the dead, Tertullian states, was common in the second century, and became the universal practice of the following ages; so that it came in the fourth century to be reckoned a kind of heresy to deny the efficacy of it. By this time the invocation of saints, the superstitious use of images, of the sign of the cross, and of consecrated oil, were become established practices, and pretended miracles were confidently adduced in proof of their supposed efficacy. Thus did that mystery of iniquity, which was already working in the time of the apostles, speedily after their departure, spread its corruptions among the professors of Christianity.” Neander speaks thus of the early introduction of image worship: — “And yet, perhaps, religious images made their way from domestic life into the churches as early as the end of the third century; and the walls of the churches were painted in the same way. The early apostasy of the professed church is a fact which rests upon the authority of inspiration not less than upon that of ecclesiastical history. “The mystery of iniquity,” said Paul, “doth already work.” We marvel that so large a portion of the people of God were so soon removed from the grace of God unto another gospel. What shall be said of those who go to this period of history, and even to later times, to correct their Bibles? Paul said that men would rise in the very midst of the elders of the apostolic church, who would speak perverse things, and that men would turn away. their cars from the truth, and would be turned unto fables. Are the traditions of this period of sufficient importance to make void God’s word? The learned historian of the popes, Archibald Bower, uses the following emphatic language: — “To avoid being imposed upon, we ought to treat tradition as we do a notorious and known liar, to whom we give no credit, unless what he says is confirmed to us by some person of undoubted veracity…. False and lying traditions are of an early date, and the greatest men have, out of a pious credulity, suffered themselves to be imposed upon by them.” Mr. Dowling bears a similar testimony: — “‘The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants!’ Nor is it of any account in the estimation of the genuine Protestant how early a doctrine originated, if it is not found in the Bible. He learns from the New Testament itself that there were errors in the time of the apostles, and that their pens were frequently employed in combating those errors. Hence, if a doctrine be propounded for his acceptance, he asks, Is it to be found in the inspired word? Was it taught by the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles?…More than this, we will add, that though Cyprian, or Jerome, or Augustine, or even the Fathers of an earlier age, Tertullian, Ignatius, or Irenaeus, could be plainly shown to teach the unscriptural doctrines and dogmas of popery, which, however, is by no means admitted, still the consistent Protestant would simply ask, Is the doctrine to be found in the Bible? Was it taught by Christ and his apostles?…He who receives a single doctrine upon the mere authority of tradition, let him be called by what name he will, by so doing, steps down from the Protestant rock, passes over the line which separates Protestantism from popery, and can give no valid reason why he should not receive all the earlier doctrines and ceremonies of Romanism upon the same authority.” Dr. Cumming, of London, thus speaks of the authority of the Fathers of the early church: — “Some of these were distinguished for their genius, some for their eloquence, a few for their, piety, and too many for their fanaticism and superstition. It is recorded by Dr. Delahogue (who was Professor in the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth), on the authority of Eusebius, that the Fathers who were really most fitted to be the luminaries of the age in which they lived, were too busy in preparing their flocks for martyrdom to commit anything to writing; and, therefore, by the admission of this Roman Catholic divine, we have not the full and fair exponent of the views of all the Fathers of the earlier centuries, but only of those who were most ambitious of literary distinction, and least attentive to their charges…. The most devoted and pious of the Fathers were busy teaching their flocks; the more vain and ambitious occupied their time in preparing treatises. If all the Fathers who signalized the age had committed their sentiments to writing, we might have had a fair representation of the theology of the church of the Fathers; but as only a few have done so (many even of their writings being mutilated or lost), and these not the most devoted and spiritually minded, I contend that it is as unjust to judge of the theology of the early centuries by the writings of the few Fathers who are its only surviving representatives, as it would be to judge of the theology of the nineteenth century by the sermons of Mr. Newman, the speeches of Dr. Candlish, or the various productions of the late Edward Irving.” Dr. Adam Clarke gives the following decisive testimony on the same subject: — “But of these we may safely state that there is not a truth in the most orthodox creed that cannot be proved by their authority; nor a heresy that has disgraced the Romish church, that may not challenge them as its abettors. In points of doctrine, their authority is, with me, nothing. The WORD of God alone contains my creed. On a number of points I can go to the Greek and Latin Fathers of the church to know what they believed, and what the people of their respective communions believed; but after all this, I must return to God’s word to know what he would have me to believe.” In his life, he uses the following strong language: — “We should take heed how we quote the Fathers in proof of the doctrines of the gospel; because he who knows them best, knows that on many of those subjects they blow hot and cold.” The following testimonies will in part explain the unreliable nature of the Fathers. Thus Ephraim Pagitt testifies: — “The church of Rome, having been conscious of their errors and corruptions, both in faith and manners, have sundry times pretended reformations; yet their great pride and infinite profit, arising from purgatory, pardons, and such like, hath hindered all such reformations. Therefore, to maintain their greatness, errors, and new articles of faith,1. They have corrupted many of the ancient Fathers, and, reprinting them, make them speak as they would have them…. 2. They have written many books in the names of these ancient writers, and forged many decrees, canons, and councils, to bear false witness to them.” 11 Wm. Reeves testifies to the same fact: — “The church of Rome has had all the opportunities of time, place, and power to establish the kingdom of darkness; and that in coining, clipping, and washing the primitive records to their own good liking, they have not been wanting to themselves, is notoriously evident.” The traditions of the early church are considered by many quite as reliable as the language of the Holy Scriptures. A single instance taken from the Bible will illustrate the character of tradition, and show the amount of reliance that can be placed upon it: — “Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved, following (which also leaned on his breast at supper, and saith, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?); Peter, seeing him, saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die; yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” (John 21:20-23.) Here is the account of a tradition which actually originated in the very bosom of the apostolic church, which, nevertheless, handed down to the following generations an entire mistake. Observe how carefully the word of God has corrected this error. Two rules of faith really embrace the whole Christian world. One of these is the word of God alone; the other is the word of God and the traditions of the church, Here they are: — 1. THE RULE OF THE MAN OF GOD, THE BIBLE ALONE. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Timothy 3:16,17.) 2. THE RULE OF THE ROMANIST, THE BIBLE AND TRADITION. “If we would have the whole rule of Christian faith and practice, we must not be content with those scriptures which Timothy knew from his infancy, that is, with the Old Testament alone; nor yet with the New Testament, without taking along with it the traditions of the apostles, and the interpretation of the church, to which the apostles delivered both the book and the true meaning of it.” It is certain that the first-day Sabbath cannot be sustained by the first of these rules; for the word of God says nothing respecting such an institution. The second one is necessarily adopted by all who advocate the sacredness of the first day of the week; for the writings of the Fathers and the traditions of the church furnish all the testimony which can be adduced in support of that day. To adopt the first rule is to condemn the first-day Sabbath as a human institution. To adopt the second is virtually to acknowledge that the Romanists are right,; for it is by this rule that they are able to sustain their unscriptural dogmas. Mr. W. B. Taylor, an able and-Sabbatarian writer, states this point with great clearness: — “The triumph of the consistent Roman Catholic over all observers of Sunday, calling themselves Protestants, is indeed complete and unanswerable…. It should present a subject of very grave reflection to Christians of the reformed and evangelical denominations, to find that no single argument or suggestion can be offered in favor of Sunday observance that will not apply with equal force and to its fullest extent in sustaining the various other ‘holy days’ appointed by ‘the church.’” Listen to the argument of a Roman Catholic: — “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.’ 15 Have they not spun a fair thread in quoting these places? If we should produce no better for purgatory and prayers for the dead, invocation of the saints, and the like, they might have good cause indeed to laugh us to scorn; for where is it written that these were Sabbath-days in which those meetings were kept? Or where is it ordained they should be always observed? Or, which is the sum of all, where is it decreed that the observation of the first day should abrogate or abolish the sanctifying of the seventh day, which God commanded everlastingly to be kept holy? Not one of those is expressed in the written word of God.” (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10.) Whoever, therefore, enters the lists in behalf of the first-day Sabbath, must of necessity do this — though perhaps not aware of the fact — under the banner of the church of Rome. THE SUNDAY LORD’S DAY NOT TRACEABLE TO THE APOSTLES General statement respecting the Ante-Nicene Fathers — The change of the Sabbath never mentioned by one of these Fathers — Examination of the historical argument for Sunday as the Lord’s day — This argument compared with the like argument for the Catholic festival of the Passover. THE Ante-Nicene Fathers 1 are those Christian writers who flourished after the time of the apostles, and before the council of Nicaea, A.D. 325. Those who govern their lives by the volume of inspiration do not recognize any authority in these Fathers to change any precept of that book, nor to add any new precepts to it. But those whose rule of life is the Bible as modified by tradition, regard the early Fathers of the church as nearly or quite equal in authority to the inspired writers. They declare that the Fathers conversed with the apostles; or if’ they did not do this, they conversed with some who had seen some of the apostles; or, at least, they lived within a few generations, of the apostles, and so learned by tradition, which involved only a few transitions from father to son, what was the true doctrine of the apostles. Thus with perfect assurance they supply the lack of inspired testimony in behalf of the so-called Christian Sabbath by plentiful quotations from the early Fathers. What if there be no mention of the change of the Sabbath in the New Testament? and what if there be no commandment for resting from labor on the first day of the week? or, what if there be no method revealed in the Bible by which the first day of the week can be enforced by the fourth commandment? They supply these serious omissions in the Scriptures by testimonies which they say were written by men who lived during the first three hundred years after the apostles. On such authority as this the multitude dare to change the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. But next to the deception under which men fall when they are made, to believe that the Bible may be corrected by the Fathers, is the deception practiced upon them as to what the Fathers actually teach. It is asserted that the Fathers bear explicit testimony to the change of the Sabbath by Christ as a historical fact, and that they knew that this was so because they had conversed with the apostles, or with some who had conversed with them. It is also asserted that the Fathers called the first day of the week the Christian Sabbath, and that they refrained from labor on that day as an act of obedience to the fourth commandment. Now it is a most remarkable fact that every one of these assertions is false. The people who trust in the Fathers as their authority for departing from God’s commandment, are miserably deceived as to what the Fathers teach. 1. The Fathers are so far from testifying that the apostles told them Christ changed the Sabbath, that not even one of them ever alludes to such a change. 2. No one of them ever calls the first day the Christian Sabbath, nor, indeed, ever calls it a Sabbath of any kind. 3. They never represent it as a day on which ordinary labor was sinful; nor do they represent the observance of Sunday as an act of obedience to the fourth commandment. 4. The modern doctrine of the change of the Sabbath was therefore absolutely unknown in the first centuries of the Christian church. But though no statement asserting the change of the Sabbath can be produced from the writings of the Fathers of the first three hundred years, it is claimed that their testimony furnishes decisive proof that the first day of the week is the Lord’s day of Revelation 1:10. The Biblical argument that this term refers to the seventh day and no other, because that day alone is in the Holy Scriptures claimed by the Father and the Son as belonging in a peculiar sense to each, is given in chapter eleven, and is absolutely decisive. But this is set aside without answer, and the claim of the first day to this; honorable distinction is substantiated out of the Fathers as follows: — The term “Lord’s day,” as a name for the first day of the week, can be traced back through the first three centuries, from the Fathers who lived toward their close to the ones next preceding, who mention the first day, and so backward by successive steps, till we come to one who lived in John’s time, and was his disciple; and this disciple of John calls the first day of the week the Lord’s day. It follows, therefore, that John must have intended the first day of the week by this title, but, did not define his meaning because it was familiarly known by that name in his time. Thus by history they claim to prove the first day of the week to be the Lord’s day of Revelation 1:10; and then by Revelation 1:10, they attempt to show the first day of the week to be the sacred day of this dispensation; for the spirit of inspiration by which John wrote would not have called the first day by this name if it were only a human institution, and if the seventh day was still by divine appointment the Lord’s holy day. This is a concise statement of the strongest argument for first-day sacredness which can be drawn from ecclesiastical history. It is the argument by which first-day writers prove Sunday to be the day John called the Lord’s day. This argument rests upon the statement that “Lord’s day,” as a name for Sunday, can be traced back to the disciples of John, and that it is the name by which that day was familiarly known in. John’s time. But this entire statement is false. The truth is, no writer of the first century, and no one of the second, prior to A.D. 194, who is known to speak of the first day of the week, ever calls it the Lord’s day! Yet the first day is seven times mentioned by the sacred writers before John’s vision upon Patmos, and is twice mentioned by John in his Gospel, which he wrote after his return from that island, and is mentioned some sixteen times. by ecclesiastical writers of the second century, prior to A.D. 194, and never in a single instance is it called the Lord’s day! We give all the instances of its mention in the Bible. Moses, in the beginning, by divine inspiration, gave to the first day its name; and though the resurrection of Christ is said to have made it the. Lord’s day, yet every sacred writer who mentions the day after that event still adheres to the plain name of “first day of the week.” Here are all the instances in which the inspired writers mention the day: Moses, B.C. 1490: “The evening and the morning were the first day.” Genesis 1:5. Matthew, A.D. 41: “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week.” Matthew 28:1. Paul, A.D. 57: “Upon the first day of the week.” 1 Corinthians 16:2. Luke, A.D. 60: “Now upon the first day of the week.” Luke 24:1. Luke, A.D. 63: “And upon the first day of the week.”’ Acts 20:7. Mark, A.D. 64: “And very early in the morning, the first day of the week.” Mark 16:2. “Now when Jesus was’ risen ‘early the first day of the week.” Verse 9. After the resurrection of Christ, and before John’s vision, A.D. 96, the day is six times mentioned by inspired men, and every time as plain “first day of the week.” It certainly was not familiarly known as “Lord’s day” before the time of John’s vision. To speak the exact truth, it was not called by that name at all, nor by any other name equivalent to that, nor is there any record of its being set apart by divine authority as such. But in the year 96, John says, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” Revelation 1:10. Now it is evident that this must be a day which the Lord had set apart for himself, and which he claimed as his. This was all true of the seventh day, but was not in any respect, true of the first day. He could not, therefore, call the first day by this name, for it was not such. But if the Spirit of God designed at this point to create a new institution, and to call a certain day the Lord’s which before had never been claimed by him, it was necessary that he should specify that new day. He did not define the term, which proves that he was not giving a sacred name to some new institution, but was speaking of a. well-known, divinely-appointed day. But after John’s return from Patmos, he wrote his Gospel,3 and in that Gospel he twice had occasion to mention the first day of the week. Let us see whether he adheres to the manner of the other sacred writers, or whether, when we know he means the first day, he gives to it a sacred name. John, A.D. 97: “The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early.” John 20:1. “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week.” Verse These texts complete the Bible record of the first day of the week. They furnish conclusive evidence that John did not receive new light in Vision at Patmos, bidding him call the first day of the week the Lord’s day.; and when taken with all the instances preceding, they constitute a complete demonstration that the first day was not familiarly known as the Lord’s day in John’s time, nor indeed known at all by that name. Let us now see whether “Lord’s day,” as a title for the first day, can be traced back to John by means of the writings of the Fathers. The following is a concise statement of the testimony by which the Fathers are made to prove that John used the term as a name for the first day of the week. A chain of seven successive witnesses, commencing with one who was the disciple of John, and. extending forward through several generations, is made to connect and identify the Lord’s day of John with the Sunday Lord’s day of a later age. Thus Ignatius, the disciple of John, is made to speak familiarly of the first day as the Lord’s day. This is directly connecting the Fathers and the apostles. Then the epistle of Pliny, A.D. 104, in connection with the Acts of the Martyrs, is adduced to prove that the martyrs in his time and forward were tested as to their observance of Sunday, the question being, “Have you kept the Lord’s day?” Next, Justin Martyr, A D. 140, is made to speak of Sunday as the Lord’s day. After this, Theophilus of Antioch, A.D. 168, is brought forward to bear a powerful testimony to the Sunday Lord’s day. Then Dionysius of Corinth, A.D. 170, is made to speak to the same effect. Next Melito of Sardis, A.D. 177, is produced to confirm what the others have said. And finally, Irenaeus, A.D. 178, who had been the disciple of Polycarp, one of the disciples of the apostle John, is brought forward to bear a decisive testimony in behalf of Sunday as the Lord’s day and the Christian Sabbath. These are the first seven witnesses who are cited to prove that Sunday is the Lord’s day. They bring us nearly to the close of the second century. They constitute the chain of testimony by which the Lord’s day of the apostle John is identified with the Sunday Lord’s day of later times. Firstday writers present these witnesses as proving positively that Sunday is the Lord’s day of the Scriptures; and the Christian church accepts this testimony, in the absence of that of the inspired writers. But the folly of the people, and the wickedness of those who lead them, may be set forth in one sentence: — The first, second, third, fourth, and seventh of these testimonies are inexcusable frauds, while the fifth and sixth have no decisive bearing upon the case. 1. Ignatius, the first of these witnesses, it is said, must have known Sunday to be the Lord’s day, for he calls it such, and he had conversed with the apostle John. But in the entire writings of this Father, the term “Lord’s day” does not once occur, nor is there in them all a single mention of the first day of the week! The reader will find a critical examination of the epistles of Ignatius in chapter fourteen of this history. 2. It. is a pure fabrication that the martyrs in Pliny’s time, about A.D. 104, and thence onward, were tested by the question whether they had kept the Sunday Lord’s day. No question at all resembling this is to be found in the words of the martyrs, till we come to the fourth century, and then the reference is not at all to the first day of the week. This is, fully shown in chapter fifteen. 3. The Bible Dictionary of the American Tract Society, page 379, brings forward the third of these Sunday Lord’s day witnesses in the person of Justin Martyr, A.D. 140. It makes him call Sunday the Lord’s day by quoting him as follows: — “Justin Martyr observes that ‘on the Lord’s day all Christians in the. city or country meet together, because that is the day of our Lord’s resurrection.’” But Justin never gave to Sunday the title of Lord’s day, nor, indeed, any other sacred title. Here are his words correctly quoted: — “And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets, are read, as long as time permits,” etc. Justin speaks of the day called Sunday. But that he may be made to help establish its title to the name of Lord’s day, his words are deliberately changed. Thus the third witness to Sunday as the Lord’s day, like the first and second, is made such by fraud. But the fourth fraud is even worse than the three which precede. 4. The fourth testimony to the Sunday Lord’s day is furnished in Dr. Justin Edwards’ Sabbath Manual; p. 114: — “Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, about A.D. 162, says: ‘Both custom and reason challenge from us that we should honor the Lord’s day, seeing on that day it was that our Lord Jesus completed his resurrection from the dead.’” Dr. Edwards does riot pretend to give the place in Theophilus where these words are to be found. Having carefully and minutely examined every paragraph of the writings of Theophilus several times over, I state emphatically that nothing of the kind is to be found in that writer. He never uses the term “Lord’s day,” and does not even speak of the first day of the week. These words, which are so well adapted to create the impression that the Sunday Lord’s day is of apostolic institution, are put into his mouth by the falsehood of some one. Here are four frauds, constituting the first four instances of the alleged use of “Lord’s day” as a name for Sunday. Yet it is by means of these very frauds that the Sunday Lord’s day of later ages is identified with the Lord’s day of the Bible. Somebody invented these frauds. The use to which they are put plainly indicates the purpose for which they were framed. The title of Lord’s day must be proved to pertain to Sunday by apostolic authority. For this purpose these frauds were a necessity. The case of the Sunday Lord’s day may be fitly illustrated by that of the long line of popes. Their apostolic authority as head of the Catholic church depends on their being able to identify the apostle Peter as the first of their line, and to prove that his authority was transmitted to them. There is no difficulty in tracing their line back to the early ages, though the earliest Roman bishops were modest, unassuming men, wholly unlike the popes of after times. But when they come to make Peter the head of their line, and to identify his authority and theirs, they can do it only by fraudulent testimonials. And such is the case with first-day observance. It may be traced back as a festival to the time of Justin Martyr, A.D. 140, but the day had then no sacred name, and claimed no apostolic authority. These must be secured, however, at any cost; and so its title of “Lord’s day” is, by a series of fraudulent testimonials,. traced to the apostle John, as in like manner the authority of the popes is traced to the apostle Peter. 5. The fifth witness of this series is Dionysius, of Corinth, A.D. 170. Unlike the four which have been already examined, Dionysius actually uses the term “Lord’s day,” though he says nothing identifying it with the first day of the week. His words are these: — “Today we have passed the Lord’s holy day, in which we have read your epistle; in reading which we shall always have our minds stored with admonition, as we shall, also, from that written to us before by Clement.” The epistle of Dionysius to Sorer, bishop of Rome, from which this sentence is taken, has perished. Eusebius, who wrote in the fourth century, has preserved to us this sentence, but we have no knowledge of its connection. First-day writers quote Dionysius as the fifth of their witnesses theft Sunday is the Lord’s day. They say that Sunday was so familiarly known as such in the time of Dionysius, that he calls it by that name without even stopping to tell what day he meant. But it is not honest to present Dionysius as a witness to the Sunday Lord’s day, for he makes no application of the term. Yet it is said he certainly meant Sunday, because that was the familiar name of the day in his time, as is indicated by the fact that he did not define the term. And how is it known that “Lord’s day” was the familiar name for Sunday in the time of Dionysius? The four witnesses already examined furnish all the evidence in proof of this, for there is no writer this side of Dionysius who calls Sunday the Lord’s day until almost the entire period of a generation has clapsed. So Dionysius constitutes the fifth witness of the series by virtue of the tact that the first four witnesses prove that in his time, “Lord’s day” was the common name for the first clay of the week. But the first four testify to nothing of the kind until the words are by fraud put into their mouths! Dionysius is a witness for the Sunday Lord’s day, because four fraudulent testimonials from the generations preceding him fix this as the meaning of his words! And the name “Lord’s day” must have been a very common one for the first day of the week, because Dionysius does not define the term! And yet those who say this know that this one sentence of his epistle remains, while the connection, which doubtless fixed his meaning, has perished. But Dionysius does not merely use the term “Lord’s day.” lie uses a stronger term than this, — “the Lord’s holy day.” Even for a long period after Dionysius, no writer gives to Sunday so sacred a title as “the Lord’s holy day.” Yet this is the very title given to the Sabbath in the Holy Scriptures, and it is a well-ascertained fact that at this very time it was extensively observed, especially in Greece, the country of Dionysius, and that, too, as an act of obedience to the fourth commandment. 6. The sixth witness in this remarkable series is Melito, of Sardis, A.D. 177. The first four, who never use the term “Lord’s day,” are by direct fraud made to call Sunday by that name; the fifth, who speaks of the Lord’s holy day, is claimed, on the strength of these frauds, to have meant Sunday; while the sixth is not certainly proved to have spoken of any day! Melito wrote several books which are now lost, but their titles have been preserved by Eusebius. 7 One of these, as given in the English version of Eusebius, is “On the Lord’s Day.” Of course, first-day writers claim this was a treatise concerning Sunday, though down to this point no writer calls Sunday by this name. But it is an important fact that the word day formed no part of the title of Melito’s book. It was a discourse on something pertaining to the Lord, — oJ peri th~v kuriakh~v lo>gov , — but the essential word, hJmerav (day), is wanting. It may have been a treatise on the life of Christ, for Ignatius thus uses these words in connection: kuriakh The first reason is that neither Irenaeus nor any other man can add to or change one precept of the word of God, on any pretense whatever. We are never authorized to depart from the words of the inspired writers on the testimony of men who conversed with the apostles, or rather, who conversed with some who had conversed with them. And the second reason is that every word of this pretended testimony of Irenaeus is a fraud! Nor is there a single instance in which the term “Lord’s day” is to be found in any of his works, nor in any fragment of his works preserved in other authors! 9 And this completes the seven witnesses’ by whom the Lord’s day of the Catholic church is traced back to, and identified with, the Lord’s day of the Bible! It is not till A.D. 194, sixteen years after the latest of these witnesses, that we meet the first instance in which Sunday is called the Lord’s day. In other words, Sunday is not called the Lord’s day till ninety-eight years after John was upon Patmos, and one hundred and sixty-three years after the resurrection of Christ!
But is not this owing to the fact that the records of that period have perished? By no means; for the day is six times mentioned by the inspired writers between the resurrection of Christ, A.D. 31, and John’s vision upon Patmos, A.D. 96; namely, by Matthew, A.D. 41; by Paul, A.D. 57; by Luke, A.D. 60 and 63; and by Mark, A.D. 64; and always as the first day of the week. John, after his return from Patmos, A.D. 97, twice mentions the day, still calling it the first day of the week.
After John’s time, the day is next mentioned in the so-called epistle of Barnabas, written probably as early as A.D. 140, and is there called “the eighth day.” Then it is spoken of by Justin Martyr in his apology, A.D. 140, once as “the day on which we all hold our common assembly;” once as “the first day on which God…made the world;” once as “the same day [on which Christt rose from the dead;” once as “the day after that of Saturn; ” and three times as “Sunday,” or “the day of the sun.” Again he refers to it in his dialogue with Trypho, A.D. 155, in which he twice calls it the “eighth day;” once “the first of all the days;” once as “the first” “of all the days of the [weekly] cycle;” and twice as “the first day after the Sabbath.” It is once mentioned by Irenaeus, A.D. 178, who calls it simply the “first day of the week.” And next it is introduced once by Bardesanes, who likewise calls it simply “the first of the week.” The variety of names by which the day is mentioned during this time is remarkable; but it is never called “Lord’s day,” nor is it ever designated by any sacred name.
Though Sunday is mentioned in so many different ways during the second century, it is not till we come almost to the close of the second, century that we find the first; instance in which it is called “Lord’s day.” Clement, of Alexandria, A.D. 194, uses this title with reference to “the eighth day.”
If he speaks of a natural day, he no doubt means Sunday. It is not certain, however, that he speaks of a natural day, for his explanation gives to the term an entirely different sense. Here are his words: — “And the Lord’s day Plato prophetically speaks of, in the tenth book of the Republic, in these words: ‘And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow, on the eighth they are to set out, and arrive in four days.’ By the meadow is to be understood the fixed sphere, as being a mild and genial spot, and the locality of the pious; and by the seven days, each motion of the seven planets, and the whole practical art which speeds to the end of rest. But after the wandering orbs, the journey leads to heaven, that is, to the eighth motion and day. And he says that souls are gone on the fourth day, pointing out the passage through the four elements. But the seventh day is recognized as sacred, not by the Hebrews only, but also by the Greeks; according to which the whole world of all animals and plants revolve.” Clement was originally a heathen philosopher, and these strange mysticisms which he here puts forth upon the words of Plato are only modifications of his. former heathen notions. Though Clement says that Plato speaks of the Lord’s day, it is certain that he does not understand him to speak of literal days nor of a literal meadow. On the contrary, he interprets the meadow to represent “the fixed sphere, as being a mild and genial spot, and the locality of the pious;” which must refer to their future inheritance. The seven days are not so many literal days, but they represent “each motion of the seven planets, and the whole practical art which speeds to the end of rest.” This seems to represent the present period of labor which is to end in the rest of the saints; for he adds: “But after the wandering orbs [represented by Plato’s seven days] the journey leads to heaven, that is, to the eighth motion and clay.” The seven days, therefore, do here represent the period of the Christian’s pilgrimage, and the eighth day of which Clement here speaks is not Sunday, but heaven itself! Here is the first instance of “Lord’s day” as a name for the eighth day, but this eighth day is a mystical one, and means heaven!
But Clement uses the term” Lord’s day” once more, and this time clearly, as representing, not a literal day, but the whole period of our regenerate life. For he speaks of it in treating of fasting, and he sets forth fasting as consisting of abstinence from sinful pleasures, not only in deeds, to use his distinction, as forbidden by the law, but in thoughts, as forbidden by the gospel. Such fasting pertains to the entire life of the Christian. And thus Clement sets forth what is involved in observing this duty in the gospel sense: — “He, in fulfillment of the precept, according to the gospel, keeps the Lord’s day, when he abandons an evil disposition, and assumes that of the Gnostic, glorifying the Lord’s resurrection in himself.” From this statement we learn, not merely his idea of fasting, but also that of celebrating the Lord’s day, and glorifying the resurrection of Christ.
This, according to Clement, does not consist in paying special honors to Sunday, but in abandoning an evil disposition, and in assuming that of the Gnostic, a Christian sect to which he belonged. Now it is plain that this kind of Lord’s-day observance pertains to no one day of the week, but embraces the entire life of the Christian. Clement’s Lord’s day was not a literal, but a mystical day, embracing, according to this, his second use of the term, the entire regenerate life of the Christian; and according to his first use of the term, embracing also the future life in heaven. And this view is confirmed by Clement’s statement of the contrast between the Gnostic sect to which, he belonged and other Christians. He says of their worship that it was “NOT ON SPECIAL DAYS, as some others, but doing this continually in our whole life.” And he speaks further of the worship of the Gnostic, that it was “not in a specified place, or selected temple, or at certain festivals, and on appointed days, but during his whole life.” It is certainly a very remarkable fact that the first writer’, who speaks of the Lord’s day as the eighth day, uses the term, not with reference to a literal, but a mystical day. It is not Sunday, but the Christian’s life, or heaven itself! This doctrine of a perpetual Lord’s day we shall find alluded to in Tertullian, and expressly stated in Origen, who are the next two writers that use the term. But Clement’s mystical or perpetual Lord’s day shows that he had no idea that John meant Sunday by his use of these words; for in that case he must have recognized that as the true Lord’s day, and the Gnostics’ special day of worship.
Tertullian, A.D. 200, is the next writer who uses the term “Lord’s day.” He defines his meaning, and fixes the name upon the day of Christ’s resurrection. Kitto 13 says this is “the earliest authentic instance” in which the name is thus applied, and we have proved this true by actual examination of every writer, unless the reader can discover some reference to Sunday in Clement’s mystical eighth day. Tertullian’s words are these: — “We, however (just as we have received), only on the Lord’s day of the resurrection [solo die dominico resurrexionis] ought to guard, not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude; deferring even our business, lest we give any place to the devil. Similarly, too, in the period of Pentecost; which period we distinguish by the same solemnity of exultation.” Twice more does Tertullian use the term “Lord’s day,” and once more does he define it, this time calling it the “eighth day.” And in each of these two cases he places; the day which he calls the Lord’s day in the same rank with the Catholic festival of Pentecost, as he does in the instance already quoted. As the second instance of Tertullian’s use of “Lord’s day,” we quote a portion of the rebuke which he addressed to his brethren for mingling with the heathen in their festivals. He says: — “Oh! better fidelity of the nations to their own sects, which claims no solemnity of the Christians for itself! Not the Lord’s day, not Pentecost, even if they had known them, would they have shared with us; for they would fear lest they should seem to be Christians. We are not apprehensive lest we seem to be heathens!
If any indulgence is to be granted to the flesh, you’ have it. I will not say your own days, but more too; for to the heathens each festive day occurs but once annually; you have a festive day every eighth day.” The festival which Tertullian here represents as coming every eighth day was no doubt the one which he has just called the Lord’s day. Though he elsewhere 16 speaks of the Sunday festival as observed at least by some portion of the heathen, he here speaks of the Lord’s day as unknown to those of whom he now writes. This strongly indicates that the Sunday festival had but recently begun to be called by the name of “Lord’s day.”
Once more he speaks of it: — “As often as the anniversary comes round, we make offerings for the (lead as birth-day honors. We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord’s day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday [the Pentecost]. We feel pained should any wine or bread, even though our own, be cast upon the ground. At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign [of the cross]. “If for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, and faith as their observer. That reason. will support tradition, and custom, and faith, you will either yourself perceive, or learn from some one who has.” This completes the instances in which Tertullian uses the term “Lord’s day,” except a mere allusion to it in his discourse on Fasting. It is very remarkable that in each of the three cases, he puts it on a level with the festival of Whitsunday, or Pentecost. He also associates it directly with “offerings for the dead” and with the use of “the sign of the cross.” When asked for authority from the Bible for these things, he does not answer, “We have the authority of John for the Lord’s day, though we have nothing but tradition for the sign of the cross and offerings for the dead.”
On the contrary, he said there was no Scripture injunction for any of them.
If it be asked, How could the title of “Lord’s day” be given to Sunday except by tradition derived from the apostles? the answer will be properly returned, What was the origin of offerings for the dead? and how did the sign of the cross come into use among Christians? The title of “Lord’s day” as a name for Sunday is no nearer apostolic than is the sign of the cross, and offerings for the dead; for it can be traced no nearer to apostolic times than can these most palpable errors of the great apostasy.
Clement taught a perpetual Lord’s day; Tertullian held a similar view, asserting that Christians should celebrate a perpetual Sabbath, not by abstinence from labor, but from sin. 18 Tertullian’s method of Sunday observance will be noticed hereafter.
Origen, A.D. 231, is the third of the ancient writers who call “the eighth day” the Lord’s day. He was the disciple of Clement, the first writer who makes this application. It is not strange, therefore, that he should teach Clement’s doctrine of a perpetual Lord’s day, nor that he should state it even more distinctly than did Clement himself. Origen, having represented Paul as teaching that all days are alike, continues thus: — “If it be objected to us on this subject that we ourselves are accustomed to observe certain days, as for example the Lord’s day, the Preparation, the Passover, or the Pentecost, I have to answer, that to the perfect Christian, who is ever in his thoughts, words, and deeds serving his natural Lord, God the Word, all his days are the Lord’s, and he is always keeping the Lord’s day.” This was written some forty years after Clement had propounded his doctrine of the Lord’s day. The imperfect Christian might honor a Lord’s day which stood in the same rank with the Preparation, the Passover, and the Pentecost. But the perfect Christian observed the true Lord’s day, which embraced all the days of his regenerate life. Origen uses the term “Lord’s day” for two different days: 1. For a natural day, which in his judgment, stood in the same rank with the Preparation day, the Passover, and the Pentecost; 2. For a mystical day, as did Clement, which is the entire period of the Christian’s life.
The mystical day, in his estimation, was the true “Lord’s day.” It therefore follows that he did not believe Sunday to be the Lord’s day by apostolic appointment. But, after Origen’s time, “ Lord’s day” became a common name for the so-called eighth day. Yet these three men — Clement, Tertullian, and Origen — who first make this application, not only do not claim that this name was given to the day by the apostles, but plainly indicate that they had no such idea. Offerings for the dead and the use of the sign of the cross are found as near to the apostolic times as is the use of “Lord’s day” as a name for Sunday. The three have a common origin, as shown by Tertullian’s own words. Origen’s views of the Sabbath and of the Sunday festival will be noticed hereafter.
Such is the case with the claim of Sunday to the title of “Lord’s day.” The first instance of its use, if Clement be supposed to refer to Sunday, is not till almost one century after John was in vision upon Patmos. Those who first called it by that name had no idea that it was such by divine or apostolic appointment, as they plainly show. In marked contrast with this is the Catholic festival of the Passover. Though never commanded in the New Testament;, it can be traced back to men who say that they had it from the apostles!
The churches of Asia Minor had the festival from Polycarp, who, as Eusebius states the claim of Polycarp, had “observed it with John, the disciple of our Lord, and the rest of the apostles with whom he associated.” 20 Socrates says of them that they maintain that this observance “was delivered to them by the apostle John.” 21 Anatolius says of these Asiatic Christians that they received “the rule from an unimpeachable authority, to wit, the evangelist John.” Nor was this all. The Western churches also, with the church of Rome at their head, were strenuous observers of the Passover festival. They also traced the festival to the apostles. Thus Socrates says of them: “The Romans and those in the western parts assure us that their usage Originated with the apostles Peter and Paul.” 23 But he says these parties cannot prove this by written testimony. Sozomen says of the Romans, with respect to the Passover festival, that they “have never deviated from their original usage in this particular, the custom having been handed down to them by the holy apostles, Peter and Paul.” If the Sunday Lord’s day could be traced to a man who claimed to have celebrated it with John and other of the apostles, how confidently would this be cited as proving positively that it is an apostolic institution! And yet this. can be done in the case of the Passover festival! Nevertheless, a single fact in the case of this very festival is sufficient to teach us the folly of trusting in tradition. Polycarp claimed that John and other of the apostles taught him to observe the festival on the fourteenth day of the first month, whatever day of the week it might be; while the elders of the Roman church asserted that Peter and Paul taught them that it must be observed on the Sunday following Good Friday! The “Lord’s day” of the Catholic church can be traced no nearer to John than A.D. 194, or perhaps, in strict truth, to A.D. 200, and those who then use the name show plainly that they did not believe it to be the Lord’s day by apostolic appointment. To hide these fatal facts by seeming to trace the title back to Ignatius; the disciple of John, and thus to identify Sunday with the Lord’s day of that apostle, a series of remarkable frauds has been committed, which we have had occasion to examine. But even could the Sunday Lord’s day be traced to Ignatius, the disciple of John, it would then come no nearer being an apostolic institution than does the Catholic festival of the Passover, which can be traced to Polycarp, another of John’s disciples, who claimed to have received it from John himself!
THE FIRST WITNESSES FOR SUNDAY
Origin of Sunday observance the subject of present inquiry — Contradictory statements of Mosheim and Neander — The question between them stated, and the true data for deciding that question — The New Testament furnishes no support for Mosheim’s statement — Epistle of Barnabas a forgery — The testimony of Pliny determines nothing in the case — The epistle of Ignatius probably spurious, and certainly interpolated so far as it is made to sustain Sunday — Decision of the question.
SUNDAY, the first day of the week, is now almost universally observed as the Christian Sabbath. The origin of this institution is still before us as the subject of inquiry. This is presented by two eminent church historians; but so directly do they contradict each other, that it is a question of curious interest to determine which of them states the truth. Thus Mosheim writes respecting the first century: — “All Christians were unanimous in setting apart the first day of the week, on which the triumphant Savior arose from the dead, for the solemn celebration of public worship. This pious custom, which was derived from the example of the church of Jerusalem, was founded upon the express appointment of the apostles, who Consecrated that day to the same sacred purpose, and was observed universally throughout the Christian churches, as appears from the united testimonies of the most credible writers.”
Now let us read what Neander, the most distinguished of church historians, says of this apostolic authority for Sunday observance: — “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a sin.” How shall we determine which of these historians is in the right? Neither of them lived in the apostolic age of the church. Mosheim was a writer of the eighteenth century, and Neander, of the nineteenth. Of necessity, therefore, they must learn the facts in the case from the writings of that period which have come down to us. These contain all the testimony which can have any claim to be admitted in deciding this case. These are, first, the inspired writings of the New Testament; secondly, the reputed productions of such writers of that age as are supposed to mention the first day; viz., the epistle of Barnabas, the letter of Pliny, governor of Bythinia, to the emperor Trajan, and flit epistle of Ignatius. These are all the writings prior to the middle of the second century — and this is late enough to amply cover the ground of Mosheim’s Statement — which can be introduced as even referring to the first day of the week.
The questions to be decided by this testimony are these: Did the apostles set apart Sunday for divine worship, as Mosheim affirms? or does the evidence in the case show that the festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, as is affirmed by Neander?
It is certain that the New Testament contains no appointment of Sunday for the solemn celebration of public worship. And it is equally true that there is no example of the church of Jerusalem on which to found such observance. The New Testament, therefore, furnishes no support 3 for the statement, of Mosheim.
The three epistles which have come down to us purporting to have been written in the apostolic age, or immediately subsequent to that age, next come under examination. These are all that remain to us of a period more extended theft that embraced in the statement of Mosheim. He speaks of the first century only; but we summon all the writers of that century, and of the following one prior to the time of Justin Martyr, A.D. 140, who are even supposed to mention the first day of the week. Thus the reader is furnished with all the data in the, case. The epistle of Barnabas speaks as follows in behalf of the first-day observance: — “Lastly he saith unto them, Your new moons and your sabbaths I cannot bear them. Consider what he means by it; the sabbaths, says he, which ye now keep, are not acceptable unto me, but those which I have made; when resting from all things, I shall begin the eighth day, that is, the beginning of the other world; for which cause we observe the eighth day with gladness, in which Jesus arose from the dead, and having manifested himself to his disciples, ascended into heaven.” It might be reasonably concluded that Mosheim would ‘place great reliance upon this testimony as coming from an apostle, and as being somewhat better suited to sustain the sacredness of Sunday than anything previously examined by us. Yet he frankly acknowledges that this epistle is spurious.
Thus he says: — “The epistle of Barnabas was the production of some Jew who, most probably, lived in this century, and whose mean abilities and superstitious attachment to Jewish fables, show, notwithstanding the uprightness of his intentions, that he must have been a very different person from the true Barnabas, who was St. Paul’s companion.” In another work, Mosheim says of this epistle: — “As to what is suggested by Some, of its having been written by that Barnabas who was the friend and companion of St. Paul, the futility of such a notion is easily to be made apparent from the letter itself; several of the opinions and interpretations of Scripture which it contains having in them so little of either truth, dignity, or force as to render it impossible that they could ever have proceeded from the pen of a man divinely instructed.” Neander speaks thus of this epistle: — “It is impossible that we should acknowledge this epistle to belong to that Barnabas who was worthy to be the companion of the apostolic labors of St. Paul.” Prof. Stuart bears a similar testimony: — “That a man by the name of Barnabas wrote this epistle I doubt not; that the chosen associate of Paul wrote it, I, with many others, must doubt.” Dr. Killen, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church of Ireland, uses the following language: — “The tract known as the Epistle of Barnabas was probably composed in A.D. 135. It is the production, apparently, of a convert from Judaism who took special pleasure in allegorical interpretation of Scripture.” Prof. Hackett bears this testimony: — “The letter still extant, which was known as that of Barnabas even in the second century, cannot be defended as genuine.” Mr. Milner speaks of the reputed epistle of Barnnbas as follows: — “It. is a great injury to him to apprehend the epistle, which goes by his name, to be his.” Kitto speaks of this production as — “The so-called epistle of Barnabas, probably a forgery of the second century.” Says the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, speaking of the Barnabas of the New Testament: — “He could not be the author of a work so full of forced allegories, extravagant and unwarrantable explications of Scripture, together with stories concerning beasts, and such like conceits, as make up the first part of this epistle.” Eusebius, the earliest of church historians, places this epistle in the catalogue of spurious books. Thus he says: — “Among the spurious must be numbered both the books called, ‘The Acts of Paul,’ and that called, ‘Pastor,’ and ‘The Revelation of Peter.’ Besides these, the books called, ‘The Epistle of Barnabas,’ and what are called, ‘The Institutions of the Apostles.’” Sir Wm. Domville speaks as follows: — “But the epistle was not written-by Barnabas; it was not, merely unworthy of him, it would be a disgrace to him; and what is of much more consequence, it would be a disgrace to the Christian religion, as being the production of one of the authorized teachers of that religion in the times of the apostles, which circumstance would seriously damage the evidence of its divine origin. Not being the epistle of Barnabas, the document is, as regards the Sabbath question, nothing more than the testimony of some unknown writer to the practice of Sunday observance by some Christians of some unknown community, at some uncertain period of the Christian era, with no sufficient ground for believing that period to have been the first century.” Coleman bears the following testimony: — “The epistle of Barnabas, bearing the honored name of the companion of Paul in his missionary labors, is evidently spurious.
It abounds in fabulous narratives, mystic, allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament, arid fanciful conceits, and is generally agreed by the learned to be of no authority.” As a specimen of the unreasonable and absurd things contained in this epistle, the following passage is quoted: — “Neither shalt thou eat of the hyena: that is, again, be not an adulterer; nor a corrupter of others; neither be like to such. And wherefore so! Because that creature every year changes its kind, and is sometimes male, and sometimes female.” Thus first-day historians being allowed to decide the ease, we are authorized to treat this epistle as a forgery. And whoever will read its ninth chapter (for it will not bear quoting) will acknowledge the justice of the conclusion. This epistle is the only writing purporting to come from the first century, except the New Testament, in which the first day is even referred to. That this furnishes no support for Sunday observance, even Mosheim acknowledges.
The next document that claims our attention is the letter of Pliny, the Roman Governor of Bythinia, to the emperor Trajan. It was written about A.D. 104. He says of the Christians of his province: — “They affirmed that the whole of their guilt or error was, that they met on a certain stated day, before it was light, and addressed themselves in a form of prayer to Christ, as to some god, binding themselves by a solemn oath, not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never ‘to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery; never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then re-assemble to eat in common a harmless meal.” This epistle of Pliny certainly furnishes no support for Sunday observance. The case is presented in a candid manner by Coleman. He says of this extract: — “This statement is evidence that these Christians kept a day as holy time, but whether it was the last or the first day of the week, does not appear.” Charles Buck, an eminent first-day writer, saw no evidence in this epistle of first-day observance, as is manifest from the indefinite translation which he gives it. Thus he cites the epistle: — “These persons declare that their whole crime, if they are guilty, consists in this: that on certain days they assemble before sunrise to sing alternately the praises of Christ as of God.” Tertullian, who wrote A.D. 200, speaks of this very statement of Pliny’s thus: — “He found in their religious services nothing but meetings at early morning for singing hymns to Christ and God, and sealing home their way of life by a united pledge to be faithful to their religion, forbidding murder, adultery, dishonesty, and other crimes.” Tertullian certainly found in this no reference to the festival of Sunday.
Mr. W. B. Taylor speaks of this stated day as follows: — “As the Sabbath-day appears to have been quite as commonly observed at this date as the sun’s day (if not even more so), it is just as probable that this ‘stated day’ referred to by Pliny was the seventh day, as that it was the first day; though the latter is generally taken for granted .” Taking for granted the very point that should be proved, is no now feature in the evidence thus far examined in support of first-day observance.
Although Mosheim relies on this expression of Pliny’s as a chief support of Sunday, yet he speaks thus of the opinion of another learned man: — “B. Just. Hen. Boehmer would indeed have us to understand this day to have been the same with the Jewish Sabbath.” This testimony of Pliny was written a few years subsequent to the time of the apostles. It relates to a church which probably had been founded by the apostle Peter. 24 It is certainly far more probable that this. church, only forty years after the death of Peter, was keeping the fourth commandment, than that it was observing a day never enjoined by divine authority. It must be conceded that this testimony from Pliny proves nothing in support of Sunday observance; for it does not designate what day of the week was thus observed.
The epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, so often quoted in behalf of first-day observance, next claim our attention. He is represented as saying: — “Wherefore if they who are brought up in these ancient laws came nevertheless to the newness of-hope, no longer observing sabbaths, but keeping the Lord’s day, in which also our life is sprung; up by him, and through his death, whom yet some deny (by which mystery we have been brought to believe, and therefore wait that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only master) how shall we be able to live different from him; whose disciples the very prophets themselves being, did by the Spirit expect him as their master.” Two important facts relative to this quotation are worthy of particular notice: 1. That the epistles of Ignatius are acknowledged to be spurious by first-day writers of high authority; and those epistles which some of them except as possibly genuine, do not include in their number the epistle to the Magnesians, from which the above quotation is made, nor do they say anything relative to first-day observance; 2. That the epistle to the Magnesians would say nothing of any day, were it not that the word day had been fraudulently inserted by the translator! In support of the first of these propositions, the following testimony from Dr. Killen is adduced: — “In the sixteenth century, fifteen letters were brought out from beneath the mantle of a hoary antiquity, and offered to the world as the productions of the pastor of Antioch. Scholars refused to receive them on the terms required, and forthwith eight of them were admitted to be forgeries. In the seventeenth century, the seven remaining letters, in a somewhat altered form, again came forth from obscurity, and claimed to be the works of Ignatius.
Again discerning critics refused to acknowledge their pretensions; but curiosity was roused by this second apparition, and many expressed an earnest desire to obtain a sight of the real epistles.
Greece, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were ransacked in search of them, and at length three letters are found. The discovery creates general gratulation; it is confessed that four of the epistles so lately asserted to be genuine, are apocryphal; and it is boldly said that the three now forthcoming are above challenge. But truth still refuses to be compromised, and sternly disowns these claimants for her approbation. The internal evidence of these three epistles abundantly attests that, like the last three books of the Sibyl, they are only the last shifts of a grave imposture.” The same writer thus states the opinion of Calvin: — “It is no mean proof of sagacity of the great Calvin, that, upwards of three hundred years ago, he passed a sweeping sentence of condemnation on these Ignatian epistles.” Of the three epistles of Ignatius still claimed as genuine, Prof. C. F.
Hudson speaks as follows: — “Ignatius of Antioch was martyred probably A.D. 115. Of the eight epistles ascribed to him, three are genuine; viz., those addressed to Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans.” It will be observed that the three epistles which are here mentioned as genuine do not include that epistle from Which the quotation in behalf of Sunday is taken, and it is a fact, also, that they contain no allusion to Sunday. Sir Win. Domville, an and-Sabbatarian writer, uses the following language: — “Every one at all conversant with such matters is aware that the works of Ignatius have been more interpolated and corrupted than those of any other of the ancient Fathers; and also that some writings have been attributed to him which are wholly spurious.” Robinson, an eminent English Baptist writer of the last century, expresses the following opinion of the epistles ascribed to Ignatius, Barnabas, and others: — “If any of the writings attributed to those who are called apostolic Fathers, as Ignatius, teacher at Antioch, Polycarp, at Smyrna, Barnabas, who was half a Jew, and Hemas, who was a brother to Pius, teacher at Rome, if any of these be genuine, of which there is great reason to doubt, they only prove the piety and illiteracy of the good men. Some are worse, and the best not better, than the godly epistles of the lower sort of Baptists and Quakers in the time of the civil war in England. Barnabas and Hermas both mention baptism; but both of these books are contemptible reveries of wild and irregular geniuses.” The doubtful character of these Ignatian epistles is thus sufficiently attested. The quotation in behalf of Sunday is not taken from one of the three epistles that are still claimed as genuine; and what is still further to be observed, it would say nothing in behalf of any day were it not for an extraordinary license, not to say fraud, which the translator has used in inserting the word day. This fact is shown with critical accuracy by Kitto, whose Cyclopedia is in high repute among first-day scholars. He presents the original of Ignatius, with comments and a translation, as follows: — “We must here notice one other passage…as bearing on the subject of the Lord’s day, though it certainly contains no mention of it. It occurs in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians (about A.D. 100). The whole passage is confessedly obscure, and the text may be corrupt. .. The passage is as follows: — “ Eij oujn oji ejn pajlaioi~v pra>gmasin ajnastrafe>ntev, eijv kaino>thta ejlpi>dov hJlqon mhke>ti sabbati>zontev, ajlla< kata< kuriakh>n zwh Gurney 34 puts forward as a material witness to prove the observance of the Lord’s day in the beginning of the second century, fails to prove any such fact, it appearing on a thorough examination of his testimony that he does not even mention the Lord’s day, nor in any way allude to the religious observance of it, whether by that name or by any other.” It is manifest, therefore, that this famous quotation has no reference whatever to the first day of the week, and that it furnishes no evidence that that day was known in the time of Ignatius by the title of Lord’s day. 36 The evidence is now before the reader which must determine whether Mosheim or Neander spoke in accordance with the facts in the case. And thus it appears that in the New Testament, and in the uninspired writings of the period referred to, there is absolutely nothing to sustain the strong Sunday statement of Mosheim. When we come to the fourth century,-we shall find a statement by him which essentially modifies what he has here said. Of the epistles ascribed to Barnabas, Pliny, and Ignatius, we have found that the first is a forgery; that the second speaks of a stated day without defining what one; and that the third, which is probably a spurious document, would say nothing relative to Sunday, if the advocates of first-day sacredness had not interpolated the word day into the document! We can hardly avoid the conclusion that Mosheim spoke on this subject as a doctor of divinity, and not as a historian; and with the firmest conviction that we speak the truth, we say with Neander, “The festival of Sunday was always only a human ordinance.”
EXAMINATION OF A FAMOUS FALSEHOOD
Were the martyrs in Pliny’s time and afterward tested by the question whether they had kept Sunday or not? — Argument in the affirmative quoted from Edwards — Its origin — No facts to sustain such an argument prior to the fourth century — A single instance at the opening of that century all that can be claimed in support of the assertion — Sunday not even alluded to in that instance — Testimony of Mosheim relative to the work in which this is found.
CERTAIN doctors of divinity have made a special effort to show that the “stated day of Plinys epistle is the first day of the week. For this purpose they adduce a fabulous narrative which the more reliable historians of the church have not deemed worthy of record. The argument is this: In Pliny’s time and afterward, that is, from the close of the first century and onward, whenever the Christians were brought before their persecutors for examination, they were asked whether they had kept the Lord’s day, this term being used to designate the first day of the week. And hence two facts are asserted to be established: 1. That when Pliny says that the Christians who were examined by him were accustomed to meet on a stated day, that day was undoubtedly the first day of the, week; 2. That the observance of the first day of the week was the grand test by which Christians were known to their heathen persecutors; 3. That “Lord’s day” was the name by which the first day of the week was known in the time of Pliny, a few years after the death of John.
To prove these points, Dr. Edwards makes the following statement: — “Hence the fact that their persecutors, when they wished to know whether men were Christians, were accustomed to put to them this question; viz., ‘Dominicum servasti (Hast thou kept the Lord’s day)?’ If they had, they were Christians. This was the badge of their Christianity, in distinction from Jews and pagans. And if they said they had, and would not recant, they must be put to death.
And what, when they continued steadfast, was their answer? ‘Christianus sum; intermittere non possum (I am a Christian; I cannot omit, it).’ It is a badge of my religion, and the man who assumes it must of course keep the Lord’s day, because it is the will of his Lord; and should he abandon it, he would be an apostate from his religion.” Mr. Gurney, an English first-day writer of some note, uses the same argument and for the same purpose. 2 The importance attached to this statement, and the prominence given to it by the advocates of first-day sacredness, render it proper that its merits should be examined. Dr.
Edwards gives no authority for his. statement; but Mr. Gurney traces the story to Dr. Andrews, bishop of Winchester, who claimed to have taken it from the Acta Martyrum, an ancient collection of the acts of the martyrs. It was in the early part of the seventeenth century that Bishop Andrews first brought this forward in his speech in the court of Star Chamber, against Thraske, who was accused before that arbitrary tribunal of maintaining the heretical opinion that Christians are bound to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord. The story was first produced, therefore, for the purpose of confounding an observer of the Sabbath when on trial by his enemies for keeping that day. Sir Win. Domville, an able and-Sabbatarian writer, thus traces out the matter: — “The bishop, as we have seen, refers to the Acta of the martyrs as justifying his assertion respecting the question, Dominicum servasti? but he does not cite a single instance from them in which that question was put. We are left, therefore, to hunt out the instances for ourselves, wherever, if anywhere, they are to be found. The most complete collection of the memoirs and legends still extant, relative to the lives and sufferings of the Christian martyrs, is that by Ruinart, entitled, ‘Acta primorum Martyrum sincera et selecta.’ I have carefully consulted that work, and I take upon myself to affirm that among the questions there stated to have been put to the martyrs in and before the time of Pliny, and for nearly two hundred years afterwards, the question, Dominicum servasti? does not once occur; nor any equivalent question.” 3 This shows at once that no proof can be obtained from this quarter, either that the “stated day” of Pliny was the first day of the week, or that the martyrs of the early church were tested by the question whether they ]had observed it or not. It also shows the statement to be false that the martyrs of Pliny’s time called Sunday the Lord’s day, and kept it as such. After quoting all the questions put to martyrs in and before Pliny’s time, and thus proving that no such question as is alleged was put to them, Domville says: — “This much may suffice to show that Dominicum servasti? was no question in Pliny’s time, as Mr. Gurney intends us to believe it was. I have, however, still other proof of Mr. Gurney’s unfair dealing with the subject, but I defer stating it for the present, that I may proceed in the inquiry, What may have been the authority on which Bishop Andrews relied when stating that Dominicum servasti? was ever a usual question put by the heathen persecutors? I shall with this view pass over the martyrdoms which intervened between Pliny’s time and the fourth century, as they contain nothing to the purpose, and shall come at once to that martyrdom the narrative of which was, I have no doubt, the source from which Bishop Andrews derived his question, ‘Dominicum servasti (Hold you the Lord’s day)?’ This martyrdom happened A.D. 304. 4 The sufferers were Saturninus and his four sons, and several other persons. They were taken to Carthage, and brought before the proconsul Amulinus. In the account given of their examinations by him, the phrases, ‘CELEBRARE Dominicum,’ and ‘AGERE Dominicum,’ frequently occur, but in no instance is the verb ‘servare’ used in reference to Dominicum. I mention this chiefly to show that when Bishop Andrews, alluding, as no doubt he does, to the narrative of this martyrdom, says the question was, Dominicum servasti? it is very clear he had not his author at hand, and that in trusting to his memory, he coined a phrase of his own.” Domville quotes at length the conversation between the proconsul and the martyrs, which is quite similar in most respects to Gurney’s and Edward’s quotation from Andrews. He then adds: — “The narrative of the martyrdom of Saturninus being the only one which has the appearance of supporting the assertion of Bishop Andrews that, ‘Hold you the Lord’s day?’ was the usual question to the martyrs, what if I should prove that even this narrative affords no support to that assertion? yet nothing is more easy than this proof; for Bishop Andrews has quite mistaken the meaning of the word Dominicum in translating it ‘the Lord’s day.’ It had no such meaning. It was a barbarous word in use among some of the ecclesiastical, writers in, and subsequent to, the fourth century, to express sometimes a church, and at other times the Lord’s supper, but: NEVER the Lord’s day. 6 My authorities on this point are — “1. Ruinart, who, upon the word Dominicum, in the narrative of the martyrdom of Saturninus, has a note, in which he says it is a word signifying the Lord’s supper 7 (‘Dominicum vero desinat sacra mysteria’), and he quotes Tertullian and Cyprian in support of this interpretation. “2. The editors of the Benedictine edition of St. Augustine’s works.
They state that the word Dominicum has the two meanings of a church and the Lord’s supper. For the former, they quote, among other authorities, a canon of the council of Neo Cesarea. For the latter meaning, they quote Cyprian, and refer also to St. Augustine’s account of his conference with the Donatists, in which allusion is made to the narrative of the martyrdom of Saturninus. “3. Gesner, who, in his Latin Thesaurus, published in 1749, gives both meanings to the word Dominicum. For that of the Lord’s supper, he quotes Cyprian; for that of a church, he quotes Cyprian and also Hillary. Domville states other facts of interest bearing on this point, and then pays his respects to Mr. Gurney as follows: — “It thus appearing that the reference made by Bishop Andrews to the ‘Acts of Martyrs’ completely fails to establish his dictum respecting the question alleged to have been put to the martyrs, and it also appearing that there existed strong and obvious reasons for not placing implicit reliance upon that dictum, what are we to think of Mr. Gurney’s regard for truth, when we find he does not scruple to tell his readers that the ‘stated day’ mentioned in Pliny’s letter as that on which the Christians held their religious assemblies, was ‘clearly the first day of the week,’ as is proved by the very question which it was customary for the Roman persecutors to address to the martyrs, ‘Dominicum servasti (Hast thou kept the Lord’s day)?’ For this unqualified assertion, prefixed as it is by the word ‘clearly,’ in order to. make it the more impressive, Mr. Gurney is without any excuse.” The justice of Domville’s language cannot be questioned, when he characterizes this favorite first-day argument as — “One of those daring misstatements of facts so frequent in theological writings, and which, from the confident tone so generally assumed by the writers on such occasions, are usually received without examination, and allowed, in consequence, to pass current for truth.” The investigation to which this statement has been subjected, shows, 1. That no such question as, Hast thou kept the Lord’s day? is upon record, as proposed to the martyrs in the time of Pithy; 2. That no such question was asked to any martyr prior to the commencement of the fourth century; 3. That a single instance of martyrdom in which any question of the kind was asked, is all that can be claimed; 4. That in this one case, which is all that has even the slightest appearance of sustaining the story under examination, a correct translation of the original Latin shows that the question had no relation whatever to the observance of Sunday!
All this has been upon the assumption that the Acta Martyrum, in which this story is found, is an authentic work. Let Mosheim testify relative to the character of this work for veracity: — “As to those accounts which have come clown to us under the title of Acta Martyrum, or the Acts of the Martyrs, their authority is certainly for the most part of a very questionable nature; indeed, speaking generally, it might be coming nearer to the truth, perhaps, were we to say that they are entitled to no sort of credit whatever.” Such is the authority of the work from which this story is taken. It is not strange that first-day historians should leave the repetition of it to theologians.
Such are the facts respecting this extraordinary falsehood. They constitute so complete an exposure of this famous historical argument for Sunday as to consign it to the just contempt of all honest men. But this is too valuable an argument to be lightly surrendered, and, moreover, it is as truthful as are certain other of the historical arguments for Sunday. It will not do to give up this argument because of its dishonesty; for others will have to go with it for possessing the same character.
Since the publication of Domville’s elaborate work, James Gilfillan, of Scotland, has written a large volume entitled, “The Sabbath,” which has been extensively circulated both in Europe and America, and is esteemed a standard work by the American Tract Society and by firsts-day denominations in general. Gilfillan had read Domville, as appears from his statements on pages 10, 142, 143, 616, of his volume. He was therefore acquainted with Domville’s exposure of the fraud respecting “Dominicum servasti?” But though he was acquainted with this exposure, he offers not one word in reply. On the contrary, lie repeats the story with as much assurance as though it had not been proved a falsehood. But as Domville had shown up the matter from the Acta Martyrum, it was necessary for Gilfillan to trace it to sonic other authority, and so he assigns it to Cardinal Baronius. Here are Gilfillan’s words: — “From the days of the apostles downward for many years, [he followers of Christ had no enemies more fierce and unrelenting than that people [the Jews], who cursed them in the synagogue, sent out emissaries into all countries to calumniate their Master and them, and were abbettors, wherever they could, to the martyrdom of men, such as Polycarp, of whom the world was not worthy.
Among the reasons of this deadly enmity was the change of the Sabbatic day. The Romans, though they had no objection on this score, punished the Christians for the faithful observance of their day of rest, one of the testing questions put to the martyrs being, ‘Dominicum servasti (Have you kept the Lord’s day)?’ — Baron.
An. Eccles., A.D. 303, Numbers 35, etc.” Gilfillan having reproduced this statement, and assigned as his authority the annalist Baronius, more recent first-day writers take courage, and repeat the story after him. Now they are all right, as they think. What if the, Acta Martyrum has failed them? Domville ought to have gone to Baronius, who, in their judgment, is the true source of information in this matter. Had he done this, they say, he would have been saved from misleading his readers. But let us ascertain what evil Domville has done in this case. It all consists in the assertion of two things out of the Acta Martyrum: — 1. That no such question as “Dominicum servasti?” was addressed to any martyr till the early part of the fourth century, some two hundred years after the time of Pliny. 2. That the question even then did not relate to what is called the Lord’s day, but to the Lord’s supper.
Now it is a remarkable fact that Gilfillan has virtually admitted the truth of the first of these statements, for the earliest instance which he could find in Baronius is A.D. 303, as his reference plainly shows. It differs only one year from the date assigned in Ruinart’s Acta Martyrum, and relates to the very case which Domville has quoted from that work! Domville’s first and most important statement is therefore vindicated by Gilfillan himself, though he has not the frankness to say this in so many words.
Domville’s second point is that Dominicum, when used as a noun, as in the present case, signifies either a church or the Lord’s supper, but never signifies Lord’s day. He establishes the fact by incontestible evidence.
Gilfillan was acquainted with all this. He could not answer Domville, and yet he was not willing to abandon the falsehood which Domville had exposed. So he turns from the Acta Martyrum, in which the compiler directly defines the word to mean precisely what Domville assorts, and brings forward the great Romish annalist, Cardinal Baronins. Now, say our first-day friends, we are to have the truth front a high authority. Gilfillan has-found in Baronins an express statement that the martyrs were tested by the question, “Have you kept the Lord’s day?” No matter, then, as to the Acta Martyrum, from which Bishop Andrews first produced this story. That, indeed, has failed us, but we have in its stead the weighty testimony of the great Baronius. To be sure, he fixes this test no earlier than the fourth century, which renders it of no avail as proof that Pliny’s stated day was Sunday; but it is Worth much to have Baronius bear witness, that certain martyrs in the fourth century were put to death because they observed the Sunday Lord’s day.
But these exultant thoughts are vain. I must state a grave fact in plain language: Gilfillan has deliberately falsified the testimony of Baronius!
That historian records at length the martyrdom of Saturninus and his company in Northern Africa in A.D. 303. It is the very story which Domville has cited from the Acta Martyrum, and Baronius repeatedly indicates that he himself copied it from that work. He gives the various questions propounded by the proconsul, and the several answers which were returned by each of the martyrs. I copy from Baronius the most important of these. They were arrested while celebrating the Lord’s sacrament according to custom. 15 The following is the charge on which they were arrested: They had celebrated the Collectam Dominicum against the command of the emperors. 16 The proconsul asked the first whether he had celebrated the Collectam, and he replied that he was a Christian, and had done this. 17 Another says, “I have not only been in the Collecta, but I have celebrated the Dominicum with the brethren, because I am a Christian.” 18 Another says, “We have celebrated the Dominicum, because the Dominicum cannot be neglected.” 19 Another said that the Collecta was made [or observed] at his house. 20 The proconsul, questioning again one of those already examined, received this answer: “The Dominicum cannot be disregarded; the law so commands.” 21 When one was asked whether the Collecta was made [or observed] at his house, he answered, “In my house we have celebrated the Dominicum.” He added, “Without the Dominicum, we cannot be,” or live. 22 To another, the proconsul said that he did not wish to know whether he was a Christian, but whether he participated in the Collecta. His reply was: “As if one could be a Christian without the Dominicum, or as if the Dominicum can be celebrated without the Christian.” 23 And he said further to the proconsul: “We have observed the Collecta most sacredly; we have always convened in the Dominicum for reading the Lord’s word.” 24 Another said: “ I have been in [literally, have made] the Collecta with my brethren, I have celebrated the Dominicum.” After him, another proclaimed the Dominicum to be the hope and safety of the Christian; and when tortured as the others, he exclaimed, “I have celebrated the Dominicum with a devoted heart, and with my brethren I have made the Collecta because I am a Christian.” 26 When the proconsul again asked one or these whether he had conducted the Dominicum, he replied that he had, because Christ was his Savior. I have thus given the substance of this famous examination, and have set before the reader the references there]in’ made to the Dominicum. It. is to be observed that Collecta is used as another name for Dominicum. Now does Baronius use either of these words to signify the Lord’s day? It so happens that he has defined these words with direct reference to this very case no less than seven times. Now let us read these seven definitions: — When Baronius records the first question addressed to these martyrs, he there defines these words as follows: “By the words Collectam, Collectionem, and Dominicum, the author always understands the sacrifice of the Mass.” 28 After recording the words of that martyr who said that the law commanded the observance of the Dominicum, Baronius defines his statement thus: “Evidently the Christian law concerning the Dominicum, no doubt about celebrating the sacrifice.” 29 Baronius, by the Romish words sacrifice and Mass, refers to the celebration of the Lord’s supper by these martyrs. At the conclusion of the examination, he again defines the cele bration of the Dominicum. He says: “It has been shown, above in relating these things that the Christians were moved, even in the time of severe persecution, to celebrate the Dominicum. Evidently, as we have declared elsewhere in many places, it was a sacrifice without bloodshed, and of divine appointment.” 30 He presently defines Dominicum again, saying, “Though it is a fact that the same expression was employed at times with reference to the temple of God, yet since all the churches upon the earth have united in this matter, and from other things related above, it has been sufficiently shown concerning the celebration of the Dominicum, that only the sacrifice of the Mass can be understood.” 31 Observe this last statement, he says, Though the word has been employed to designate the temple of the Lord, yet in the things here related it can only signify the sacrifice of the Mass. These testimonies are exceedingly explicit. But Baronius has not yet finished. In the index to Tome 3, he explains these words again with direct reference to this very martyrdom. Under Collecta is this statement: “The Collecta, the Dominicum, the Mass, the same [A.D.] 303, 39.” 32 Under Missa: “The Mass is the same as the Collecta, or Dominicum [A.D.] 303, 39.” 33 Under Dominicum: “To celebrate the Dominicum is the same as to conduct the Mass, [A.D.] 303, 39; 49; 51.” It is not possible to mistake the meaning of Baronius. He says that Dominicum signifies the Mass! The celebration of the supper by these martyrs was doubtless very different from the pompous ceremony which the church of Rome now observes under the name of Mass. But it was the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, concerning which they were tested, and for observing which they were put to a cruel death. The word Dominicum signifies “the sacred mysteries,” as Ruinart defines it; and Baronius, in seven times affirming this definition, though acknowledging that it has sometimes been used to signify temple of God, plainly declares that in this record, it can have no other meaning than that service which the Romanists call the sacrifice of the Mass. Gilfillan had read all this, yet he dares to quote Baronius as saying that these martyrs were tested by the question, “Have you kept Lord’s day?” He could not but know that he was writing a direct falsehood; but he thought the honor of God, and the advancement of the cause of truth, demanded this act at his hands.
Before Gilfillan wrote his work, Domville had called attention to the fact that the sentence, “Dominicum servasti?” does not occur in the Acta Martyrum, a different verb being used every time. But this is the popular form of this question, and must not be given up. So Gilfillan declares that Baronius uses it in his record of the martyrdoms in A.D. 303. But we have cited the different forms of questions recorded by Baronius, and find them to be precisely the same as those of the Acta Martyrum. “Dominicum servasti?” does not occur in that historian, and Gilfillan, in stating that it does, is guilty of untruth. This, however, is comparatively unimportant.
But for asserting that Baronius speaks of “Lord’s day” under the name of Dominicum, Gilfillan stands convicted of inexcusable falsehood in matters of serious importance.
ORIGIN OF FIRST-DAY OBSERVANCE
Sunday a heathen festival from remote antiquity — Origin of the name — Reasons which induced the leaders of the church to adopt this festival — It was the day generally observed by the Gentiles in the first centuries of the Christian era — To have taken a different day would have been exceedingly inconvenient — They hoped to facilitate the conversion of the Gentiles by keeping the same day that they observed — Three voluntary weekly festivals in the church in memory of the Redeemer — Sunday soon elevated above the other two — Justin Martyr — Sunday observance first found in the church of Rome — Irenaeus — First act of papal usurpation was in behalf of Sunday — Tertullian — Earliest trace of abstinence from labor on Sunday — General statement of facts — The Roman church made its first great attack upon the Sabbath by turning it into a fast.
MORE ancient than the Christian religion is the festival of Sunday, its origin being lost in remote antiquity. It did not originate, however, from any divine command, nor from piety toward God; on the contrary, it was set apart as a sacred day by the heathen world in honor of their chief god, the sun. It is from this fact that the first day of the week has obtained the name of Sunday, a name by which it is known in many languages. Webster thus defines the word: — “Sunday; so called because this day was anciently dedicated to the sun or to its worship. The first day of the week; the Christian Sabbath; a day consecrated to rest from secular employments, and to religious worship; the Lord’s day.”
And Worcester, in his large dictionary, uses similar language: — “Sunday; so named because anciently dedicated to the sun or to its worship. The first day of the week; the Christian Sabbath, consecrated to rest from labor and to religious worship; the Lord’s day.”
These lexicographers call Sunday the Christian Sabbath, etc., because in the general theological literature of our language it is thus designated, though never so termed in the Bible. Lexicographers do not undertake to settle theological questions, but simply to define terms as currently used in a particular language. Though all the other days of the week have heathen names, Sunday alone was a conspicuous heathen festival in the days of the early church. The North British Review, in a labored attempt to justify the observance of Sunday by the Christian world, styles that day, “ THE WILD SOLAR HOLIDAY [i.e., festival in honor of the sun] OF ALL PAGAN TIMES.” Verstegan says: — “The most ancient Germans being pagans, and having appropriated their first day of the week to the peculiar adoration of the sun, whereof that day doth yet in our English tongue retain the name of Sunday, and appropriated the next day unto it, unto the special adoration of the moon, whereof it yet retaineth with us the name of Monday; they ordained the next day to these most heavenly planets to the particular adoration of their great reputed god, Tuisco, whereof we do yet retain in our language the name of Tuesday.” The same author thus speaks concerning the idols of our Saxon ancestors: — “Of these, though they had many, yet seven among the rest they especially appropriated unto the seven days of the week…. Unto the day dedicated unto the special adoration of the idol of the sun, they gave the name of Sunday, as much as to say the sun’s day, or the day of the sun. This idol was placed in a temple, and there adored and sacrificed unto, for that they believed that the sun in the firmament did with or in this idol correspond and cooperate.” Jennings makes this adoration of the sun more ancient than the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. For, in speaking of the time of that deliverance, he refers to the Gentiles as — “The idolatrous nations who, in honor to their chief god, the sun, began their day at his rising.” 4 He represents them also as setting apart Sunday in honor of the same object of adoration: — “The day which the heathens in general consecrated to the worship and honor of their chief god, the sun, which, according to our computation, was the first day of the week.” The North British Review thus defends the introduction of this ancient heathen festival into the Christian church: — “That very day was the Sunday of their heathen neighbors and respective countrymen; and patriotism gladly united with expediency in making it at once their Lord’s day and their Sabbath…. If the authority of the church is to be ignored altogether by Protestants, there is no matter; because opportunity and common expediency are surely argument enough for so ceremonial a change as the mere day of the week for the observance of the rest and holy convocation of the Jewish’ Sabbath. That primitive church, in fact, was shut up to the adoption of the Sunday, until it became established and supreme, when it Was too late to make another alteration; and it was no irreverent nor undelightful thing to adopt it, inasmuch as the first day of the week was their own high day at any rate: so that their compliance and civility were rewarded by the redoubled sanctity of their quiet festival.” It would seem that something more potent than “patriotism” and “expediency” would be requisite to transform this heathen festival into the Christian Sabbath, or even to justify its introduction into the Christian church. A further statement of the reasons which prompted its introduction, and a brief notice of the earlier steps toward transforming it into a Christian institution, will occupy the remainder of this chapter.
Chafie, a clergyman of the English Church, in 1652, published a work in vindication of first-day observance, entitled, “The Seventh-day Sabbath.”
After showing the general observance of Sunday by the heathen world in the early ages of the church, Chafie thus states the reasons which forbid the Christians’ attempting to keep any other day: — “1. Because of the contempt, scorn, and derision they thereby should be had in, among all the Gentiles with whom they lived…. How grievous would be their taunts and reproaches against the poor Christians living with them and under their power for their new set sacred day, had the Christians chosen any other than the Sunday…. 2. Most Christians then were either servants or the poorer sort of people; and the Gentiles, most probably, would not give their servants liberty to cease from working on any other set day constantly, except on their Sunday…. 3. Because had they assayed such a change, it would have been but labor in vain;…they could never have brought it to pass.” Thus it is seen that at the time when the early church began to apostatize from God and to foster in its bosom human ordinances, the heathen world — as they had long done — very generally observed the first day of the week in honor of the sun. Many of the early Fathers of the church had been heathen philosophers. Unfortunately, they brought with them into the church many of their old notions and principles. Particularly did it occur to them that by uniting with the heathen in the day of weekly celebration they should greatly facilitate their conversion. The reasons which induced the church to adopt the ancient festival of the heathen as something made ready to hand, are thus stated by Morer: — “It is not to be denied but we borrow the name of this day from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and we allow that the old Egyptians worshiped the sun, and as a standing memorial of their veneration, dedicated this day to him. And we find by the influence of their examples, other nations, and among them the Jews themselves, doing him homage; 8 yet these abuses did not hinder the Fathers of the Christian church simply to repeal, or altogether lay by, the day or its name, but only to sanctify and improve both, as they did also the pagan temples polluted before with idolatrous services, and other instances wherein those good men were always tender to work any other change than what was evidently necessary, and in such things as were plainly inconsistent with the Christian religion; so that Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adored that planet, and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel.” In the time of Justin Martyr, Sunday was a weekly festival, widely celebrated by the heathen in honor of their god, the sun. And so, in presenting to the heathen emperor of Rome an “Apology” for his brethren, Justin takes care to tell him thrice that the Christians held their assemblies on this day of general observance. 10 Sunday, therefore, makes its first appearance in the Christian church as an institution identical in time with the weekly festival of the heathen, and Justin, who first mentions this. festival, had been a heathen philosopher. Sixty years later, Tertullian acknowledges that it was not without an appearance of truth that men declared the sun to be the God of the Christians. But he answered that though they worshiped toward the east, like the heathen, and devoted Sunday to rejoicing, it was for a reason far different from sun-worship, And on another occasion, in defending his brethren from the charge of sunworship, he acknowledges that these acts. — prayer toward the east, and making Sunday a day of festivity — did give men a chance to think the sun was the God of the Christians. 12 Tertullian is therefore a witness to the fact that Sunday was a heathen festival when it obtained a foothold in the Christian church, and that the Christians, in consequence of observing, it, were taunted with being sun-worshipers. It is remarkable that in his replies he never claims for their observance any divine precept or apostolic example. His principal point was that they had as good a right to do it as the heathen had. One hundred and twenty-one years after Tertullian, Constantine, while yet a heathen, put forth his famous edict in behalf of the heathen festival of the sun, which day he pronounced “venerable.” And this heathen law caused the day to be observed everywhere throughout the Roman empire, and firmly established it both in church and State. It is certain, therefore, that at the time of its entrance into the Christian church, Sunday was an ancient weekly festival of the heathen world.
That this heathen festival was upon the day of Christ’s resurrection, doubtless powerfully contributed to aid “patriotism” and “expediency” in transforming it: into the Lord’s day, or Christian Sabbath. For, with pious motives, as we may reasonably conclude, the professed people of God early paid a voluntary regard to several days, memorable in the history of the Redeemer. Mosheim, whose testimony in behalf of Sunday has been presented already, uses the following language relative to the crucifixion day: — “It is also probable that: Friday, the day of Christ’s crucifixion, was early distinguished by particular honors from the other days of the week.” Of the second century he says: — “Many also observed the fourth day of the week, on which Christ was betrayed; and the sixth, which was the day of his crucifixion.” Dr. Peter Heylyn says of those who chose Sunday: — “Because our Savior rose that day from among the dead, so chose they Friday for another, by reason of our Savior’s passion; and Wednesday on the which he had been betrayed: the Saturday, or ancient Sabbath, being meanwhile retained in the Eastern churches.” Of the comparative sacredness of these three voluntary festivals, the same writer testifies: — “If we consider either the preaching of the word, the ministration of the sacraments, or the public prayers, the Sunday in the Eastern churches had no great prerogative above other days, especially above the Wednesday and the Friday, save that the meetings were more solemn, and the concourse of people greater than at other times, as is most likely.” And besides these three weekly festivals, there were also two annual festivals of great sacredness. These were the Passover and the Pentecost.
And it is worthy of special notice that although the Sunday festival can be traced no higher in the church than Justin Martyr, A.D. 140, the Passover can be traced to a man who claimed to have received it from the apostles. (See chapter thirteen.) Among these festivals, considered simply as voluntary memorials of the Redeemer, Sunday had very little preeminence; for it is well stated by Heylyn, — “Take which you will, either the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord’s day instituted by any apostolic mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week.” Domville bears the following testimony, which is worthy of lasting remembrance: — “Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to his apostles.” “Patriotism” and “expediency,” however, erelong elevated immeasurably above its ‘fellows that one of these voluntary festivals which corresponded to “the wild solar holiday” of the heathen world, making that day, at last, “the Lord’s day”’ of the Christian church. The earliest testimony in behalf of first-day observance that has any claim to be regarded as genuine, is that of Justin Martyr, written about A.D. 140.
Before his conversion, he was a heathen philosopher. The time, place, and occasion of his first Apology or Defense of the Christians, addressed to the Roman emperor, is thus stated by an eminent Roman Catholic historian. He says that Justin Martyr — “Was at Rome when the persecution that was raised under the reign of Antoninus Plus, the successor of Adrian, began to break forth, where he composed an excellent apology in behalf of the Christians.” Of the works ascribed to Justin Martyr, Milner says: — “Like many of the ancient Fathers, he appears to us under the greatest disadvantage. Works really his have been lost; and others have been ascribed to him, part of which are not his, and the rest, at least, of ambiguous authority.” If the writings ascribed to him are genuine, there is little propriety in the use made of his name by the advocates of the first-day Sabbath. He taught the abrogation of the Sabbatic institution; and there is no intimation in his words that the Sunday. festival which he mentions was other than a voluntary observance. Thus he addresses the emperor of Rome: — “And upon the day called Sunday, all that live either in city or country meet together at the same place, where the writings of the apostles and prophets are read as much as time will give leave; when the reader has done, the bishop makes a sermon, wherein he instructs the people, and animates them to the practice of such lovely precepts: at the conclusion of this discourse, we all rise up together, and pray; and prayers being over, as I now said, there is bread and wine and water offered, and the bishop, as before, sends up prayers and thanksgivings, with all the fervency he is able, and the people conclude all with the joyful acclamation of Amen. Then the consecrated elements are distributed to, and partaken of by, all that are present, and sent to the absent by the hands of the deacons. But the wealthy and the willing, for every one is at liberty, contribute as they think fitting; and this collection is deposited with the bishop, and out of this he relieves the orphan and the widow, and such as are reduced to want by sickness or any other cause, and such as are in bonds, and strangers that come from far; and, in a word, he is the guardian and almoner to all the indigent. Upon Sunday we all assemble, that being the first day in which God set himself to work upon the dark void, in order to make the world, and in which Jesus Christ our Savior rose again from the dead; for the day before Saturday he was crucified, and the day after, which is Sunday, he appeared unto his apostles and disciples, and taught them what I have now proposed to your consideration.” This passage, if genuine, furnishes the earliest reference to the observance of Sunday as a religious festival in the Christian church. It should be remembered that this language was written at Rome, and addressed directly to the’ emperor. It shows, therefore, what was the practice of the church in that city and vicinity, but does not determine how extensive this observance was. It contains strong incidental proof that apostasy had made progress at Rome, the institution of the Lord’s supper being changed in part already to a human ordinance, water being now as essential to the Lord’s supper as the wine or the bread. And what is still more dangerous, as perverting the institution of Christ, the consecrated elements were sent to the absent, — a step which speedily resulted in their becoming objects of superstitious veneration, and finally of worship. Justin tells the emperor that Christ thus ordained; but such a statement is a grave departure from the truth of the New Testament.
This statement of reasons for Sunday observance is particularly worthy of attention. He tells the emperor that they assembled upon the day called Sunday. This was equivalent to saying to him, We observe the day on which our fellow-citizens offer their adoration to the sun. Here both “patriotism” and “expediency” discover themselves in the words of Justin, which were addressed to a persecuting emperor in behalf of the Christians. But as if conscious that the observance of heathen festival as the day of Christian worship was: not consistent with their profession as worshipers of the Most High, Justin bethinks himself for reasons in defense of this Observance. He assigns no divine precept nor apostolic example for this festival; for his reference to what Christ taught his disciples, as appears from the connection, was to the general system of the Christian religion, and not to the observance of Sunday. If it be said that Justin might have learned from tradition what is not to be found in the New Testament relative to Sunday observance, and that, after all, Sunday may be a divinely-appointed festival, it is sufficient to answer, 1. That this plea would show only tradition in favor of the Sunday festival; 2. That Justin Martyr is a very unsafe guide, his testimony relative to the Lord’s supper differing from that of the New Testament; and 3. That the American Tract Society, in a work published against Romanism, bears the following testimony relative to the point before us: — “Justin Martyr appears, indeed, peculiarly unfitted to lay claim to authority. It is notorious that he supposed a pillar erected on the island of the Tiber to Semo Sanchus, an old Sabine Deity, to be a monument erected by the Roman people in honor of the impostor, Simon Magus. Were so gross a mistake to be made by a modern writer in relating a historical fact, exposure would immediately take place, and his testimony would thence forward be suspected. And assuredly, the same measure should be meted to Justin Martyr, who so egregiously errs in reference to a fact alluded to by Livy, the historian.” Justin assigns the following reasons in support of Sunday observance: “That being the first day in which God set himself to work upon the dark void in order to make the world, and in which Jesus Christ our Savior rose again from the dead.” Bishop Jeremy Taylor most fittingly replies to this: — “The first of these looks more like an excuse than a just reason; for if anything of the creation were made the cause of a Sabbath, it ought to be the end, not the beginning; it ought to be the rest, not the first part of the work; it ought to be that which God assigned, not [that] which man should take by way of after justification.” It is to be observed, therefore, that the first trace of Sunday as a Christian festival is found in the church of Rome. Soon after this time, and thenceforward, we shall find “the bishop” of that church making vigorous efforts to suppress the Sabbath of the Lord. and to elevate in its stead the festival of Sunday.
It is proper to note the fact, also, that Justin was a decided opponent of the ancient Sabbath. In his “Dialogue with Trypho the Jew,” he thus addressed him: — “This new law teaches you to observe a perpetual Sabbath; and you, when you have spent one day in idleness, think you have discharged the duties of religion…. If any one is guilty of adultery, let him repent, then he hath kept the true and delightful Sabbath unto God…. For we really should observe that circumcision, which is in the flesh, and the Sabbath, and all the feasts, if we had not known the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, upon the account of your iniquities…. It was because of your iniquities, and the iniquities of your lathers, that God appointed you to observe the Sabbath…. You see that the heavens are not idle, nor do they observe the Sabbath. Continue as ye were born.
For if before Abraham there was no need of circumcision, nor of the sabbaths, nor of feasts, nor of offerings before Moses; so now in like manner there is no need of them, since Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was by the determinate counsel of God, born of a virgin of the seed of Abraham without sin.” This reasoning of Justin deserves no reply. It shows, however, the unfairness of Dr. Edwards, who quotes Justin Martyr as a witness for the change of the Sabbath; 25 whereas Justin held that God made the Sabbath on account of the wickedness of the Jews, and that he totally abrogated it in consequence of the first advent of Christ: the Sunday festival of the heathen being evidently adopted by the church at Rome from motives of “expediency” and perhaps of “patriotism.” The testimony of Justin, if genuine, is peculiarly valuable in one respect. It shows that, as late as A.D. 140, the first day of the week had acquired no title of sacredness for Justin several times mentions the day, twice as “the day called Sunday,” and twice as “the eighth lay, and by other terms also, but never by any sacred name. The next, important witness in behalf of first-day sacredness is thus presented by Dr. Edwards: — “Hence Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, a disciple of Polycarp, who had been the companion of the apostles, A.D. 167, says that the Lord’s day Was the Christian Sabbath. His words are, ‘On the Lord’s day every one of us Christians keeps the Sabbath, meditating on the law, and rejoicing in the, works of God.’” This testimony is highly valued by first-day writers, and is often and prominently set forth in their publications. Sir Win. Domville, whose elaborate treatise on the Sabbath has been several times quoted, states the following important fact relative to this quotation: — “I have carefully searched through all the extant works of Irenaeus, and can with certainty state that; no such passage, or any one at all resembling it, is there to be found. The edition I consulted was that by Massuet (Paris, 1710); but to assure myself still further, I have since looked to the editions by Erasmus (Paris, 1563), and Grabe (Oxford, 1702), and in neither do I find the passage in question.” 28 It is a remarkable fact that those who quote this as the language of Irenaeus, if they give any reference, cite their readers to Dwight’s Theology, instead of referring them to the place in the works of Irenaeus where it is to be found. It was Dr. Dwight who first enriched the theological world with this invaluable quotation. Where, then, did Dwight obtain this testimony which has so many times been given as that of Irenaeus? On this point, Domville remarks: — “He had the misfortune to be afflicted with a disease in his eyes from the early age of twenty-three, a calamity (says his biographer) by which he was deprived of the capacity for reading and study…. The knowledge which he gained from books after the period above mentioned [by which the editor must mean his age of twenty-three] was almost exclusively at second hand, by the aid of others.” Domville slates another fact which gives us unquestionably the origin of this quotation: — “But although not to be found in Irenaeus, there are, in the writings; ascribed to another Father, namely, in the interpolated epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, and in one of its interpolated passages, expressions so clearly resembling those of Dr. Dwight’s quotation as to leave no doubt of the source from which he quoted.” Such, then, is the end of this famous testimony of Irenaeus, who had it from Polycarp, who had it from the apostles! It was furnished the world by a man whose eyesight was impaired; who, in consequence of this infirmity, took at second hand an interpolated passage from an epistle falsely ascribed to Ignatius, and published it to the world as the genuine testimony of Irenaeus. Loss of eyesight, as we may charitably believe, led Dr. Dwight into the serious error which he has committed; but by the publication of this spurious testimony:, which. Seemed to come in a direct line from the apostles, he has rendered multitudes as incapable of reading aright the fourth commandment, as he, by loss of natural eyesight, was of reading Irenaeus for himself. This case admirably illustrates tradition as a religious guide; it is the blind leading the blind until both fall into the ditch.
Nor is this all that should be said in the case of Irenaeus. In all his writings there is no instance in which lie calls Sunday the Lord’s day! And what is also very remarkable, there is no sentence extant, written by him, in which lie even mentions the first day of the. week! 31 It appears, however, from several statements in ancient writers, that he did mention the day, though no sentence of his in which it is mentioned is in existence. He held that the Sabbath was a typical institution, which pointed to the seventh thousand years as the great day of rest to the church; 32 he said that Abraham was “without observance of Sabbaths;” 33 and yet he makes the origin of the Sabbath to be the sanctification of the seventh day. 34 But he expressly asserts the perpetuity and authority of the ten commandments, declaring that they are identical with the law of nature implanted from the beginning in mankind, that they remain permanently with us, and that if any one does not observe them, he has no salvation.” It is a remarkable fact that the first instance upon record in which the bishop of Rome attempted Co rule the Christian church was byAN EDICT IN BEHALF OF SUNDAY. It had been the custom of all the churches to celebrate the Passover, but with this difference: that while the Eastern churches observed it upon the fourteenth day of the first month, no matter what day of the week this might be, the Western churches kept it upon the Sunday following that day, or rather, upon the Sunday following Good Friday. Victor, bishop of Rome, in the year 196, 36 took upon him to impose the Roman custom upon all the churches; that is, to compel them to observe the Passover upon Sunday. “This bold attempt,” says Bower, “we may call the first essay of papal usurpation.” 37 Dowling terms it the “earliest instance of Romish assumption.” 38 The churches of Asia Minor informed Victor that they could not comply with his lordly mandate.
Then, says Bower, — “Upon the receipt of this letter, Victor, giving the reins to an impotent and ungovernable passion, published bitter invectives against all the churches of Asia, declared them cut off from his communion, sent letters of excommunication to their respective bishops; and, at the same time, in order to have them cut off from the communion of the whole church, wrote to the other bishops, exhorting them to follow his example, and forbear communicating with their refractory brethren of Asia.” 39 The historian informs us that “not one followed his example or advice; not one paid any sort of regard to his letters, or showed the least inclination to second him in such a rash and uncharitable attempt.” He further says: — “Victor being thus baffled in his attempt, his successors took care not to revive the controversy; so that the Asiatics peaceably followed their ancient practice till the council of Nicaea, which, out of complaisance to Constantine the Great, ordered the solemnity of Easter to be kept everywhere on the same day, after the custom of Rome.” The Victory was not obtained for Sunday in this struggle, as Heylyn testifies, — “Till the great council of Nicaea [A.D. 325], backed by the authority of as great an emperor [Constantine], settled it better than before; none but some scattered schismatics, now and then appearing, that durst oppose the resolution of that famous synod.” Constantine, by whose powerful influence the council of Nicaea was induced to decide this question in favor of the Roman bishop, that; is, to fix the Passover upon Sunday, urged the following strong reason for the measure: — “Let us, then, have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews.” This sentence is worthy of notice. A determination to have nothing in common with the Jews had very much to do with the suppression of the Sabbath in the Christian church. Those who rejected the Sabbath of the Lord, and chose in its stead the more popular and more convenient Sunday festival of the heathen, were so infatuated with the idea of having nothing in common with the Jews, that they never even questioned the propriety of a festival in common with the heathen.
This festival was not weekly, but annual; but the removal of it from the fourteenth of the first month to the Sunday following Good Friday was the first legislation attempted in honor of Sunday as a Christian festival; and, as Heylyn quaintly expresses it, “The Lord’s day found it no small matter to obtain the victory.” 43 In a brief period after the council of Nicaea, by the laws of Theodosius, capital punishment was inflicted upon those who should celebrate the feast of the Passover upon any other day than Sunday. 44 The Britons of Wales were long able to maintain their ground against this. favorite project of the Roman church, and as late as the sixth century “obstinately resisted the imperious mandates of the Roman pontiffs.” Four years from the commencement of the struggle just narrated, bring us to the testimony of Tertullian, the oldest of the Latin Fathers, who wrote about A.D. 200. Dr. Clarke tells us that the Fathers “blow hot and cold.”
Tertullian is a fair example of this. He places the origin of the Sabbath at the creation, but elsewhere says that the patriarchs did not keep it. He says that Joshua broke the Sabbath at Jericho, and afterward shows that he did not break it. He says that Christ broke, the Sabbath, and in another place proves that he did not. He represents the eighth day as more honorable than the seventh, and elsewhere states the reverse. He states that, the law is abolished, and in other places teaches its perpetuity and authority, He declares that the Sabbath was abrogated by Christ, and afterward asserts that “Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath,” but imparted “an additional sanctity” to “the Sabbath-day itself, which from the beginning had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father.” And he goes on to say that Christ “furnished to this day divine safeguards, — a course which his adversary would have pursued for some other days, to avoid honoring the Creator’s Sabbath.”
This last statement is very remarkable. The Savior furnished additional safeguards to the Creator’s Sabbath. But “his adversary” would have done this to some other days. Now it is plain, first, that Tertullian did not believe that Christ sanctified some other day to take the place of the Sabbath; and secondly, that he believed the consecration of another day to be the work of the adversary of God! When he wrote these words, he certainly did not believe in the sanctification of Sunday by Christ. But Tertullian and his brethren found themselves observing as a festival that day on which the sun was worshiped, and they were, in consequence, taunted with being worshipers of the sun. Tertullian denies the charge, though he acknowledges that it had some appearance of truth, He says: — “Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude, believe that the sun is our God. We shall be counted Persians, perhaps, though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth having himself everywhere in his own disk. The idea, no doubt, has originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer. But you, many of you, also, under pretense sometimes of worshiping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sunday to rejoicing, from a fin-different reason than sun-worship, we have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to case and luxury, though they, too, go far away from Jewish ways, of which they are ignorant.” Tertullian pleads no divine command nor apostolic example for this practice. In fact, he offers no reason for the practice, though he intimates that he had one to offer. But he finds it necessary in another work to repel this same charge of sun-worship, because of Sunday observance. In his second answer to this charge he states the ground of defense more distinctly, and here we shall find his best reason: — “Others, with greater regard to. good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the God of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray toward the cast, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshiping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day [Sunday] in preference to the preceding day, as the most suitable in the week for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest, and for banqueting. By resorting to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those of strangers.” Tertullian, in this discourse, addresses himself to the nations still in idolatry. With some of these, Sunday was an ancient festival; with others it was of comparatively recent date. But some of these heathen reproached the Sunday Christians with being sun-worshipers. And now observe the answer. He does not say, “We Christians are commanded to celebrate the first day of the week: in honor of Christ’s resurrection.” His answer is doubtless the best that he knew how to frame. It is a mere retort, and consists in asserting, first, that the Christians had done no more than their accusers, the heathen; and secondly, that they had as good a right to make Sunday a day of festivity as had the heathen!
The origin, of first-day observance has been the subject of inquiry in this chapter. We have found that Sunday from remote antiquity was a. heathen festival in honor of the sun, and that. in the first centuries of the Christian era this ancient festival was in general veneration in the heathen world. We have learned that patriotism and expediency, and a tender regard for the conversion of the Gentile world, caused the leaders of the church to adopt as their religious festival the day observed by the heathen, and to retain the same name which the heathen had given it. We have seen that the earliest instance upon record of the actual observance of Sunday in the Christian church, is found in the church of Rome about A.D. 140. The first great effort in its behalf, A.D. 196, is by a singular coincidence the first act of papal usurpation. The first instance of a sacred title being applied to this festival, and the earliest trace of abstinence from labor on that day, are found in the writings of Tertullian at the close of the second century. The origin of the festival of Sunday is now before the reader; the steps by which it has ascended to supreme power will be pointed out in their proper order and place.
One fact of deep interest will conclude this chapter. The first great effort made to put down the Sabbath was the act of the church of Rome in turning it into a fast, while Sunday was made a joyful festival. While the Eastern churches retained the Sabbath, a portion of the Western churches, with the church of Rome at their head, turned it into a fast. As a part of the Western churches refused to comply with this ordinance, a long struggle ensued, the result of which is thus stated by Heylyn: — “In this difference it stood a long time together, till in the end the Roman church obtained the cause, and Saturday became a fast almost through all the parts of the Western world. I say the Western world, and of that alone, the Eastern churches being so far from altering their ancient custom that in the sixth council of Constantinople, A.D. 692, they did admonish those of Rome to forbear fasting on that day upon pain of censure.” Win. James, in a sermon before the University of Oxford, thus states the time when this fast originated: — “The Western church began to fast on Saturday at the beginning of the third century.” Thus it is seen that this struggle began with the third century, that is, immediately after the year 200. Neander thus states the motive of the Roman church: — “In the Western churches, particularly the Roman, where opposition to Judaism was the prevailing tendency, this very opposition produced the custom of celebrating the Saturday in particular as a fast-day.” By Judaism, Neander meant the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath. Dr. Charles Hase, of Germany, states the object of the Roman church in very explicit language: — “The Roman church regarded Saturday as a fast-day in direct opposition to those who regarded it as a Sabbath. Sunday remained a joyful festival in which all fasting and worldly business was avoided as much as possible, but the original commandment of the decalogue respecting the Sabbath was not then applied to that day.” Lord King attests this fact in the following words: — “Some of the Western churches, that they might not seem to Judaize, fasted on Saturday, as Victorinus Petavionensis writes:
We use to fast on the seventh day. And it is our custom then to fast, that we may not seem, with the Jews, to observe the Sabbath.” Thus the Sabbath of the Lord was turned into a fast in order to render it despicable before men. Such was the first great effort of the Roman church toward the suppression of the ancient Sabbath of the Bible.
THE NATURE OF EARLY FIRST-DAY OBSERVANCE
The history of first-day observance compared with that of the popes — First-day observance defined in the very words of each of the early Fathers who mention it — The reasons which each had for its observance stated in his own words — Sunday in their judgment of no higher sacredness than Easter or Whitsunday, or even than the fifty days between those festivals — Sunday not a day of abstinence from labor — The reasons which are offered by those of them who rejected the Sabbath stated in their own words.
AN apt illustration of the history of first-day observance in the Christian church is that of the bishops of Rome. The Roman bishop now claims supreme power over all the churches of Christ,. He asserts that this. power was given to Peter, and by him was transmitted to the bishops of Rome; or rather that: Peter was the first Roman bishop, and that a succession of such bishops from his time to the present have exercised this absolute power in the church. They are able to trace back their line to apostolic times, and they assert that the power now claimed by the pope was claimed and exercised by the first pastors of the church of the Romans. Those who now acknowledge the supremacy of the pope believe this assertion, and with them it is a, conclusive evidence that the pope is by divine right possessed of supreme power. But the assertion is absolutely false. The early pastors, or bishops, or elders, of the church of the Romans were modest, unassuming ministers of Christ, wholly unlike the arrogant bishop of Rome, who now usurps the place of Christ as the head of the Christian church.
The first day of the week now claims to be the Christian Sabbath, and enforces its authority by means of the fourth commandment, having set aside the seventh day, which that commandment enjoins, and usurped its place. Its advocates assert that this position and this authority were given to it by Christ. As no record of such a gift is found in the Scriptures, the principal argument in its support is furnished by tracing first-day observance back to the early Christians, who, it is said, would not have hallowed the day if they had not been instructed to do it by the apostles; and the apostles would not have taught them to do it if Christ had not, in their presence, changed the Sabbath.
But first-day observance can be traced no nearer to apostolic times than A.D. 140, while the bishops of Rome can trace their line to the very times of the apostles. Herein is the papal claim to apostolic authority better than is that of the first-day Sabbath. But with this exception, the historical argument in behalf of each is the same. Both began with very moderate pretensions, and gradually gaining in power and sacredness, grew up in strength together.
Let us now go to those who were the earliest observers of Sunday, and learn from them the nature of that observance at its commencement. We shall find, 1. That no one claimed for first-day observance any divine authority; 2. That none of them had ever heard of the change of the Sabbath, and none believed the first-day festival to be a continuation of the Sabbatic institution; 3. That labor on that day is never set forth as sinful, and that abstinence from labor is never mentioned as a feature of its observance, nor even implied, only so far as is necessary in order to spend a portion of the day in worship; 4. That if we put together all the hints respecting Sunday observance which are scattered through the Fathers of the first three centuries (for no one of them gives more than two of these, and generally a single hint is all that is found in one writer), we shall find just four items: (1.) An assembly on that day in which the Bible was read and expounded, and the supper celebrated, and money collected; (2.) The day must be one of rejoicing; (3.) It must not be a day of fasting; and (4.) The knee must not be bent in prayer on that day.
The following are all the hints respecting the nature of first-day observance during the first three centuries. The epistle falsely ascribed to Barnabas simply says: “We keep the eighth day with joyfulness.” 1 Justin Martyr, in words already quoted at full length, describes the kind of meeting which they held at Rome and in that vicinity on that day, and this is all that he connects with its observance. 2 Irenaeus taught that to commemorate the resurrection, the knee must not be bent on that day, and mentions nothing else as essential to its honor. This act of standing in prayer was a symbol of the resurrection, which was to be celebrated only on that day, as he held. 3 Bardesanes, the Gnostic, represents the Christians as everywhere meeting for worship on that day, but he does not describe that worship, and he gives no other honor to the day. 4 Tertullian describes Sunday observance as follows: “We devote Sunday to rejoicing;” and he adds, “We have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and luxury.” 5 In another work he gives us a further idea of the festive character of Sunday. Speaking to his brethren, he says: “If any indulgence is to be granted to the flesh, you have it. I will not say your own days, but more too; for to the heathens each festive day occurs but once annually; you have a festive day every eighth clan.” 6 Dr. Heylyn spoke the truth when he said: — “Tertullian tells us that they did devote the Sunday partly unto mirth and recreation, not to devotion altogether; when in a hundred years after Tertullian’s time there was no law or constitution to restrain men from labor on this day in the Christian church.” The Sunday festival in Tertullian’s time was not like the modern first-day Sabbath, but was essentially the German festival of Sunday, a day for worship and for recreation, and one on which labor was not sinful. But Tertullian speaks further respecting Sunday observance, and the following extract has been used as proof flint labor on that day was counted sinful.
This is the only statement that can be found prior to Constantine’s Sunday law that has such an appearance, and the proof is decisive that its meaning is not what is claimed. Here are his words: — “We, however (just as we have received), only on the day of the Lord’s resurrection, ought to gaurd, not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude, deferring even our business, lest we give any place to the devil. Similarly, too, in the period of Pentecost; which period we distinguish by the same solemnity of exultationi” He speaks of “deferring even our business;” but this does not necessarily imply anything more than its postponement during the hours devoted to religious services. It falls very far short of saying that labor on Sunday is a sin. But we will quote Tertullian’s next mantion of Sunday observance before noticing further the words last quoted: — “We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord’s day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday.” These two things, fasting and kneeling, are the only acts which the Fathers set down as unlawful on Sunday, unless, indeed, mourning may be included by some in the list. It is certain that labor is never thus mentioned. And observe that Tertullian repeats the important statement of the previous quotation, that the honor due to Sunday pertains also to the “period of Pentecost,” that is, to the fifty days between Easter, or Passover, and Whitsunday, or Pentecost. If, therefore, labor on Sunday was in Tertullian’s estimation sinful, the same was true for the period of Pentecost, a space of fifty days! But this is not possible. We can conceive of the deferring of business for one religious assembly each day for fifty days, and also that men should neither fast nor kneel during that time, which was precisely what the religious celebration of Sunday actually was.
But to make Tertullian assert that labor on Sunday was a sin, is to make him declare that such was the case for fifty days together, which no one will venture to say was the doctrine of Tertullian.
In another work, Tertullian gives us one more statement respecting the nature of Sunday observance: “We make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? 10 His language is very extraordinary when it is considered that he was addressing heathen. It seems that Sunday as a Christian festival was so similar to the festival which these heathen observed that he challenged them to show wherein the Christians went further than did these heathen whom he here addressed.
The next Father who gives us the nature or early Sunday observance is Peter of Alexandria. He says: — “But the Lord’s day we celebrate as a day of joy, because on it he rose again, on which day we have received it for a custom not even to bow the knee.” He marks two things as essential: it must be a day of joy; and Christians must not kneel on that day. Zonaras, an ancient commentator on these words of Peter, explains the day of joy by saying, “We ought not to fast; for it is a day of joy for the resurrection of the Lord.” 12 Next in order, we quote the so-called Apostolical Constitutions. These command Christians to assemble for worship avery day, “but principally on the Sabbath-day; and on the day of our Lord’s resurrection, which is the Lord’s day, meet more diligently, sending praise to God,” etc. The object of assembling was “to hear the saving word concerning the resurrection,” to “pray thrice standing,” to have the prophets read, to have preaching and also the supper. 13 These “Constitutions” not only give the nature of the worship on Sunday as just set forth, but they also give an idea of Sunday as a day of festivity: — “Now we exhort you, brethren and fellow-servants, to avoid vain talk and obscene discourses, and jestings, drunkenness, lasciviousness, luxury, unbounded passions, with foolish discourses since we do not permit you so much as on the Lord’s days, which are days of joy, to speak or act anything unseemly.” This language plainly implies that the so-called Lord’s day was day of greater mirth than the other days of the week. Even on the Lord’s Day they must not speak or act anything unseemly, though it is evident that their license on that day was greater than on other days.
Once more these “Constitutions” give us the nature of Sunday observance “Every Sabbath-day, excepting one, and every Lord’s day hold your solemn assemblies, and rejoice; for he will be guilty of sin who fasts on the Lord’s day.” 15 But no one can read so much as once that “he is guilty of sin who performs work on this day.”
Next, we quote the epistle to the Magnesians in its longer form, which, though not written by Ignatius, was actually written about, the time that the Apostolical Constitutions were committed to writing, Here are the words of this epistle: — “And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s day as a festival, the resurrection day, the queen and chief of all the days.” The writer of the Syriac Documents concerning Edessa comes last, and he defines the services of Sunday as follows: “On the first [day] of the week, let there be service, and the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and the oblation.” 17 These are all the passages in the writings of the first three centuries which describe early first-day Observance. Let the reader judge whether we have correctly stated the nature of that observance. Next we invite attention to the several reasons offered by these Fathers for celebrating the festival of Sunday.
The reputed epistle of Barnabas supports the Sunday festival by saying that it was the day “on which Jesus rose again from the dead,” and it intimates that it prefigures the eight thousand years, when God shall create the world anew? Justin Martyr has four reasons: — 1. “It is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world.” 2. “Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead.” 3. “It is possible for us to show how the eighth day possessed a certain mysterious import, which the seventh day did not possess, and which was oromulgated by God through these rites,” 21 through circumcision. 4. “The command of circumcision, again, bidding [them] always circumcise the children on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision, by which we are circumcised from deceit and iniquity through Him who rose from the dead on the first day after the Sabbath.” Clement, of Alexandria, appears to treat solely of a mystical eighth day, or Lord’s day. It is perhaps possible that he has some reference to Sunday.
Therefore we quote what he says in behalf of this day, calling attention to the fact that he produces his testimony, not from the Bible, but from a heathen philosopher: — “And the Lord’s day Plato prophetically speaks of in the tenth book of the Republic, in these words: ‘And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow, on the eighth day they are to set out, and arrive in four days.’” Clement’s reasons for Sunday are found outside the Scriptures. The next Father will give us a good reason for Clement’s action in this case.
Tertullian is the next writer who gives reasons for the Sunday festival, he is speaking of “offerings for the dead;” the manner of Sunday observance, and the use of the sign of the cross upon the forehead. Here is the ground on which these observances rest:— “If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, and faith as their observer. That reason will support tradition, and custom, and faith, you will either yourself perceive, or learn from some one who has.” Tertullian’s frankness is to be commended. He had no Scripture to offer, and he acknowledged the fact. he depended on tradition, and he was not ashamed to confess it. Following Tertullian is Origen, who gives Scripture evidence in support of the Sunday festival. Here are his words: — “The manna fell on the Lord’s day, and not on the Sabbath, to show the Jews. That even then the Lord’s day was preferred before it.” Origen seems to have been of Tertullian’s judgment as to the inconclusiveness of the arguments adduced by his predecessors. He therefore coined an original argument, which seems to have been very conclusive in his estimation, as he offers this alone. But he must have forgotten that the manna fell on all the six working days, or he would have seen that while his argument does not elevate Sunday above the other five working days, it does make the Sabbath the least reputable day of the seven! And yet the miracle of the manna was expressly designed to set forth the sacredness of the Sabbath, and to establish its authority before the people.
Cyprian is the next Father who gives an argument for the Sunday festival.
He contents himself with one of Justin’s old arguments, viz., the one drawn from circumcision. Thus he says : — “For in respect of the observance of the eighth day in the Jewish circumcision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and in usage; but when, Christ came, it was fulfilled in truth. For because the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, was to be that on which the Lord should rise again, and should quicken us, and give us circumcision of the Spirit, the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day, went before in the figure; which figure ceased when by and by the truth came, and spiritual circumcision was given to us.” Such is the only argument adduced by Cyprian in behalf of the first-day festival. The circumcision of infants when eight days old was, in his judgment, a type of infant baptism. But he did not hold that circumcision on the eighth day of the child’s life, signified that baptism need to be deferred till the infant was eight days old, but, as here stated, did signify that the eighth day was to be the Lord’s day! But the eighth day, on which circumcision took place, was not the first day of the week, but the eighth day of each child’s life, whatever day of the week that might be.
The next Father who gives a reason for celebrating Sunday as a day of joy, and refraining from kneeling on it, is Peter, of Alexandria, who simply says, “Because on it he rose again.” Then come the Apostolical Constitutions, which assert that the Sunday festival is a memorial of the resurrection: — “But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day festival; because the former is a memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection.” The writer, however, offers no proof that Sunday was set apart by divine authority in memory of the resurrection. But the next person who gives his reasons for keeping Sunday “as a festival,” is the writer of the longer form of the reputed epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians. He finds the eighth day prophetically set forth in the title to the sixth and twelfth psalms! In the margin, the word Sheminith is translated “the eighth.” Here is this writer’s argument for Sunday: — “Looking forward to this, the prophet declared, ‘To the end for the eighth day,’ on which our life both sprang up again, and the victory over death was obtained in Christ.” There is yet another of the Fathers of the first three centuries who gives the reasons then used in support of the Sunday festival, and that is the writer of the Syriac Documents concerning Edessa. He comes next in order, and closes the list. Here are four reasons: — 1. “Because on the first day of the week our Lord rose from the place of the dead.” 2. “On the first day of the week he arose upon the world,” i.e., he was born upon Sunday. 3. “On the first day of the week he ascended up to heaven.” 4. “On the first day of the week he will appear at last with the angels of heaven.” The first of these reasons is as good a one as man can devise out of his own heart for doing what God never commanded; the second and fourth are mere assertions of which mankind know nothing; while the third is a positive untruth, for the ascension was upon Thursday.
We have now presented every reason for the Sunday festival which can be found in all the writings of the first three centuries. Though generally very trivial, and sometimes worse than trivial, they are nevertheless worthy of careful study. They constitute a decisive testimony that the change of the Sabbath by Christ or by his apostles from the seventh to the first day of the week was absolutely unknown during that entire period. But were it true that such a change had been made, they must have known it. Had they believed that Christ changed the Sabbath to commemorate his resurrection, how emphatically would they have stated that fact, instead of offering reasons for the festival of Sunday which are so worthless as to be, with one or two exceptions, entirely discarded by modern first-day writers. Or had they believed that the apostles honored Sunday as the Sabbath, or Lord’s day, how would they have produced these facts in triumph! But Tertullian said that they had no positive Scripture injunction for the Sunday festival; and the others, by offering reasons that were only devised in their own hearts, corroborated his testimony, and all of them together establish the fact that, even in their own estimation, the day was only sustained by the authority of the church. They were totally unacquainted with the modern doctrine that the seventh day in the commandment means simply one day in seven, and that the Savior, to commemorate his resurrection, appointed the first day of the week to be that one of the seven to which the commandment should apply!
We have given every statement in the Fathers of the first three centuries in which the manner of celebrating the Sunday festival is set forth. We have also given every reason for that observance, which is to be found in any of them. These two classes of testimonies show clearly that ordinary labor was not one of the things which were forbidden on that day. We now offer direct proof that; other days, which on all hands are accounted nothing but church festivals, were expressly declared by the Fathers to be equal, if not superior, in sacredness to the Sunday festival.
The “Lost Writings of Irenaeus” gives us his mind concerning the relative sacredness of the festival of Sunday and of either Easter or Pentecost. This is the statement: — “Upon which [feast] we do not bend the knee, because it is of equal significance with the Lord’s day, for the reason already alleged, concerning it.” Tertullian, in a passage already quoted, which, by omitting the sentence we are about, to quote, has been used as the strongest testimony to the first-day Sabbath in the Fathers, expressly makes the period of Pentecost — a space of fifty days — equal in sacredness with the festival which he calls “Lord’s day.” Thus he says: — “Similarly, too, in the period of Pentecost; which period we distinguish by the same solemnity of exultation. ” He states the same fact in another work: — “We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord’s day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday.” Origen classes the so-called Lord’s day with three other church festivals: — “If it be objected to us on this subject that we ourselves are accustomed to observe certain days, as for example, the Lord’s day, the Preparation, the Passover, or Pentecost, I have to answer, that to the perfect Christian, who is ever in his thoughts, words, and deeds, serving his natural Lord, God the Word, all his days are the Lord’s, and he is always keeping the Lord’s day.” Irenaeus and Tertullian make the Sunday Lord’s day equal in sacredness with the period from the Passover to the Pentecost; but Origen, after classing the day with several church festivals, virtually confesses that it has no pre-eminence above other days.
Commodianus, who once uses the term “Lord’s day,” speaks of the Catholic festival of the Passover as “Easter, that day of ours most blessed .” 35 This certainly indicates that in his estimation no other sacred day was superior in sanctity to Easter.
The “Apostolical Constitutions” treat the Sunday festival in the same manner that it is treated by Irenaeus and Tertullian. They make it equal to the sacredness of the period from Easter to the Pentecost. Thus they say: — “He will be guilty of sin who fasts on the Lord’s day, being the day of the resurrection, or during the time of Pentecost, or in general, who is sad on a festival day to the Lord.” These testimonies prove conclusively that the festival of Sunday, in the judgment of such men as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others, stood in the same rank with that of Easter or Whitsunday. They had no idea that one was commanded by God, while the others were only ordained by the church. Indeed, Tertullian, as we have seen, expressly declares that there is no precept for Sunday observance? 37 Besides these important facts, we have decisive evidence that Sunday was not a any of abstinence from labor, and our first witness is Justin, the earliest witness to the Sunday festival in the Christian church. Trypho, the Jew, said to Justin, by way of reproof, “You observe no festivals or Sabbaths. 38 This was exactly adapted to bring out from Justin the statement that, though he did not observe the seventh day as the Sabbath, he did thus rest on the first day of the week, if it were true that that day was with him a day of abstinence from labor. But he gives no such answer, tie sneers at the very idea of abstinence from labor, declaring that “God does not take pleasure in such observances.” Nor does he intimate that this is because the Jews did not rest upon the right day; but he condemns the very idea of refraining from labor for a day, stating that “the new law,” which has taken the place of the commandments given on Sinai,39 requires a perpetual Sabbath, and this is kept by repenting of sin: and refraining from its commission. Here are his words: — “The new law requires you to keep a perpetual Sabbath, and you, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are pious, not discerning why this has been commanded you; and if you eat unleavened bread, you say the will of God has been fulfilled. The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances: if there is any perjured person or a thief among you, let him cease to be so; if any adulterer, let him repent; then he has kept the sweet and true Sabbaths of God.” This language plainly implies that Justin did not believe that any day should be kept as a Sabbath by abstinence from labor, but that all days should be kept as sabbaths by abstinence from sin. This testimony is decisive, and it is in exact harmony with the facts already adduced from the Fathers, and with others yet to be presented. Moreover, it is confirmed by the express testimony of Tertullian. He says: — “By us (to whom Sabbaths are strange, and the new moons, and festivals formerly beloved by God the) Saturnalia and new year’s and mid-winter’s festivals and Matronalia are frequented.” And he adds in the same paragraph, in words already quoted: — “If any indulgence is to be granted to the flesh, you have it. I will not say your own days, but more too; for to the heathens each festive day occurs but once annually; you have a festive day every eighth day.” Tertullian tells his brethren in plain language that they kept no sabbaths, but did keep many heathen festivals. If the Sunday festival, which was a day of “indulgence” to the flesh, and which he here mentions as the “eighth day,” was kept by them as the Christian Sabbath in place of the ancient seventh day, then he would not have asserted that to us “sabbaths are strange.” But Tertullian has precisely the same Sabbath as Justin Martyr. He does not keep the first day in place of the seventh, but he keeps a “perpetual Sabbath,” in which he professes to refrain from sin every day, and actually abstains from labor on none. Thus, after saying that the Jews teach that “from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day,” and therefore observe that day, he says: — “Whence we [Christians] understand that we still more ought to observe a Sabbath from all ‘servile work’ always, and not only every seventh day, but through all time.” Tertullian certainly had no idea that Sunday was the Sabbath in any other sense than were all the seven days of the week. We shall find a decisive confirmation of this when we come to quote Tertullian respecting the origin of the Sabbath. We shall also find that Clement expressly makes Sunday a day of labor.
Several of the early Fathers wrote in opposition to the observance of the seventh day. We now give the reasons assigned by each for that opposition. The writer called Barnabas did not keep the seventh day, not because it was a ceremonial ordinance unworthy of being observed by a Christian, but because it was so pure an institution that even Christians cannot truly sanctify it till they are made immortal. Here are his words: — “Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expression, ‘He finished in six days.’ This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with him a thousand years. And he himself testifieth, saying, ‘Behold, today will be as a thousand years.’ Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years; all things will be finished. ‘And he rested on the seventh day.’ This meaneth: When his Son, coming [again], shall destroy the time of the wicked man, and judge the ungodly, and change the sun, and the moon, and the stars, then shall he truly rest on the seventh day. Moreover, he says, ‘Thou shalt sanctify it with pure hands and a pure heart.’ If, therefore, any one can now sanctify the day which God hath sanctified, except he is pure in heart in all things, we are deceived. Behold, therefore: certainly one properly resting sanctifies it, when we ourselves, having received the promise, wickedness no longer existing, and all things having been made new by the Lord, shall be able to work righteousness.
Then we shall be able to sanctify it, having been first sanctified ourselves. Further he says to them, ‘your new moons and your sabbaths I cannot endure.’ Ye perceive how he speaks: Your present sabbaths are not acceptable to me, but that is which I have made [namely this], when giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world, wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day, also, on which.Jesus rose again from the dead.” Observe the points embodied in this statement of doctrine: 1 . He asserts that the six days of creation prefigure the six thousand years which our world shall endure in its present state of wickedness; 2. He teaches that at the end of that period, Christ will come again, and make an end of wickedness, and “then shall he truly rest on the seventh day;” 3. That “no one can now sanctify the day which God hath sanctified, except he is pure in heart in all things;” 4. But that cannot be the case until the present world shall pass away, “when we ourselves, having received the promise, wickedness no longer existing, and all things having been made new by the Lord, shall be able to work righteousness: then we shall be able to sanctify it, having been first sanctified ourselves; ” therefore men cannot keep the Sabbath while this wicked world lasts; 5. So he says, “Your present sabbaths are not acceptable,” not because they are not pure, but because you are not now able to keep them as purely as their nature demands; 6. That is to say, the keeping of the day which God has sanctified is not possible in such a wicked world as this; 7. But though the seventh day cannot now be kept, the eighth day can be, and ought to be, because when the seven thousand years are past, there will be:it the beginning of the eighth thousand, the new creation; 8. Therefore, he did not attempt to keep the seventh day, which God had sanctified; for that is too pure to be kept in the present wicked world, and can only be kept after the Savior comes, at the commencement of the seventh thousand years; but he kept the eighth day with joyfulness, on which Jesus arose from the dead; 9. So it appears that the eighth day, which God never sanctified, is exactly suitable for observance in our world during its present state of wickedness; 10. But when all things have been made new, and we are able to work righteousness, and wickedness no longer exists, then we shall be able to sanctify the seventh day, having first been sanctified ourselves.
The reason Barnabas gives for riot observing the Sabbath of the Lord is not that the commandment enjoining it is abolished, but thai; the institution is so pure that men in their present imperfect state cannot acceptably sanctify it. They will keep it, however, in the new creation; but in the meantime they keep with joyfulness the eighth day, which, having never been sanctified by God, is not difficult to keep in the present state of wickedness.
Justin Martyr’s reasons for not observing the Sabbath are not at all like those of the so-called Barnabas, for Justin seems to have heartily despised the Sabbatic institution. He denies that it was obligatory before the time of Moses, and declares that it was abolished by the advent of Christ. He teaches that it was given to the Jews because of their wickedness, and he expressly affirms the abolition of both the Sabbath and the law. So far is he from roaching the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, or from making the Sunday festival a continuation of the ancient Sab-batic institution, that he sneers at the very idea of days of abstinence from labor, or days of idleness; and though God gives as his reason for the observance of the Sabbath, that that was the day on which he rested from all his work, Justin gives as his first reason for the Sunday festival that that was the day on which ‘God began his work! Of abstinence from labor as an act of obedience to the Sabbath, Justin says: — “The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances.” A second reason for not observing the Sabbath is thus stated by him: — “For we, too, would observe the:fleshly circumcision, and the Sabbaths, and in short, all the feasts, if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined you; namely, on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts.” As Justin never discriminates between the Sabbath of the Lord and the annual sabbaths, he doubtless here means to include it as well as them. But what a falsehood it is to assert that the Sabbath was given to the Jews because of their wickedness! The truth is, it was given to the Jews because of the universal apostasy of the Gentiles. 47 But in the following paragraph, Justin gives three more reasons for not keeping the Sabbath: — “Do you see that the elements are not idle, and keep no Sabbaths?
Remain as you were born. For if there was no need of circumcision before Abraham, or of the observance of Sabbaths, of feasts and sacrifices, before Moses, no more need is there of them now, after that, according to the will of God, Jesus Christ, the son of God, has been born without sin, of a virgin sprung from the stock of Abraham.” Here are three reasons: 1. “That the elements are not idle, and keep no Sabbaths;” though this reason is simply worthless as an argument against the seventh day, it is a decisive confirmation of the fact already proved, that Justin did not make Sunday a day of abstinence from labor; 2. His second reason here given is that there was no observance of Sabbaths before Moses; and yet we know that God, at the beginning, did appoint the Sabbath to a holy use, — a fact to which, as we shall see, quite a number of the Fathers testify, and we also knorr that in that age were men who kept all the precepts of God; 3. There is no need of Sabbafic observance since Christ. Though this is mere assertion, it is by no means easy for those to meet it fairly who represent Justin as maintaining the Christian Sabbath.
Another argument of Justin against the obligation of the Sabbath is, that God “directs the government of the universe on this day equally as on all others!” 49 as though this were inconsistent with the present sacredness of the Sabbath, when it is also true that God thus governed the world in the period when Justin acknowledges the Sabbath ‘to have been obligatory.
Though this reason is trivial as an argument against the Sabbath, it does show that Justin could have attached no Sabbatic character to Sunday. But he has yet one more argument against the Sabbath. The ancient law has been done away by the new and final law, and the old covenant has been superseded by the news. 50 But he forgets that the design of the new covenant was not to do away with the law of God, but to put that law into the heart of every Christian. And many of the Fathers, as we shall see, expressly repudiate this doctrine of the abrogation of the decalogue.
Such were Justin’s reasons for rejecting the ancient Sabbath. But though he was a decided asserter of the abrogation of the law, and of the Sabbatic institution itself, and kept Sunday only as a festival, modern first-day writers cite him as a witness in support of the doctrine that the first day of the week should be observed as the Christian Sabbath on the authority of the fourth commandment.
Now let us learn what stood in the way of Irenaeus’s observance of the Sabbath. It was not that the commandments were abolished, for we shall presently learn that he taught their perpetuity. Nor was it that he believed in the change of the Sabbath, for he gives no hint of such all idea. The Sunday festival, in his estimation, appears to have been simply of” equal significance” with the Pentecost. 51 Nor was it that Christ broke the Sabbath; for Irenaeus says that he did not. 52 But because the Sabbath is called a sign, he regarded it as significant of the future kingdom, and appears to have considered it no longer obligatory, though he does not expressly say this. Thus he sets forth the meaning of the Sabbath as held by him: — “Moreover, the Sabbath of God, that is, the kingdom, was, as it. were, indicated by created things,” etc. “These [promises to the righteous] are [to take place] in the times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day, which has been sanctified, in which God rested from all the works which he created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous,” etc. “For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years; and in six days created things were completed; it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the six thousandth year.” But Irenaeus did not notice that the Sabbath, as a sign, does not point forward to the restitution, but backward to the creation, that it may signify that the true God is the Creator.(Exodus 31:17; Ezekiel 20:12,20.)
Nor did he observe the fact that when the kingdom of God shall be established under the whole heaven, all flesh shall hallow the Sabbath.”(Isaiah 66:22,23; Daniel 7:18,27.)
But he says that those who lived before Moses were justified “without observance of Sabbaths,” and offers as proof that the covenant at Horeb was not made with the Fathers. Of course, if this proves that the patriarchs were free from obligation toward the fourth commandment, it is equally good as proof that they might violate any other. ‘These things indicate that Irenaeus was opposed to Sabbatic observance, though he did not in express language assert its abrogation, and did in most decisive terms assert the continued obligation of the ten commandments.
Tertullian offers numerous reasons for not observing the Sabbath, but there is scarcely one of these that he does not in some other place expressly contradict. Thus he asserts that the patriarchs before Moses did not observe the Sabbath. 56 But he offers no proof, and he elsewhere dates the origin of the Sabbath at the creation, as we shall show hereafter. 57 In several places he teaches ‘the abrogation of the law, and seems to set aside moral law as well as ceremonial. But elsewhere he bears express testimony that the ten commandments are still binding as the rule of the Christian’s life. 58 He quotes the words of Isaiah, in which God is represented as hating the. feasts, new-moons, and sabbaths observed by the Jews(Isaiah 1:13,14.), as proof that the seventh-day Sabbath was a temporary institution abrogated by Christ. But in another place he says: “Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath: he kept the law thereof.” 59 And he also explains this very text by stating that God’s aversion toward the Sabbaths observed by the Jews was “because they were celebrated without the fear of God, by a people full of iniquities;” and he adds that the prophet, in a later passage, speaking of Sabbaths celebrated according to God’s commandment, “declares them to be true, delightful, and inviolable.”(Isaiah 56:2; 58:13.)
Another statement is that Joshua violated the Sabbath in the siege of Jericho. 60 ‘Yet he elsewhere explains this very case, showing that the commandment forbids our own work, not God’s. Those who acted at Jericho did “not do their own work, but God’s, which they executed, and that, too, from his express commandment.” 61 He also both asserts and denies that Christ violated the Sabbath. 62 Tertullian was a double-minded man. He wrote against the law and the Sabbath, but contradicted and exposed his own errors.
Origen attempts to prove that the ancient Sabbath is to be understood mystically or spiritually, not literally: — “‘Ye shall sit, every one in your dwellings: no one shall move from his place on the Sabbath-day.’ Which precept it is impossible to observe literally; for no man can sit a whole day so as not to move from the place where he sat down.” Great men are not always wise. There is no such precept in the Bible.
Origen referred to that which forbade the people to go out for manna on the Sabbath, but which did not conflict with another that commanded holy convocations or assemblies for worship on the Sabbath.(Exodus 16:29; Leviticus 23:3.)
Victorinus is the latest of the Fathers before Constantine, who offers reasons against the observance of the Sabbath. His first reason is that Christ said by Isaiah that his soul hated the Sabbath; which Sabbath he in his body abolished; and these assertions we have seen answered by Tertullian. 64 His second reason is that “Jesus [Joshua] the son of Nave [Nun], the successor of Moses, himself broke the Sabbath-day;” 65 which is false. His third reason is that ‘“Matthias [a Maccabean] also, prince of Judah, broke the Sabbath;” 66 which is doubtless false, but is of no consequence as authority. His fourth argument is original, and may fitly close the list of reasons assigned by the Fathers for not observing the Sabbath. It is given in full without an answer: — “And in Matthew we read, that it is written Isaiah also and the rest of his colleagues broke the Sabbath.” 67
THE SABBATH IN THE RECORD 0F THE EARLY FATHERS
The first reasons for neglecting the Sabbath are now mostly obsolete — A portion of the early Fathers taught the perpetuity of the decalogue, and made it the standard of moral character — What they say concerning the origin of the Sabbath at creation — Their testimony concerning the perpetuity and observance of the ancient Sabbath — Enumeration of the things which caused the suppression of the Sabbath, and the elevation of Sunday. THE reasons offered by the early Fathers for neglecting the observance of the Sabbath, show conclusively that they had no special light on the subject by reason of living in the first centuries, which we in this later age do not possess. The fact is, so many of the reasons offered by them are manifestly false and absurd that those who in these days discard the Sabbath, do also discard the most of the reasons offered by these Fathers for this same course. We have also learned from such of the early Fathers as mention first-day observance, the exact nature of the Sunday festival, and all the reasons which in the first centuries were offered in its support.
Very few indeed of these reasons are now offered by modern first-day writers.
But some of the Fathers bear emphatic testimony to the perpetuity of the ten commandments, and make their observance the condition of eternal life. Some also distinctly assert the origin of the Sabbath at creation.
Several of them, moreover, bear witness to the existence of Sabbathkeepers, or give decisive testimony to the perpetuity and obligation of the Sabbath, or define-the nature of proper Sabbatic observance, or connect the observance of the Sabbath and first-day together. Let us now hear the testimony of those who assert the authority of the ten commandments.
Irenaeus asserts their perpetuity, and makes them a test of Christian character. Thus he says: — “For God at the first, indeed, warning them [the Jews] by means of natural precepts, which from the beginning he had implanted in mankind, that is, by means of theDECALOGUE (which, if any one does not observe, he has no salvation), did then demand nothing more of them.” This is a very strong statement, tie makes the ten commandments the law of nature implanted in man’s being at the beginning; and so inherited by all mankind. This is no doubt true. It is the presence of the carnal mind or law of sin and death, implanted in man by the fall, that has partially obliterated this law, and made the work of the new covenant a necessity,(Jeremiah 31:33; Romans 7:21-25; 8:1-7.) He again asserts; the perpetuity and authority of the ten commandments in the following words: — “Preparing man for this life, the Lord himself did speak in his own person to all Mike the words of the decalogue: and therefore, in like manner, do they remain permanently with us, receiving, by means of his advent in the flesh, extension and increase, but not abrogation,” By the “extension” of the decalogue, Irenaeus doubtless means the exposition which the Savior gave of the meaning, of the commandments in his sermon on the mount.(Matthew chapters 5, 6, 7.) Theophilus speaks in like manner concerning the decalogue: — “For God has given us a law and holy commandments; and every one who keeps these can be saved, and, obtaining the resurrection, can inherit incorruption.” “We have learned a holy law; but we have as Lawgiver him who is really God, who teaches us to act righteously, and to be pious, and to do good.” “Of this great and wonderful law which tends to all righteousness, theTEN HEADS are such as we have already rehearsed.” Tertullian calls the ten commandments “ the rules of our regenerate life,” that is to say, the rules which govern the life of a converted man: — “They who theorize respecting numbers, honor the number ten as the parent of all the others, and as imparting perfection to the human nativity. For my own part, I prefer viewing this measure of time in reference to God, as if implying that the ten months rather initiated man into the ten commandments; so that the numerical estimate of the time needed to consummate our natural birth should correspond to the numerical classification of the rules of our regenerate life .” In showing the deep guilt involved ill the violation of the seventh commandment, Tertullian speaks of the sacredness of the commandments which precede it, naming several in particular, and among them the fourth, and then says of the precept against adultery that — It stands “in the very forefront of the most holy law, among the primary counts of the celestial edict .” Clement of Rome, or rather the, author.whose works have been ascribed to this Father, speaks thus of the decalogue as a test: — “On account of those, therefore, who, by neglect of their own salvation, please the evil one, and those, who, by study of their own profit, seek to please the good One, ten things have been prescribed as a test to this present age, according to the number of ten plagues which were brought upon Egypt.” Novarian, who wrote about A.D. 250, is accounted the founder of (he sect called Cathari, or Puritans. He wrote a treatise on the Sabbath, which is not extant. There is no reference to Sunday in any of his writings. he makes the following striking remarks concerning the moral law: — “The law was given to the children of Israel for this purpose, that they might profit by it, andRETURN to those virtuous manners which, although they had received them from their fathers, they had corrupted in Egypt, by reason of their intercourse with a barbarous people. Finally, also, those ten commandments on the tables teach nothing new, but remind them of what had been obliterated — that righteousness in them, ‘which had been put to sleep, might revive again, as it were, by the afflatus of the law, after the manner of a fire [nearly extinguished].” It is evident that in the judgment of Novarian, the ten commandments enjoined nothing that was not sacredly regarded by the patriarchs before Jacob went down into Egypt. It follows, therefore, that in his opinion the Sabbath was made, not at the fall of the manna, but when God sanctified the seventh day; and that holy men from the earliest ages observed it.
The Apostolical Constitutions, written about the third century, give us an understanding of what was widely ‘regarded in the third century’ as apostolic doctrine. They speak thus of the ten commandments: — “Have before thine eyes the fear of God, and always remember the ten commandments of God, — to love the one and only Lord God with all thy strength; to give no heed to idols, or any other beings, as being lifeless gods, or irrational beings or demons.” “He gave a plain law to assist the law of nature, such a one as is pure, saving, and holy, in which his own name was inscribed, perfect, which is never to fail, being complete in ten commands, unspotted, converting souls.” This writer, like Irenaeus, believed in the identity of the decalogue With the law of nature. These testimonies show that in the writings of the early Fathers are some of the strongest utterances in behalf of the perpetuity and authority of the ten commandments. Now let us hear what they say concerning the origin of the Sabbath at creation. The epistle ascribed to Barnabas says: — “And he says in another place, ‘If my sons keep the Sabbath, then will I cause my mercy to rest upon them.’ The Sabbath is mentioned at the beginning of the creation [thus]: ‘And God made in six days the works of his hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it.’” Irenaeus seems plainly to connect the origin of the Sabbath with the sanctification of the seventh day: — “These [things promised] are [to take place] in the times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day, which has been sanctified, in which God rested from his works which he created, which is the true Sabbath, in which they shall not be engaged in any earthly occupation.” Tertullian, likewise, refers the origin of the Sabbath to “the benediction of the Father”: — “But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh moveth, I more readily recognize in this number than in the eighth the honor of a numerical agreement with the Sabbatical period; so that the month in which God’s image is sometimes produced in a, human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which God’s creation was completed and hallowed. ” “For even in the case before us, he [Christ] fulfilled the law, while interpreting its condition; [moreover] he exhibits in a clear light the different kinds of work, while doing what the law excepts from ‘the sacredness of the Sabbath, [and] while imparting to the Sabbath-day itself which from the beginning had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father, an additional sanctity by his own beneficent action.” Origen, who, as we have seen, believed in a mystical Sabbath, did nevertheless fix its origin at, the sanctification of the seventh day: — “For he [Celsus] knows nothing of the day of the Sabbath and rest of God, which follows the completion of the world’s creation, and which lasts during the duration of the world, and in which all those will keep festival with God who have done all their works in their six days.” The testimony of Novatian, which has been given relative to the sacredness and authority of the decalogue, plainly implies the existence of the Sabbath in the patriarchal ages, and its observance by those holy men of old. It was given to Israel that they might “RETURN to those virtuous manners which, although they had received them from their fathers, they had corrupted in Egypt.” And he adds, “Those ten commandments on the tables teach nothing new, but remind them of what had been obliterated.” He did not, therefore, believe the Sabbath to have originated at the fall of the manna, but counted it one of those things which were practiced by their fathers before Jacob went down to Egypt.
Lactantius places the origin of the Sabbath at creation: — “God completed the world and this admirable work of nature in the space of six days (as is contained in the secrets of holy Scripture), andCONSECRATED the seventh day, on which he had rested from his works. But this is the Sabbath-day, which, in the language of the Hebrews, received its name from the number, whence the seventh is the legitimate and complete number.” In a poem on Genesis, written about the time of Lactantius, but by an unknown author, we have an explicit testimony to the divine appointment of the seventh day to a holy use while man was yet in Eden, the garden of God: — “The seventh came, when God At his work’s end did rest, DECREEING IT SACRED UNTO the COMING AGE’S JOYS.” The Apostolical Constitutions, while teaching the present obligation of the Sabbath, plainly indicate its origin to have been at creation: — “O Lord Almighty, thou hast created the world by Christ, and hast appointed the Sabbath in memory thereof, because that on that day thou hast made us rest from our works, for the meditation upon thy laws.” Such are the testimonies of the early Fathers’ to the primeval origin of. the Sabbath, and to the sacredness and perpetual obligation of the ten commandments. We now call attention to what they say relative to the perpetuity of the Sabbath, and to its observance in the centuries during which they lived. Tertullian defines Christ’s relation to the Sabbath: — “He was called ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ because he maintained the Sabbath as his own institution.” He affirms that Christ did not abolish the Sabbath: — “Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath: he kept the law thereof, and both in the former case did a work which was beneficial to the life of his disciples (for he indulged them with the relief of food when they were hungry), and in the present instance, cured the withered hand; in each case intimating by facts, ‘ I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.’” 22 Nor can it be said that while Tertullian denied that Christ abolished the Sabbath, he did believe that he transferred its sacredness from the seventh day of the week to the first; for he continues thus: — “He [Christ] exhibits in a dear light the different kinds of work, while doing what the law excepts from the sacredness of the Sabbath, [and] while imparting to the Sabbath-day itself, which from the beginning had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father, an additional sanctity by his own beneficent action. For he furnished to this day DIVINE SAFEGUARDS — a course which his adversary would have pursued for some other days, to avoid honoring the Creator’s Sabbath, and restoring to the Sabbath the works which were proper for it.” This is a very remarkable statement. The modern doctrine of the change of the Sabbath was unknown in Tertullian’s time. Had it then been in existence, there could be no doubt that in the words last quoted he was aiming at it a heavy blow; for the very thing which he asserts Christ’s adversary, Satan, would have had him do, that modern first-day Writers assert he did do in consecrating another day instead of adding to the sanctity of his Father’s Sabbath.
Archelaus, of Cascar in Mesopotamia, emphatically denies the abolition of the Sabbath: — “Again, as to the assertion that the Sabbath has been abolished, we deny that he has abolished it plainly; for he was himself also Lord of the Sabbath.” Justin Martyr, as we have seen, was an outspoken opponent of Sabbatic observance, and of the authority of the law of God. He was by no means always candid in what he said. He has occasion to refer to those who observed the seventh day, and he does it with contempt. Thus he says:— “But if some, through weak-mindedness, wish to observe such institutions as were given by Moses (from which they expect some virtue, but which we believe were appointed by reason of the hardness of the people’s hearts), along with their hope in this Christ, and [wish to perform] the eternal and natural acts of righteousness and piety, yet choose to live with the Christians and the faithful, as I said before, not inducing them either to be circumcised like themselves, or to keep the Sabbath, or to observe any other such ceremonies, then I hold that we ought to join ourselves to such, and associate with them in all things as kinsmen and brethren.” These words are spoken of Sabbath-keeping Christians. Such of them as were of Jewish descent no doubt generally retained circumcision. But there were many Gentile Christians who observed the Sabbath, as we shall see; and it is not true that they observed circumcision. Justin speaks of this class as acting from” weak-mindedness; ” yet he inadvertently alludes to the keeping of the commandments as the performance of “theETERNAL andNATURAL ACTS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS,” a most appropriate designation indeed. Justin would fellowship those who act thus, provided they would fellowship him in the contrary course. But though Justin, on this condition, could fellowship these “weak-minded” brethren, he says that there are those who “do not venture to have any intercourse with, or to extend hospitality to, such persons: but I do not agree with them.” 26 This shows the bitter spirit which prevailed in some quarters toward the Sabbath, even as early as Justin’s time. Justin has no word of condemnation for these intolerant professors; he is only solicitous lest those persons who perform “the eternal and natural acts of righteousness and piety” should condemn those who do not perform them.
Clement, of Alexandria, though a mystical writer, bears an important testimony to the perpetuity of the ancient Sabbath, and to man’s. present need thereof. He comments thus on the fourth commandment: — “And the fourth word is that which intimates that the world was created by God, and that he gave us the seventh day as a rest, on account of the trouble that there is in life. For God is incapable of weariness, and suffering, and want. But we who bear flesh need rest. The seventh day, therefore, is proclaimed a rest — abstraction from ills — preparing for the primal day, our true rest.” Clement recognized the authority of the moral law; for he treats of the ten commandments one by one, and shows what each enjoins. He plainly teaches that the Sabbath was made for man, and that he now needs it as a day of rest, and his language implies that. it, was made at the creation. But in the next paragraph he makes some curious suggestions, which deserve notice: — “Having reached this point, we must mention these things by the way; since the discourse has turned on the seventh and the eighth.
For the eighth may possibly turn out to be properly the seventh, and the seventh manifestly the sixth, and the latter properly the Sabbath, and the seventh a day of work. For the creation of the world was concluded in six days.” This language has been adduced to show flint Clement called the eighth day, or Sunday, the Sabbath. But first-day writers in general have not dared to commit themselves to such an interpretation, and some of them have expressly discarded it. Let us notice this statement with especial care.
He speaks of the ordinals seventh and eighth in the abstract, but probably with reference to the days of the week. Observe, then, 1 That; he does not intimate that the eighth day has become the Sabbath in place of the seventh which was once such, but he says that the eighth day may possibly turn out to be properly the seventh. 2. That in Clement’s time, A.D. 194, there was not any confusion in the minds of men as to which day was the ancient Sabbath, and which one was the first day of the week, or eighth day, as it was often called, nor does he intimate that there was. 3. But Clement, from some cause, says that possibly the eighth day should be counted the seventh, and the seventh day the sixth. Now, if this should be done, it would change the numbering of the days, not only as far back as the resurrection or Christ, but all the way back to the creation. 4. If, therefore, Clement, in this place, designed to teach that Sunday is the Sabbath, he must also have held that it always had been such. 5. But observe that, while he changes the numbering of the days of the week, he does not change the Sabbath from one day to another, he says the eighth may possibly be the seventh, and the seventh, properly the sixth, and the latter, or this one [Greek, hJ me There remains but one difficulty to be solved, and that is why he should suggest the changing of the numbering of the days of the week by striking one from the count of each day, thus making the ‘Sabbath the sixth day in the count instead of the seventh; and making Sunday the seventh day in the count instead of the eighth. The answer seems to have eluded the observation of the first-day and Sabbatarian writers who have sought to grasp it. But there is a fact which solves the difficulty. Clement’s commentary on the fourth commandment, from which these quotations are taken, is principally made up of curious observations on “the perfect number six, “the number seven motherless and childless,” and the number eight, which is “a cube,” and the like matters, and is taken, with some change of arrangement, almost word for word from Philo Judaeus, a teacher who flourished at Alexandria about one century before Clement.
Whoever will take pains to compare these two writers will find in Philo nearly all the ideas and illustrations which Clement has used, and the very language also in which he has expressed them. 29 Philo was a mystical teacher to whom Clement looked up, as to a master. A statement which we find in Philo, in immediate connection with several curious ideas, which Clement quotes from him, gives, beyond all doubt; the key to Clement’s suggestion that possibly the eighth day should be called the seventh, and the seventh day called the sixth. Philo said that, according to God’s purpose, the first day of time was not to be numbered with the other days of the creation week. Thus he says: — “And he allotted each of the six days to one of the portions of the whole,TAKING OUT THE FIRST DAY, which he does not even call the first day, that it may not be numbered with the others, but entitling it ONE, he names it rightly, perceiving in it, and ascribing to it, the nature and appellation of the limit.” This would simply change the numbering of the days, as counted by Philo, and afterward partially adopted by Clement, and make the Sabbath, not the seventh day, but the sixth, and Sunday, not the eighth day, but the seventh; but it would still leave the Sabbath-day and the Sunday the same identical days as before. It would, however, give the Sabbath the name of, sixth day, because the first of the six days of creation was not counted; and it would cause the eighth day, so called in the early church because of its coming next after the Sabbath, to be called seventh day. Thus the Sabbath would be the sixth day, and the seventh a day of work, and yet the Sabbath would be the identical day that it has ever been, and the Sunday, though called seventh day, would still, as ever before, remain a day on which ordinary labor was lawful. Of course, Philo’s idea that the first day of time should not be counted, is wholly false; for there is not one fact in the Bible to support it, but many which expressly contradict it, and even Clement, with all deference to Philo, only timidly suggests it. But when the matter is laid open, it shows that Clement had no thought of calling Sunday the Sabbath, and that he does expressly confirm what we have fully proved out of other of the Fathers, that Sunday was a day on which, in their judgment, labor was not sinful.
Tertullian, at different periods of his life, held different views respecting the Sabbath, and committed them all to, writing. We last quoted from him a decisive testimony to the perpetuity of the Sabbath, coupled with an equally decisive testimony against the sanctification of the first day of the week. In another work, from which we have already quoted his statement, that Christians should not kneel on Sunday, we find another statement that “some few” abstained from kneeling on the Sabbath. This has probable reference to Carthage, where Tertullian lived, he speaks thus: — “In the matter of kneeling also, prayer is subject to diversity of observance, through the act of some few who abstain from kneeling on the Sabbath; and since this dissension is particularly on its trial before the churches, the Lord will give his grace that the dissidents may either yield, or else indulge their opinion without offense to others.” The act of standing in prayer was one of the chief honors conferred upon Sunday. Those who refrained from kneeling on the seventh day, without doubt did it because they desired to honor that day. This particular act is of no consequence; for it was adopted in imitation of those who, from tradition and custom, thus honored Sunday; but we have in this an undoubted reference to Sabbath-keeping Christians. Tertullian speaks of them, however, in a manner quite unlike that of Justin in his reference to the commandment-keepers of his time.
Origen, like many others of the Fathers, was far from being consistent with himself. Though he has spoken against Sabbatic observance, and has honored the so-called Lord’s day as something better than the ancient Sabbath, he has nevertheless given a discourse expressly designed to teach Christians the proper method of observing the Sabbath. Here is a portion of this sermon: — “But what is the feast of the Sabbath except that of which the apostle speaks, ‘There remaineth therefore a Sabbatism,’ that is, the observance of the Sabbath, by the people of God? Leaving the Jewish observances of the Sabbath, let us see how the Sabbath ought to be observed by a Christian. On the Sabbath-day all worldly labors ought to be abstained from. If, therefore, you cease from all secular works, and execute nothing worldly, but give yourselves up to spiritual exercises, repairing to church, attending to sacred reading and instruction, thinking of celestial things, solicitous for the future, placing the Judgment to come before your eyes, not looking to things present and visible, but to those which are future and invisible, this is the observance of the Christian Sabbath.” This is by no means a bad representation of the proper observance of the Sabbath. Such a discourse addressed to Christians is a strong evidence that many did then hallow that day. Some, indeed, have. claimed that these words were spoken concerning Sunday. They would have it that he contrasts the observance of the first day with that of the seventh. But the contrast is not between the different methods of keeping two days, but between two methods of observing one day. The Jews in Origen’s time spent the day mainly in mere abstinence from labor, and often added sensuality to idleness. But the Christians were to observe it in divine worship, as well as sacred rest. What day he intends cannot be doubtful. It isDIES SABBATI a term which can signify only the seventh day. Here is the first instance of the term Christian Sabbath, Sabbati Christiani, and it is expressly applied to the seventh day observed by Christians.
The longer form of the reputed epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians was not written till after Origen’s time; but, though not written by Ignatius, it; is valuable for the light, it, throws upon the existing state of things at, the tithe of its composition, and for marking the progress which apostasy had made with respect to the Sabbath, Here is its reference to the Sabbath and first day: — “Let us therefore no longer keel:, the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness; for he that does not work, let him not eat.’ For say the [holy] oracles, ‘ in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.’ But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in relaxation of the body, admiring the workmanship of God, and not eating things prepared the day before, nor using lukewarm drinks, and walking within a prescribed space, nor finding delight in dancing and plaudits which ]lave no sense in them. And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s day as a festival, the resurrection day, the queen and chief of all the days [of the week]. Looking forward to this, the prophet declared, ‘To the end, for the eighth day,’ on which our life both sprang up again, and the victory over death was obtained in Christ.” This writer specifies the different things which made up the Jewish observance of the Sabbath. They may be summed up under two heads: 1. Strict abstinence from labor; 2. Dancing and carousal.
Now in the light of what Origen has said, we can understand the contrast which this writer draws between the Jewish and the Christian observance of the Sabbath. The error of the Jews in the first part of this was that they contented themselves with mere bodily relaxation, without raising their thoughts to God, the Creator, and this mere idleness soon gave place to sensual folly.
The Christian, as Origen draws the contrast, refrains from labor on the Sabbath that he may raise his heart in grateful worship; or, as this writer expresses it, the Christian keeps the Sabbath in “a spiritual manner,” rejoicing, in meditation on the law; but to do thus, he must hallow it in the manner which the law commands, that is, in the observance of a sacred rest which commemorates the rest of the Creator. The writer evidently believed in the observance of the Sabbath as an act of obedience to that law on which they were to mediate on that day. And the nature of the epistle indicates that it was observed, at all events, in the country where it was written. But mark the work of apostasy. The so-called Lord’s day, for which the writer could offer nothing better than an argument drawn from the title of the sixth psalm (see its marginal reading), is exalted above the Lord’s holy day, and made the queen of all days!
The Apostolical Constitutions, though not written in apostolic times, were in existence as early as the third century, and were then very generally believed to express the doctrine of the apostles. They do therefore, furnish important historical testimony to the practice of the church at that time, and also indicate the great progress which apostasy had made. Guericke speaks thus of them: — “This is a collection of ecclesiastical statutes purporting to be the work of the apostolic age, but in reality formed gradually in the second, third, and fourth centuries, and is of much value in reference to the history of polity’, and Christian archaeology generally.” Mosheim says of them: — “The matter of this work is unquestionably ancient; since the manners and discipline of which it exhibits a view are those which prevailed amongst the Christians of the second and third centuries? especially those resident in Greece and the oriental regions.” These Constitutions indicate that the Sabbath was extensively observed in the third century. They also show the standing of the Sunday festival in that century. After solemnly enjoining the sacred observance of the ten commandments, they thus enforce the Sabbath: — “Consider the manifold workmanship of God, which received its beginning through Christ. Thou shalt observe the Sabbath, on account of Him who ceased from his work of creation, but ceased not from his work of providence: it is a rest for meditation of the law, not for idleness of the hands.” This is sound Sabbatarian doctrine. To show how distinctly these Constitutions recognize the decalogue as the foundation of Sabbatic authority, we quote the words next preceding the above, though they have been already quoted: — “Have before thine eyes the fear of God, and always remember the ten commandments of God, — to have the one and only Lord God with all thy strength; to give no heed to idols, or any other beings, as being lifeless gods, or irrational beings or demons.” But though these Constitutions thus recognize the authority of the decalogue and the sacred obligation of the seventh day, they elevate the Sunday festival in some respects to higher honor than the Sabbath, though they claim for it no precept of the Scriptures. Thus they say: — “But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day festival; because the former is the memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection.” “For the Sabbath is the ceasing of the creation, the completion of the world, the inquiry after laws, and the grateful praise to God for the blessings he has bestowed upon men. All which the Lord’s day excels, and shows the Mediator himself, the Provider, the Lawgiver, the Cause of the resurrection, the First-born of the whole creation.” “So that the Lord’s day commands us to offer unto thee, O Lord, thanksgiving for all. For this is the grace afforded by thee, which, on account of its greatness, has obscured all other blessings.” Tested by his own principles, the writer of these Constitutions was tilt advanced in apostasy; for he held a festival, for which he claimed no divine authority, more honorable than one which he acknowledged to be ordained of God. There could be but one step more in this course, and that would be to set aside the commandment of God for the ordinance of man, and this step was, not very long afterward, actually taken. One other point should be noticed. It is said: — “Let the slaves work five days; but on the Sabbath-day and the Lord’s day let them have leisure to go to church for instruction in piety.” The question of the sinfulness of labor on either of these days is not here taken into the account; for the reason assigned is that the slaves may have leisure to attend public worship. But While these Constitutions elsewhere forbid labor on the Sabbath on the authority of the decalogue, they do not forbid it upon the first day of the week. Take the following as an example: — “O Lord Almighty, thou hast created the world by Christ, and hast appointed the Sabbath in memory thereof, because that on that day thou hast made us rest from our works, for the meditation upon thy laws.” The Apostolical Constitutions are valuable to us, not as authority respecting the teaching of the apostles, but as giving us a knowledge of the views and practices which prevailed in the third century. As these Constitutions were extensively regarded as embodying the doctrine of the apostles, they furnish conclusive evidence that, at the time when they were put in writing, the ten commandments were very generally revered as the immutable rule of right, and that the Sabbath of the Lord was by many observed as an act of obedience to the fourth commandment, and as the divine memorial of the creation. They also show that the first-day festival had, in the third century, attained such strength and influence as to clearly indicate that ere long it would claim the entire ground. But observe that the Sabbath and the so-called Lord’s day were then regarded as distinct institutions, and that no hint of the change of the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first is even once given.
Thus much out of the Fathers concerning the authority of the decalogue, and concerning the perpetuity and observance of the ancient Sabbath. The suppression of the Sabbath of the Bible, and the elevation of Sunday to its place, has been shown to be in no sense the work of the Savior. But so great a work required the united action of powerful causes, and these causes we will now enumerate: — 1. Hatred toward the Jews. — This people, who retained the ancient Sabbath, had slain Christ. It was easy for men to forget that Christ, as Lord of the Sabbath, had claimed it as his own institution, and to call the Sabbath a Jewish institution which Christians should not regard. 2. The hatred of the church of Rome toward the Sabbath, and its determination to elevate Sunday to the highest place. — This church, as the chief in the work of apostasy, took the lead in the earliest effort to suppress the Sabbath by turning it into a fast. And the very first act of papal aggression was by an edict in behalf of Sunday. Thenceforward, in every possible form, this church continued this work until the pope announced that he had received a divine mandate for Sunday observance [the very thing lacking] in a roll which fell from heaven. 3. The voluntary observance of memorable days. — In the Christian church, almost from the beginning, men voluntarily honored the fourth, the sixth, and the first days of the week, and also the anniversary of the Passover and the Pentecost, to commemorate the betrayal, the death, and the resurrection, of Christ, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, which acts in themselves could not be counted sinful. 4. Making tradition of equal authority with the Scriptures, — This was the great error of the early church, and the one to which that church was specially exposed, as having in it those who had seen the apostles, or who had seen those who had seen them. It was this which ‘rendered the voluntary observance of memorable days a, dangerous thing; for what began as a voluntary observance became, after the lapse of a few years, a standing custom, established by tradition, which must be obeyed because it came from those who had seen the apostles, or from those who had seen others who had seen them. This is the origin of the various errors of the great apostasy. 5. The entrance of the no-law heresy. — This is seen in Justin Martyr, the earliest witness to the Sunday festival, and in the church of Rome, of which he was then a member. 6. The extensive observance of Sunday as a heathen festival. — The first day of the week corresponded to the widely observed heathen festival of the sun. It was therefore easy to unite the honor of Christ in the observance of the day of his resurrection, with the convenience and worldly advantage Of his people, in having the same festival day with their heathen neighbors, and to make it a special act of piety in that the conversion of the heathen was thereby facilitated, while the neglect of the ancient Sabbath was justified by stigmatizing that divine memorial as a Jewish institution with which Christians should have no concern.
THE SABBATH AND FIRST-DAY DURING THE FIRST FIVE CENTURIES
Origin of the Sabbath and of the festival of the sun contrasted — Entrance of that festival into the church — The moderns with the ancients — The Sabbath observed by the early Christians — Testimony of Morer — Of Twisse — Of Giesler — Of Mosheim — Of Coleman — Of Bishop Taylor — The Sabbath loses ground before the Sunday festival Several bodies of decided Sabbatarians — Testimony of Brerewood — Constantine’s Sunday law — Sunday a day of labor with the primitive church — Constantine’s edict a heathen law, and himself at that time a heathen — The bishop of Rome authoritatively confers the name of Lord’s day upon Sunday — Heylyn narrates the steps by which Sunday arose to power — A marked change in the history of that institution — Paganism brought into the church — The Sabbath weakened by Constantine’s influence — Remarkable facts concerning Eusebius — The Sabbath recovers strength again — The council of Laodicea pronounces a curse upon the Sabbath-keepers — The progress of apostasy marked — Authority of church councils considered — Chrysostom — Jerome — Augustine — Sunday edicts — Testimony of Socrates relative to the Sabbath about the middle of the fifth century — Of Sozomen — Effectual suppression of the Sabbath at the close of the fifth century.
WE now have the origin of the Sabbath and of the festival of Sunday distinctly before us. In the beginning, when God made the world, he gave to man the Sabbath that he might not forget the Creator of all things. When men apostatized from God, Satan turned them to the worship of the sun, and, as a standing memorial of their veneration for that luminary, caused them to dedicate to his honor the first day of the week. When the elements of apostasy had sufficiently matured in the Christian church, this ancient festival stood forth as a rival to the Sabbath of the Lord. The manner in which it obtained a foothold in the Christian church has been already shown; and many facts which have an important bearing upon the struggle between these rival institutions have also been given. We have, in the preceding chapters, given the statements of the most ancient Christian writers respecting the Sabbath and first-day in the early church. As we now trace the history of these two days during the first five centuries of the Christian era, we shall give the statements of modern church historians, covering the same ground with the early Fathers, and shall also quote, in continuation of the ancient writers, the testimonies of the earliest church historians. The reader can thus discover how nearly the ancients and moderns agree. Of the observance of the Sabbath in the early church, Morer speaks as follows: — “The primitive Christians had a great veneration for the Sabbath, and spent the day in devotion and sermons. And it is not to be doubted but they derived this practice from the apostles themselves, as appears by several scriptures to that purpose; who, keeping both that day and the first of the week, gave occasion to the succeeding ages to join them together, and make it one festival, though there was not the same reason for the continuance of the custom as there was to begin it.” A learned English first-day writer of the seventeenth century, William Twisse, D. D., thus states the early history of these two days: — “Yet for some hundred years in the primitive church, not the Lord’s day only, but the seventh day also, was religiously observed, not by Ebion and Cerinthus only, but by pious Christians also, as Baronius writeth, and Gomarus confesseth, and Rivet also, that we are bound in conscience under the gospel, to allow for God’s service a better proportion of time than the Jews did under the law, rather than a worse.” That the observance of the Sabbath was not confined to Jewish converts, the learned Gieseler explicitly testifies: — “While the Jewish Christians of Palestine retained the entire Mosaic law, and consequently the Jewish festivals, the Gentile Christians observed also the Sabbath and the Passover,(1 Corinthians 5:6-8) with reference to the last scenes of Jesus’ life, but without Jewish superstition. In addition to these, Sunday, as the day of Christ’s resurrection, was devoted to religious services.” The statement of Mosheim may be thought to contradict that of Giesler.
He says:— “The seventh day of the week was also observed as a festival, not by the Christians in general, but by such churches only as were principally composed of Jewish converts, nor did the other Christians censure this custom as criminal and unlawful.” It will be observed that Mosheim does not deny that the Jewish converts observed the Sabbath. He denies that this was done by the Gentile Christians. The proof on which he rests this denial is thus stated by him: — “The churches of Bithynia, of which Pliny speaks, in his letter to Trajan, had only one stated day for the celebration of public worship; and that was undoubtedly the first day of the week, or what we call the Lord’s day.” The proposition to be proved is this: The Gentile Christians did not observe the Sabbath. The proof is found in the following fact: The churches of Bithynia assembled on a stated day for the celebration of divine worship. It is seen, therefore, that the conclusion is gratuitous, and wholly unauthorized by the testimony. 6 But this instance shows the dexterity of Mosheim in drawing inferences, and gives us some insight into the kind of evidence which supports some of these sweeping statements in behalf of Sunday. Who can say that this “stated day” was not the very day enjoined in the fourth commandment? Of the Sabbath and first-day in the early ages of the church, Coleman speaks as follows: — “The last day of the week was strictly kept in connection with that of the first clay for a long time after the overthrow of the temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth century the Observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigor and solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued.” 7 This is a most explicit acknowledgment that the Bible Sabbath was long observed by the body of the Christian church. Coleman is a first-day writer, and therefore not likely to state the case too strongly in behalf of the seventh day. He is a modern writer, but we have already proved his statements true by those of the ancients. It is true that Coleman speaks also of the first day of the week, yet his subsequent language shows that it was a long while before this became a sacred day. Thus he says: — “During the early ages of the church, it was never entitled ‘the Sabbath,’ this word being confined to the seventh day of the week, the Jewish Sabbath, which, as we have already said, continued to be observed for several centuries by the converts to Christianity.” This fact is made still clearer by the following language, in which this historian admits Sunday to be nothing but a human ordinance: — “No law or precept appears to have been given by Christ or the apostles, either for the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, or the institution of the Lord’s day, or the substitution of the first for the seventh day of the week.” Coleman does not seem to realize that in making this truthful statement he has directly acknowledged that the ancient Sabbath is still in full force as a divine institution, and that first-day observance is only authorized by the traditions of men the next relates the manner in which this Sunday festival, which had been nourished in the bosom of the church, usurped the place of the Lord’s Sabbath, — a warning to all Christians of the tendency of human institutions, if cherished by the people of God, to destroy those which are divine. Let this important language be carefully pondered. His words are, — “The observance of the Lord’s day was ordered while yet the Sabbath of the Jews was continued; nor was the latter superseded until the former had acquired the same solemnity and importance which belonged, at first, to that great day which God originally ordained and blessed. But in time, after the Lord’s day was fully established, the observance of the Sabbath of the Jews was gradually discontinued, and was finally denounced as heretical.” 10 Thus is seen the result of cherishing this harmless Sunday festival in the church. It asked only toleration at first; but gaining strength by degrees, it gradually undermined the Sabbath of the Lord, and finally denounced its observance as heretical.
Jeremy Taylor, a distinguished bishop of the Church of England, and a man of great erudition, but a decided opponent of Sabbatic obligation, confirms the testimony of Coleman. He affirms that the Sabbath was observed by the Christians of the first three hundred years, but denies that they did this out of respect to the authority of the law of God. But we have shown from the Fathers that those who hallowed the Sabbath did it as an act of obedience to the fourth commandment, and that the decalogue was acknowledged as of perpetual obligation, and as the perfect rule of right. As Bishop Taylor denies that this was their ground of observance, he should have shown some other, which he has not done. He speaks; as follows: — “The Lord’s day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was wholly abrogated, and the Lord’s day was merely an ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because they for almost three hundred years together kept that day which was in that commandment; but they did it also without any opinion of prime obligation, and therefore they did not suppose it moral.” That, such an opinion relative to the obligation of the fourth commandment had gained ground extensively among the leaders of the church, as early at least as the fourth century, and probably in the third, is sufficiently attested by the action of the council of Laodicea, A.D. 364, which anathematized those who should observe the Sabbath, as will be noticed in its place. That this loose view of the morality of the fourth commandment was resisted by many, is shown by the existence of various bodies of steadfast Sabbatarians in that age, whose memory has come down to us; and also by the fact that that council made such a vigorous effort to put down the Sabbath. Coleman has clearly portrayed the gradual depression of the Sabbath, as the first-day festival arose in strength, until Sabbath-keeping became heretical, when, by ecclesiastical authority, the Sabbath was suppressed, and the festival of Sunday became fully established as a new and different institution. The natural consequence of this is seen in the rise of distinct sects, or bodies, who were distinguished for their observance of the seventh day. That they should be denounced as heretical, and falsely charged with many errors, is not surprising, when we consider that their memory has been handed down to us by their opponents, and that Sabbath-keepers in our own time are not infrequently treated in this very manner. The first of these ancient Sabbatarian bodies was the Nazarenes. Of these, Morer testifies that — They “retained the Sabbath; and though they pretended to believe as Christians, yet they practiced as Jews, and so were in reality neither one nor the other.” Dr. Francis White, Lord Bishop of Ely, mentions the Nazarenes as one of the ancient bodies of Sabbath-keepers who were condemned by the church leaders for that heresy; and he classes them with heretics, as Morer has done. 13 Yet the Nazarenes have a peculiar claim to our regard, as being in reality the apostolic church of Jerusalem, and its direct successors. Thus Gibbon testifies: — “The Jewish converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes, that from all the various religions of polytheism enlisted under the banner of Christ. .. The Nazarenes retired from the ruins of Jerusalem to the little town of Pella beyond the Jordan, where that ancient church languished above sixty years in solitude and obscurity.” It is not strange that the church which fled out of Judea at the word of Christ 15 should long retain the Sabbath, as it appears that they did, even as late as the fourth century. Morer mentions another class of Sabbathkeepers in the following language: — “About the same time were the Hypsistarii, who closed with these as to what concerned the Sabbath, yet would by no means accept circumcision as too plain a testimony of ancient bondage. All these were heretics, and so adjudged to be by the Catholic church. Yet their hypocrisy and industry were such as gained them a considerable footing in the Christian world.” 16 The Bishop of Ely names these also as a body of Sabbath-keepers whose heresy was condemned by the church. 17 The learned Joseph Bingham, M.
A., gives the following account of them: — “There was another sect which called themselves Hypsistarians, that is, worshipers of the most high God, whom they worshipped as the Jews only in one person. And they observed their Sabbaths, and used distinction of meats, clean and unclean, though they did not regard circumcision, as Gregory Nazianzen, whose father was one of this sect, gives the account of them.” It must ever be remembered that these people, whom the Catholic church adjudged to be heretics, are not speaking for themselves: their enemies who condemned them have transmitted to posterity all that is known of their history. It would be well if heretics, who meet with little mercy at the hand of ecclesiastical writers, could at least secure the impartial justice of a truthful record.
Another class are thus described by Cox in his elaborate work, entitled, “Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties”: — “In this way [that is, by presenting the testimony of the Bible on the subject] arose the ancient Sabbatarians, a body, it is well known, of very considerable importance in respect both to numbers and influence, during the greater part of the third and the early part of the next century.” The close of the third century witnessed the Sabbath much weakened in its hold upon the church in general, and the festival of Sunday, although possessed of no divine authority, steadily gaining in strength and in sacredness. The following historical testimony from a member of the English Church, Edward Brerewood, professor in Gresham College, London, gives a good general view of the matter, though the author’s anti- Sabbatarian views are mixed with it. He says: — “The ancient Sabbath did remain and was observed together with the celebration of the Lord’s day by the Christians of the East church above three hundred years after our Savior’s death; and besides that, no other day for more hundreds of years than I spake of before, was known in the church by the name of Sabbath but that: let the collection thereof and conclusion of all be this: The Sabbath of the seventh day, as touching the alligations of God’s solemn worship to time, was ceremonial; that Sabbath was religiously observed in the East church three hundred years and more after our Savior’s passion. That church, being the great part of Christendom, and having the apostles’ doctrine and example to instruct them, would have restrained it if it had been deadly.” Such was the case in the Eastern churches at the end of the third century; but in such of the Western churches as sympathized with the church of Rome, the Sabbath had been treated as a fast from the beginning of that century, to express their opposition toward those who observed it according to the commandment.
In the early part of the fourth century, an event occurred which could not have been foreseen, but which threw an immense weight in favor of Sunday into the balances already trembling between the rival institutions, the Sabbath of the Lord and the festival of the sun. This was nothing less than an edict from the throne of the Roman empire in behalf of “the venerable day of the sun.” It was issued by the emperor Constantine in A.D. 321, and is thus expressed: — “Let all the judges and town people, and the occupation of all trades rest on the venerable day of the sun; but let those who are situated in the country, freely and at full liberty attend to the business of agriculture; because it often happens that no other day is so fit for sowing corn and planting vines; lest, the critical moment being let slip, men should lose the commodities granted by Heaven. Given the seventh day of March; Crispus and Constantine being consuls, each of them for the second time.” Of this law, a high authority speaks as follows: — “It was Constantine the Great who first made a law for the proper observance of. Sunday; and who, according to Eusebius, appointed it should be regularly celebrated throughout the Roman empire.
Before him, and even in his time, they observed the Jewish Sabbath, as well as Sunday; both to satisfy the law of Moses, and to imitate the apostles who used to meet together on the first day.
By Constantine’s law, promulgated in 321, it was decreed that for the future the Sunday should be kept as a day of rest in all cities and towns; but he ‘allowed the country people to follow their work.” Another eminent authority thus states the purport of this law: — “Constantine the Great made a law for the whole empire (A.D. 321) that Sunday should be kept as a day of rest in all cities and towns; but he allowed the country people to follow their work on that day.” Thus the fact is placed beyond all dispute that this decree gave full permission to all kinds of agricultural labor. The following testimony of Mosheim is therefore worthy of strict attention: — “The first day of the week, which was the ordinary and stated time for the public assemblies of the Christians, was in consequence of a peculiar law enacted by Constantine, observed with greater solemnity than it had formerly been.” What will the advocates of first-day sacredness say to this? They quote Mosheim respecting Sunday observance in the first century, — which testimony has been carefully examined in this work,25 — and they seem to think that his language in support of first-day sacredness is nearly equal in authority to the language of the New Testament; in fact, they regard it as supplying an important omission in that book. Yet Mosheim states respecting Constantine’s Sunday law, promulgated in the fourth century, — which restrained merchants and mechanics, but allowed all kinds of agricultural labor on that day, — that it caused the day to be “observed with greater solemnity than it had formerly been.” It follows, therefore, on Mosheim’s own showing, that Sunday, during the first three centuries, was not a day of abstinence from labor in the Christian church. On this point, Bishop Taylor thus testifies: — “The primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord’s day, even in the times of persecution, when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none; and therefore, when Constantine the emperor had made an edict against working upon the Lord’s day, yet he excepts and still permitted all agriculture or labors of the husbandman whatsoever.” Morer tells us respecting the first three centuries, that is to say, the period before Constantine, that — “The Lord’s day had no command that it should be sanctified, but it was left to God’s people to pitch on this or that day for the public worship. And being taken up and made a day of meeting for religious exercises, yet for three hundred years there was no law to bind them to it, and for want of such a law, the day was not wholly kept in abstaining from common business; nor did they any longer rest from their ordinary affairs (such was the necessity of those times) than during the divine service.” And Sir Win. Domville says: — “Centuries of the Christian era passed away before the Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine in A.D. 321.” What these able modern writers set forth as to labor on Sunday before the edict of Constantine was promulgated, we have fully proved in the preceding chapters out of the most ancient ecclesiastical writers. That such an edict could not fail to strengthen the current already strongly set in favor of Sunday, and greatly to weaken the influence of the Sabbath, cannot be doubted. Of this fact, an able writer bears witness: — “Very shortly after the period when Constantine issued his edict enjoining the general observance of Sunday throughout the Roman empire, the party that had contended for the observance of the seventh day dwindled into insignificance. The observance of Sunday as a public festival, during which all business, with the exception of rural employments, was intermitted, came to be more and more generally established ever after this time, throughout both the Greek and the Latin churches. There is no evidence, however, that either at this, or at a period much later, the observance was viewed as deriving any obligation from the fourth commandment; it seems to have been regarded as an institution corresponding in nature with Christmas, Good Friday, and other festivals of the church; and as resting with them on the ground of ecclesiastical authority and tradition.” This extraordinary edict of Constantine’s caused Sunday to be observed with greater solemnity than it had Formerly been. Yet we have the most indubitable proof that this law was a heathen enactment; that it was put forth in favor of Sunday as a heathen institution, and not as a Christian festival; and that Constantine himself not only did not possess the character of a Christian, but was at that time in truth a heathen. It is to be observed that Constantine did not designate the day which he commanded men to keep, as Lord’s day, Christian Sabbath, or the day of Christ’s resurrection; nor does he assign any reason for its observance which would indicate that it was a Christian festival. On the contrary, he designates the ancient heathen festival of the sun in language that cannot be mistaken. Dr.
Hessey thus sustains this statement: — “Others have looked at the transaction in a totally different light, and refused to discover in the document, or to suppose in the mind of the enactor, any recognition of the Lord’s day as a matter of divine obligation. They remark, and very truly, that Constantine designates it by its astrological, or heathen title, Dies Solis, and insist that the epithet venerabilis, with which it is introduced, has reference to the rites performed on that day in honor of Hercules, Apollo, and Mithras .” On this important point, Milman, the learned editor of Gibbon, thus testifies: — “The rescript commanding the celebration of the Christian Sabbath, bears no allusion to its peculiar sanctity as a Christian institution.
It is the day of the sun which is to be observed by the general veneration; the courts were to be closed, and the noise and tumult of public business and legal litigation were no longer to violate the repose of the sacred day. But the believer in the new paganism, of which the solar worship was the characteristic, might acquiesce without scruple in the sanctity of the first day of the week.” 31 In a subsequent chapter he adds: — “In fact, as we have before observed, the day of the sun would be willingly hallowed by almost all the pagan world, especially that part which had admitted any tendency toward the Oriental theology.” On the seventh day of March, Constantine published his edict commanding the observance of that ancient festival of the heathen, the venerable day of the sun. On the following day March eighth, 33 he issued a second decree in every respect worthy of its heathen predecessor. 34 The purport of it was this: That if any royal edifice should be struck by lightning, the ancient ceremonies of propitiating the deity should be practiced, and the haruspices were to be consulted to learn the meaning of the awful portent. 35 The haruspices were soothsayers who foretold future events by examining the entrails of beasts slaughtered in sacrifice to the gods! 36 The statute of the seventh of March, enjoining the observance of the venerable day of the sun, and that of the eighth of the same month, commanding the consultation of the haruspices, constitute a noble pair of well-matched heathen edicts. That Constantine himself was a heathen at the time these edicts were issued, is shown not only by the nature of the edicts themselves, but by the fact that his nominal conversion to Christianity is placed by Mosheim two years after his Sunday law, as the following will show: — “After well considering the subject, I have come to the conclusion, that subsequently to the death of Licinius, in the year 323, when Constantine found himself sole emperor, he became an absolute Christian, or one who believes no religion but the Christian to be acceptable to God. He had previously considered the religion of one God as more excellent than the other religions, and believed that Christ ought especially to be worshipped; yet he supposed there were also inferior deities, and that to these some worship might be paid, in the manner of the fathers, without fault or sin.
And who does not know that, in those times, many others also combined the worship of Christ with that of the ancient gods, whom they regarded as the ministers of the supreme God in the government of human and earthly affairs?” 37 As a heathen, Constantine was the worshiper of Apollo, or the sun, a fact that sheds much light upon his edict enjoining men to observe the venerable day of the sun. Thus Gibbon testifies: — “The devotion of Constantine was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the sun, the Apollo of Greek and Roman mythology; and he was pleased to be represented with the symbols of the god of light and poetry The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine; and the credulous multitude were taught to believe that the emperor was permitted to behold with mortal eyes the visible majesty of their tutelar deity. .. The sun was universally celebrated as the invincible guide and protector of Constantine.” His character as a professor of Christianity is described in these words: — “The sincerity of the man, who, in a short period, effected such amazing changes in the religious world, is best known to Him who searches the heart. Certain it is that his subsequent life furnished no evidence of conversion to God. He waded without remorse through seas of blood, and was a most tyrannical prince.” A few words relative to his character as a man will complete our view of his fitness to legislate for the church. This man, when elevated to the highest place of earthly power, caused his eldest son, Crispus, to be privately murdered, lest the fame of the son should eclipse that of the father. In the same ruin was involved his nephew Licinius, “whose rank was his only crime,” and this was Followed by the execution “perhaps of a guilty wife.” Such was the man who elevated Sunday to the throne of the Roman empire; and such the nature of the institution which he thus elevated. A recent English writer says Of Constantine’s Sunday law that it “would seem to have been rather to promote heathen ‘than Christian worship.”
And he shows, in the Following extract, how this heathen emperor became a Christian, and how this heathen statute became a Christian law: — “At aLATER PERIOD, carried away by the current of opinion, he declared himself a convert to the church. Christianity, then, or what he was pleased to call by that name, became the law of the land, and the edict of A.D. 321, being unrevoked, was enforced as a Christian ordinance.” Thus it is seen that a law, enacted in support era heathen institution, after a few years came to be considered a Christian ordinance; and Constantine himself, four years after his Sunday edict, was able to control the church, as represented in the general council of Nicaea, so as to cause the members of that council to establish their annual Festival of the Passover upon Sunday. 42 Paganism had prepared the institution from ancient days, and had now elevated it to supreme power; its work wits accomplished.
We have proved that the Sunday festival in the Christian church had no Sabbatical character before the time of Constantine. We have also shown that heathenism, in the person of Constantine, first gave to Sunday. its Sabbatical character, and, in the very act of doing it, designated it as a heathen, and not as a Christian, festival, thus establishing a heathen Sabbath. It was now the part of popery authoritatively to effect its transformation into a Christian institution, — a work which it was not slow to perform. Sylvester was the bishop of Rome while Constantine was emperor. How faithfully he acted his part in transforming the festival of the sun into Christian institution is seen in that, by his apostolic authority, he changed the name of the day, giving it the imposing title of “LORD’ S DAY.” 43 To Constantine and Sylvester, therefore, the advocates of first-day observance are greatly indebted. The one elevated it as a heathen festival to the throne of the empire, making it a day of rest from most kinds of business; the other changed it into a Christian institution, giving it the dignified appellation of “Lord’s day.” It is not a sufficient reason for denying, that Pope Sylvester, not far from A.D. 325, authoritatively conferred on Sunday the name of Lord’s day, to say that one of the Fathers, as early as A.D. 200, calls the day by that name, and that some seven different writers, between A.D. 200 and A.D. 325, viz., Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Anatolius, Commodianus, Victorinus, and Peter of Alexandria, can be adduced, who give this name to Sunday.
No one of these Fathers ever claims for this title any apostolic authority; and it has been already shown that they could not have believed the day to be the Lord’s day by divine appointment. So far, therefore, is the use of this term by these persons as a name for Sunday from conflicting with the statement that Sylvester, by his apostolic authority, established this name as the rightful title of that day, that it shows the act of Sylvester to be exactly suited to the circumstances of the case. Indeed, Nicephorus asserts that Constantine, who considered himself quite as much the head of the church as was the pope, “directed that the day which the Jews considered the first day of the week, and which the Greeks dedicated to the sun, should be called the Lord’s day.” 44 The circumstances of the case render the statements of Lucius and Nicephorus in the highest degree probable.
They certainly do not indicate that the pope would deem such an act on his part unnecessary.
Take a recent event in papal history as an illustration of this case. Only a few years since, Plus IX. decreed that the virgin Mary was born without sin. This had long been asserted by many distinguished writers in the papal church, but it lacked authority as a dogma of that church until the pope, A.D. 1854, gave it his official sanction. 45 It was the work of Constantine and Sylvester, in the early part of the fourth century to establish the festival of the sun to be a day of rest by the authority of the empire, and to render it a Christian institution by the authority of St.
Peter.
The following from Dr. Heylyn, a distinguished member of the Church of England, is worthy of particular attention. In most forcible language he traces the steps by which the Sunday festival arose to power, contrasting it in this respect with the ancient Sabbath of the Lord; and then, with equal truth and candor, he acknowledges that, as the festival of Sunday was set up by the emperor and the church, the same power can take it down whenever it sees fit: — “Thus do we see upon what grounds the Lord’s day stands;ON CUSTOM FIRST, andVOLUNTARY consecration of it to religious meetings: that custom countenanced by the authority of the church of God, whichTACITLY approved the same; andFINALLY CONFIRMED andRATIFIED BY CHRISTIAN PRINCES throughout their empires. And as the day for rest from labors, and restraint from business upon that day, [it’] received its greatest strength from the supreme magistrate as long as he retained that power which to him belongs; as after from the canons and decrees of councils, the decretals of popes and orders of particular prelates, when the sole managing of ecclesiastical affairs was committed to them. “I hope it was not so with the former Sabbath, which neither took original from custom, that people being not so forward to give God a day; nor required any countenance or authority from the kings of Israel to confirm and ratify it. The Lord had spoke the word, that he would have one clay in seven, precisely the seventh day from the world’s creation, to be a day of rest unto all his people; which said, there was no more to do but gladly to submit and obey his pleasure But thus it was not done in our present business. The Lord’s day had no such command that it should be sanctified, but was left plainly to God’s people to pitch on this, or any other, for the public use. And being taken up amongst them, and made a day of meeting in the congregation for religious exercises; yet for three hundred years there was neither law to bind them to it, nor any rest from labor or from worldly business required upon it. “And when it seemed good unto Christian princes, the nursing fathers of God’s church, to lay restraints upon their people, yet at the first they were not general; but only thus, that certain men in certain places should lay aside their ordinary and daily works, to attend God’s service in the church; those whose employments were most toilsome and most repugnant to the true nature of a Sabbath, being allowed to follow and pursue their labors because most necessary to the commonwealth. “And in the following times, when as the prince and prelate, in their several places endeavored to restrain them from that also, which formerly they had permitted, and interdicted almost all kinds of bodily labor upon that day; it was not brought about without much struggling and an opposition of the people; more than a thousand years being past, after Christ’s ascension, before the Lord’s day had attained that state in which now it standeth..
And being brought into that state, wherein now it stands, it doth not stand so firmly and on such sure grounds, but that those powers which raised it up may take it lower if they please, yea take it quite away as unto the time, and settle it on any other day as to them seems best.” Constantine’s edict marks a signal change in the history of the Sunday festival. Dr. Heylyn testifies: — “Hitherto have we spoken of the Lord’s day as taken up by the common consent of the church; not instituted or established by any text of Scripture, or edict of emperor, or decree of council. .. In that which followeth, we shall find both emperors and councils very frequent in ordering things about this day and the service of it.” After his professed conversion to Christianity, Constantine still further exerted his power in behalf of the venerable day of the sun, now formally transformed into the Lord’s day, by the apostolic authority of the Roman bishop. Heylyn again says: — “So natural a power it is in a Christian prince to order things about religion, that he not only took upon him to command the day, but also to prescribe the service.” The influence of Constantine powerfully contributed to the aid of those church leaders who were intent upon bringing the forms of pagan worship into the Christian church. Gibbon thus places upon record the motives of these men, and the result of their action: — “The most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the superstition of paganism, if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity. The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final conquest of the, Roman empire; but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals.” The body of nominal Christians, which resulted from this strange union of pagan rites with Christian worship, arrogated to itself the title of Catholic church; while the true people of God, who resisted these dangerous innovations, were branded as heretics, and cast out of the church. It is not strange that the Sabbath should lose ground in such a body, in struggling with its rival, the festival of the sun. Indeed, after a brief period, the history of the Sabbath will be found only in the almost obliterated records of those whom the Catholic church cast out and stigmatized as heretics. Of the Sabbath in Constantine’s time, Heylyn says: — “As for the Saturday, that retained its wonted credit in the Eastern churches, little inferior to the Lord’s day, if not plainly equal, not as a Sabbath, think not so; but as a day designed unto sacred meetings.” There is no doubt that, after the great flood of worldliness which entered the church at the time of Constantine’s pretended conversion, and after all that was done by himself and by Sylvester in behalf of Sunday, the observance of the Sabbath became, with many, only a nominal thing. But the action of the council of Laodicea, to which we shall presently refer, proves conclusively that the Sabbath was still observed, not simply as a festival, as Heylyn would have it, but as a day of abstinence from labor, as enjoined in the commandment.
The work of Constantine, however, marks an epoch in the history of the Sabbath and of Sunday. Constantine was hostile to the Sabbath, and his influence told powerfully against it with all those who sought worldly advancement. The historian Eusebius was the special friend and eulogist of Constantine. This fact should not be overlooked in weighing his testimony concerning the Sabbath. He speaks of it as follows: — “They [the patriarchs] did not, therefore, regard circumcision, nor observe the Sabbath, nor do we; neither do we abstain from certain foods, nor regard other injunctions which Moses subsequently delivered to be observed in types and symbols, because such things as these do not belong to Christians.” This testimony shows precisely the views of Constantine and the imperial party relative to the Sabbath. But it does not give the views of Christians as a whole; for we have seen that the Sabbath had been extensively retained up to this point, and we: shall soon have occasion to quote other historians, the contemporaries and successors of Eusebius, who record its continued observance. Constantine exerted a controlling influence in the church, and was determined to “have nothing in common with that most hostile rabble of the Jews.” Happy would it have been had his aversion been directed against the festivals of the heathen, rather than against the Sabbath of the Lord.
Before Constantine’s time, there is no trace of the doctrine of: the change of the Sabbath. On the contrary, we have decisive evidence that Sunday was a day on which ordinary labor was considered lawful and proper. But Constantine, while yet a heathen, commanded that every kind of business excepting agriculture should be laid aside on that day. His law designated the day as a heathen festival, which it actually was. But within four years after its enactment, Constantine had become, not merely a professed convert to the Christian religion, but, in many respects, practically the head of the church, as the course of things at the Council of Nicaea plainly showed. His heathen Sunday law, being unrevoked, was thenceforward enforced in behalf of that day as a Christian festival. This law gave to thin Sunday festival, for the first time, something of a. Sabbatic character. It was now a rest-day from most kinds of business, by the law of the Roman empire. God’s rest-day was thenceforward more in the way than ever before.
But now we come to a fact of remarkable interest. The way having been prepared, as we have just seen, for the doctrine of the change of the Sabbath, and the circumstances of the case demanding its production, it was at this very point brought forward for the first time. Eusebius, the special friend and flatterer of Constantine, was the man who first put forth this doctrine. In his “Commentary on the Psalms” he makes the following statement on Psalm 92, respecting the change of the Sabbath: — “Wherefore as they [the Jews] rejected it [the Sabbath law], the Word [Christ], by the new covenant, TRANSLATED and TRANSFERRED the feast of the Sabbath to the morning light, and gave us the symbol of true rest, viz., the saving Lord’s day, the first [‘day] of the light, in which the Savior of the world, after all his labors among men, obtained the victory over death, and passed the portals of heaven, having achieved a work superior to the sixdays’ creation.” “On this day, which is the first [day] of light and of the true Sun, we assemble, after an interval of six days, and celebrate holy and spiritual Sabbaths, even all nations redeemed by him throughout the world, and do those things according to the spiritual law, which were decreed for the priests to do on the Sabbath.” “And all things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord’s day, as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has a precedence and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath.” Eusebius was under the strongest temptation to please and even to flatter Constantine; for he lived in the sunshine of imperial favor. On one occasion he went so far as to say that the city of Jerusalem, which Constantine had rebuilt, might be the New Jerusalem predicted in the prophecies! 55 But perhaps there was no act of Eusebius that could give Constantine greater pleasure than his publication of such doctrine as this respecting the change of the Sabbath. The emperor had, by the civil law, given to Sunday a Sabbatical character. Though he had done this while yet a heathen, he found it to his interest to maintain this law after he obtained a commanding position in the Catholic church. When, therefore, Eusebius came out and declared that Christ transferred the Sabbath to Sunday, a doctrine never before heard of, and in support of which he had no Scripture to quote, Constantine could not but feel in the highest degree flattered that his own Sabbatical edict pertained to the very day which Christ had ordained to be the Sabbath in place of the seventh. It was a convincing proof that Constantine was divinely called to his high position in the Catholic church, that he should thus exactly identify his work with that of Christ, though he had no knowledge at the time that Christ had done any work of the kind.
As no writer before Eusebius had ever hinted at the doctrine of the change of the Sabbath; and as there is the most convincing proof, as we have shown, that before his time Sunday possessed no Sabbatic character; and as Eusebius does not claim that this doctrine is asserted in the Scriptures, nor in any preceding ecclesiastical writer, it is certain that he was the father of the doctrine. This new doctrine was not put forth without some motive. That motive could not have been to bring forward some neglected passages of the Scriptures; for he does not quote a single text in its support. But the circumstances of the Case plainly reveal the motive. The new doctrine was exactly adapted to the new order of things introduced by Constantine. It was, moreover, peculiarly suited to flatter that emperor’s pride, the very thing which Eusebius was under the strongest temptation to do.
It is remarkable, however, that Eusebius, in the very connection in which he announces this new doctrine, unwittingly exposes its falsity. He first asserts that Christ changed the Sabbath, and then virtually contra-diets it by indicating the real authors of the change. Thus he says: — “All things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord’s day.” The persons here referred to as the authors of this work are the Emperor Constantine, and such bishops as Eusebius, who loved the favor of princes, and Sylvester, the pretended successor of Saint Peter. Two facts refute the assertion of Eusebius that Christ changed the Sabbath: 1. Eusebius, who lived three hundred years after the alleged change, is the first man who mentions such a change; 2. Eusebius testifies that himself and others made this change, which they could not have done had Christ made it at the beginning.
But though the doctrine of the change of the Sabbath was thus announced by Eusebius, it was not seconded by any writer of that age. The doctrine had never been heard of before, and Eusebius had simply his own assertion, but no passage of the Holy Scriptures to offer in its support.
But after Constantine, the Sabbath began to recover strength, at least in the Eastern churches. Prof. Stuart, in speaking of the period from Constantine to the council of Laodicea, A.D. 364, says: — “The practice of it [the keeping of the Sabbath] was continued by Christians who were jealous for the honor of the Mosaic law, and finally became, as we have seen, predominant throughout Christendom. It was supposed at length that the fourth commandment did require the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath (not merely a seventh part of time), and reasoning as Christians of the present day are wont to do, viz., that all which belonged to the ten commandments was immutable and perpetual, the churches in general came gradually to regard the seventh-day Sabbath as altogether sacred.” Prof. Stuart, however, connects with this the statement that Sunday was honored by all parties. But the council of Laodicea struck a heavy blow at this Sabbath-keeping in the Eastern church. Mr. James, in addressing the University of Oxford, bears this witness: — “When the practice of keeping Saturday Sabbaths, which had become so general at the close of this century, was evidently gaining ground in the Eastern church, a decree was passed in the council held at Laodicea [A.D. 364] ‘that members of the church should not rest from work on the Sabbath, like Jews; but should labor on that day, and preferring in honor the Lord’s day, then, if it be in their power, should rest from work as Christians.” This shows conclusively that at that period the observance of the Sabbath according to the commandment was extensive in the Eastern churches. But the Laodicean council not only forbade ‘the observance of the Sabbath, but they even pronounced a curse on those who should obey the fourth commandment! Prynne thus testifies: — “It is certain that Christ himself, his apostles, and the primitive Christians for some good space of time, did constantly observe the seventh-day ‘Sabbath:... the evangelists and St. Luke in the Acts ever styling it the Sabbath-day,... and making mention of its... solemnization by the apostles and other Christians,. .. it being ‘still solemnized by many Christians after the apostles’ times, even till the council of Laodicea [A.D. 364], as ecclesiastical writers and the twenty-ninth canon of that council testify, which runs thus: “Because Christians ought not to Judaize, and to rest in the Sabbath, but to work in that day (which many did refuse at that time to do). But preferring in honor the Lord’s day (there being then a great controversy among Christians which of these two days... should have precedence), if they desired to rest, they should do this as Christians. Wherefore if they shall be found to Judaize, let them be accursed from Christ.’... The seventh-day Sabbath was... solemnized by Christ, the apostles, and primitive Christians, till the Laodicean council did in a manner quite abolish the observation of it. .. The council of Laodicea [A.D. 364]... first settled the observation of the Lord’s day, and prohibited... the keeping of the Jewish Sabbath under an anathema.” The action of this council did not extirpate the Sabbath from the Eastern churches, though it did materially weaken its influence, and cause its observance to become with many only a nominal thing, while it did most effectively enhance the sacredness and the authority of the Sunday festival. That it did not wholly extinguish Sabbath-keeping is thus certified by an old English writer, John Ley: — “From the apostles’ time until the council of Laodicea, which was about the year 364, the holy observation of the Jews’ Sabbath continued, as may be proved, out of many authors; yea, notwithstanding the decree of that council against it.” And Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, about A.D. 272, uses this expostulation: — “With what eyes can you behold the Lord’s day, when you despise the Sabbath? Do you not perceive that they are sisters, and that in slighting the one, you affront the other?” This testimony is valuable in that it marks the progress of apostasy concerning the Sabbath. The Sunday festival entered the church, not as a divine institution, but as a voluntary observance. Even as late as A.D. 200, Tertullian said that it had only tradition and custom in its Support. But in A.D. 372 this human festival had become the sister and equal of that day which God hallowed in the beginning, and solemnly commanded in the moral law. How worthy to be called the sister of the Sabbath the Sunday festival actually was, may’ be judged from what followed. When this selfstyled sister had gained an acknowledged position in the family, she expelled the other, and trampled her in the dust. In our days, the Sunday festival claims to be the ‘very day intended in the fourth commandment.
The following testimonies exhibit the authority of church councils in its true light. Jortin is quoted by Cox as saying: — “In such assemblies, the best and the most moderate men seldom have the ascendant, and they are often led or driven by others who are far inferior to them in good qualities:” The same writer gives us Baxter’s opinion of the famous Westminster Assembly. Baxter says: — “I have lived to see an assembly of ministers, where three or four leading men were so prevalent as to form a confession in the name of the whole party, which had that in it which particular members did disown. And when about a controverted article, one man hath charged me deeply with questioning the words of the church, others, who were at the forming of that article, have laid it all on that same man, the rest being loath to strive much against him; and so it was, he himself was the church whose authority he so much urged.” Such has been the nature of councils in all ages; yet they have ever claimed infallibility, and have largely used that infallibility in the suppression of the Sabbath and the establishment of the festival of Sunday. Of first-day sacredness prior to, and as late as, the time of Chrysostom, Kitto thus testifies: — “Though in later times we find considerable reference to a sort of consecration of the day, it does not seem at any period of the ancient church to have assumed the form of such an observance as some modern religious communities have contended for. Nor do these writers in any instance pretend to allege any divine command, or even apostolic practice in support of it...Chrysostom (A.D. 360) concludes one of his Homilies by dismissing his audience to their respective ordinary occupations.” It was reserved for modern theologians to discover the divine or apostolic authority for Sunday observance. The ancient doctors of the church were unaware that ally such authority existed; and hence they deemed it lawful and proper to engage in usual worldly business on that day, when their religious worship was concluded. Heylyn bears witness concerning St.
Chrysostom that he — “Confessed it to be lawful for a man to look unto his worldly business on the Lord’s day, after the congregation was dismissed.” St. Jerome, a few years after this, at, the opening of the fifth century, in his commendation of the lady Paula, shows his own opinion of Sunday labor. Thus he says: — “Paula, with the women, as soon as they returned home on the Lord’s day, they sat down severally to their work, and made clothes for themselves and others.” Morer justifies this Sunday labor in the following terms: — “If we read they did any work on the Lord’s day, it is to be remembered that this application to their daily tasks was not till their worship was quite over, when they might with innocence enough resume them, because the length of time or the number of hours assigned for piety was not then so well explained as in after ages. The state of the church is vastly different from what it was in those early days. Christians then, for some centuries of years, were under persecution and poverty; and besides their own wants: they had. many of them severe masters, who compelled them to work, and made them bestow less time in spiritual matters titan they otherwise would. In St. Jerome’s age, their condition was better, because Christianity had got into the throne as well as into the empire. Yet for all this, the entire sanctification of the Lord’s day proceeded slowly; and that it was the work of time to bring it to perfection, appears from the several steps the church made in her constitutions, and from the decrees of emperors and other princes, wherein the prohibitions from servile and civil business advanced by degrees from one species to another, till the day had got a considerable figure in the world. Now, therefore, the case being so much altered, the most proper use of citing those old examples, is only, in. point of doctrine, to show that ordinary work, as being a compliance with Providence for the support of natural life, is not sinful even on the Lord’s day, when necessity is loud, and the laws of that church and nation where we live are not against it. This is what the first Christians had to say for themselves, in the works they did on that day. And if those works had been then judged a profanation of the festival, I dare believe, they would have suffered martyrdom rather than been guilty.” The bishop of Ely thus testifies: — “In St. Jerome’s days, and in the very place where he was residing, the devoutest Christians did ordinarily work upon the Lord’s day, when the service of the church was ended.” St. Augustine, the contemporary of Jerome, gives a synopsis of the argument in that age for Sunday observance, in the following words: — “It appears from the sacred Scriptures, that this day was a Solemn one; it was the first day of the age, that is, of the existence of our world; in it the elements of the world were formed; on it the angels were created; on it Christ rose also from the dead; on it the Holy Spirit descended from heaven upon the apostles, as manna had done in the wilderness. For these and other such circumstances the Lord’s day is distinguished; and therefore the holy doctors of the church have decreed that all the glory of the Jewish Sabbath is transferred to it. Let us therefore keep the Lord’s day as the ancients were commanded to do the Sabbath.” It is to be observed that Augustine does not assign among his reasons for first-day observance, the change of the Sabbath by Christ or his apostles, or that the apostles observed that day, or that John had given it the name of “Lord’s day.” These modern first-day arguments were unknown to Augustine. He gave the credit of the work, not to Christ or his inspired apostles, but to the holy doctors of the church, who, of their own accord, had transferred the glory of the ancient Sabbath to the venerable day of the sun. In the fifth century, the first day of the week was considered the most proper day for giving holy orders; that is, for ordinations; and about the middle of this century, says Heylyn, — “A law [was] made by Leo, then pope of Rome, and generally since taken up in the Western church, that they should be conferred upon no day else.” 72 According to Dr. Justin Edwards, this same pope made also this decree in behalf of Sunday: — “WE ORDAIN, according to the true meaning of the Holy Ghost, and of the apostles as thereby directed, that on the sacred day wherein our own integrity was restored, all do rest and cease from labor.” Soon after this edict of the pope, the Emperor Leo, A. D 469, put forth the following decree: — “It is our will and pleasure, that the: holy days dedicated to the most high God, should not be spent in sensual recreations, or otherwise profaned by suits of law, especially the Lord’s day, which we decree to be a venerable day, and therefore free it of all citations, executions, pleadings, and the like avocations. Let not the circus or theater be opened, nor combating with wild beasts be seen on it...If any will presume to offend in the premises, if he be a military man, let him lose his commission; or if other, let his estate or goods be confiscated.” And this emperor determined to mend the breach in Constantine’s law, and thus prohibit agriculture on Sunday; so he adds: — “We command, therefore, all, as well husbandmen as others, to forbear work on this day of our restoration.” The holy doctors of the church had by this time very effectually despoiled the Sabbath of its glory, transferring it to the Lord’s day of Pope Sylvester, as Augustine testifies; yet was not Sabbatical observance wholly extinguished even in the Catholic church. The historian Socrates, who wrote about the middle of the fifth century, says: — “For although almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, refuse to do this. The Egyptians in the neighborhood of Alexandria, and the inhabitants of Thebais, hold their religious meetings on the Sabbath, but do not participate of the mysteries in the manner usual among Christians in general; for, after having eaten and satisfied themselves with food of all kinds, in the evening, making their oblations, they partake of the mysteries.” As the church of Rome had turned the Sabbath into a fast some two hundred years before this, in order to oppose its observance, it is probable that this was the ancient tradition referred to by’ Socrates. And Sozomen, the contemporary of Socrates, speaks on the same point as follows: — “The people of Constantinople, and of several other cities, assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the next day; which custom is never observed at ‘Rome, or at Alexandria. There are several cities and villages in Egypt, where, contrary to the usages established elsewhere, the people meet together on Sabbath evenings; and although they had dined previously, partake of the mysteries.” On the statement of these historians, Cox remarks: — “It was their practice to Sabbatize on Saturday, and to celebrate Sunday as a day of rejoicing and festivity. While, however, in some places a respect was thus generally paid to both of these days, the Judaizing practice of observing Saturday was by the leading churches expressly condemned, and all the doctrines connected with it steadfastly resisted.” The time has now come, when, as stated by Coleman, the observance of the Sabbath was deemed heretical; and the close of the fifth century witnessed its effectual suppression in the great body of the Catholic church.
SUNDAY DURING THE DARK AGES
The pope becomes the head of all the churches — The people of God retire into the wilderness — Sunday to be traced through the Dark Ages in the history of the Catholic church — State of that festival in the sixth century — It did not acquire the title of Sabbath for many ages — Time when it became a day of abstinence from labor in the East — When in the West — Sunday canon of the first council of Orleans — Of the council of Arragon — Of the third council of Orleans — Of a council at Mascon — At Narbon — At Auxerre — Miracles establishing the sacredness of Sunday — The pope advises men to atone, by the pious observance of Sunday, for the sins of the previous week — The Sabbath and Sunday both strictly kept by a class at Rome, who were put down by the pope — According to Twisse, they were two distinct classes — The Sabbath, like its Lord, crucified between two thieves — Council of Chalons — Council at Toledo, in which the Jews were forbidden to keep the |
