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| The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.
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Chapter
XIII.672
| 672 Comp. The
Apology, c. xvi. | —The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met
by a Retort.
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 towards the east, 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
worshipping 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,673
in preference to the
preceding day674
as the most suitable
in the week675
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. For the Jewish feasts on the Sabbath and “the
Purification,”676
| 676 On the “Cœna
pura,” see our Anti-Marcion, p. 386, note
4. | and Jewish also are
the ceremonies of the lamps,677
and the fasts of
unleavened bread, and the “littoral prayers,”678
| 678 Tertullian, in his
tract de Jejun. xvi., speaks of the Jews praying (after the loss
of their temple, and in their dispersion) in the open air,
“per omne litus.” | all which institutions and practices are of
course foreign from your gods. Wherefore, that I may return from this
digression, you who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider
your proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days
of rest.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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