book v. chap. 23, 24; Paris ed., 1678, pp. 155, 156.) It will be

remarked here that while there was diversity of view in regard to the _yearly_ celebration of the Lord’s resurrection—a celebration of which we have no account whatever until the year 160, there was no question concerning the sacred observance of the first day as the _weekly_ commemoration of the Lord’s rising from the dead.

“We simply add a reference to one of the best known of the fragments of Irenæus in which there is further explicit testimony to the Lord’s day—testimony all the more important, because it occurs incidentally in a treatise concerning the passover, and in connection with a statement in regard to Pentecost.” (_Fragmentum lib. de Pascha_, Bened. ed., Paris, 1742, p. 490.[12])

For the sake of presenting a complete view of the testimony of the fathers for the first three centuries, we had thought of quoting from Clement of Alexandria, A. D. 194; Minucius Felix, 210; Commodian, about 270; Victorinus, 290; and Peter, bishop of Alexandria, 300. But as the testimony will be perfectly conclusive without these witnessess, and as space is valuable, we shall cite only three more authorities—three well-known fathers, Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian.

At the close of the second century, Carthage, the metropolis of Northern Africa, was the center of numerous flourishing Christian congregations. Living in Carthage for many years, Tertullian knew well the practice of the African churches. And although he became, about 202, one of the errorists known as Montanists, his testimony, however unreliable as to doctrines, is still indisputable as to facts. From the frequent references to the Lord’s day in this author we select the following: “By us, to whom the [Jewish] Sabbaths are strange, and the new moons and festivals once pleasing to God, the Saturnalia, January, and mid-winter feasts, and Matronalia [of the heathen] are frequented. O better fidelity of the heathen to their own religion! They would not share with us the Lord’s day, nor Pentecost, even if they knew them, for they would fear lest they should seem to be Christians.” (_De Idolatria_, cap. xiv, Semler’s edit., Halæ Magdeburg, vol. iv., pp., 167, 168.) The testimony of this passage is decisive in three points: (1.) The Jewish, or seventh-day, Sabbath was not observed by Christians. (2.) They were enjoined not to observe heathen festivals. (3.) To the Lord’s day, as the proper day for Christian service, belonged the honor to which Jewish and heathen days had no claim.

The exercises of the Lord’s day, when Christians assembled for public service, are described by Tertullian in a manner very similar to that of Justin Martyr, whose account has already been quoted. Prayer, reading the Scriptures, exhortation, and collections for benevolent purposes are all mentioned. (_Apol._, cap. xxxix, vol. v., pp. 92-94.) It is to be noted that Tertullian, like Justin Martyr, in addressing the heathen, calls the first day of the week “the day of the Sun,” as he also designates the Jewish Sabbath by its heathen name. (See _Apol._, cap. xvi.)

We close these citations from Tertullian, with one which is of the greatest importance in proving that the early Christians observed the first day of the week, not as a mere holiday, but as a day of rest and worship—a holy Sabbath to the Lord. “On the Lord’s day, the day of the Resurrection, we should not only abstain from that,[13] [bending the knee,] but also from all anxiety of feeling, and from employments, setting aside all business, lest we should give place to the devil.” (_De Oratione_, cap. xxiii., vol. iv., p. 22.)

Contemporary with Tertullian at the beginning of the third century was Origen of Alexandria, one of the most scholarly and learned of all the early fathers. This writer contrasts the Lord’s day with the Jewish Sabbath, and shows the superiority of the former. We may not agree with him when he maintains that the superiority was indicated by the giving of manna to the Israelites on the first day of the week, while it was withheld on the seventh. His testimony to the fact of the sacred observance of the Lord’s day instead of the seventh-day Sabbath is valid, though his reasons for the admitted superiority may not all be satisfactory. In the same connection he remarks: “On our Lord’s day the Lord always rains manna from heaven.” (_Comment on Exodus_, Delarue’s ed. of Works of Origen, Paris, 1733, vol. ii., p. 154.) In another of his works he contends that it is one of the evidences of a true Christian “always to keep the Lord’s day.” (_Contra Celsum_ lib. viii, vol. i., pp. 758, 759.)

The most important passage in the writings of Origen is found in his Homilies on the Book of Numbers. Here we first meet with the name “Christian Sabbath” for the first day of the week, or the Lord’s day: “Leaving, then, the Jewish observance of the Sabbath, let us see what the observance of the Sabbath by the Christian ought to be. On the Sabbath should be performed no worldly acts. If, therefore, you desist from all secular works, and do nothing of a worldly nature, but occupy yourselves with spiritual duties, assembling at the church, listening to the sacred readings mad instructions, thinking of celestial things, concerned for the hopes of another life, keeping before your eyes the Judgment to come, and looking not at the things which are present and visible, but at those which are invisible and future—this is the observance of the Christian Sabbath.” (_Hom. xxiii in Numeros_, vol. ii., p. 358.)

Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, about the third century, gives this explicit testimony to the Lord’s day: “Since in the Jewish circumcision of the flesh the eighth day was celebrated, the ordinance was foreshadowed in the future, but completed in truth at the coming of Christ. For inasmuch as the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, was the day on which the Lord rose and gave us life and spiritual circumcision, this eighth day, that is the first after the Sabbath and the Lord’s day, preceded in an image, which image ceased when the truth afterwards came, and spiritual circumcision was given to us.” (_Epistle_ lxiv., Works of Cyprian, Bremæ, 1690, vol. ii., p. 161) The weight of this testimony is not a little augmented by the fact that the epistle, in which it is found is a synodical epistle, which was sent forth in the name and with the authority of the Third Council of Carthage, A. D. 253. The epistle bears this inscription at its head: “Cyprianus et ceteri Collegæ qui in concilio affuerant numero LXIV. Fido patri Salutem.”

With this authoritative statement of Cyprian and his sixty-six colleagues, or co-presbyters, we close our citations from the fathers. The testimony of succeeding writers is equally clear, but it simply confirms what has already been fully proved. And now, with the facts of history in view, as we have learned them from inspired writers and their immediate successors, it remains for us to examine opposing theories of the institution of the Sabbath. We shall endeavor to dispose of this concluding, and perhaps most interesting part of our subject, in two or three articles.

Footnote 12:

The culpable carelessness of Dwight, Wilson, and other authors, in citing from the early fathers, is nowhere more noticeable than in the case of Irenæus. These writers quote him as saying: “On the Lord’s day, every one of us Christians, keeps the Sabbath, meditating on the law, and rejoicing in the works of God.” There is no reference given to the writings of Irenæus. And for good reason. After a most careful examination, we are persuaded no such passage is to be found in his writings. The mistake was probably first made by President Dwight, whose weakness of sight compelled him to depend upon an amanuensis. “For twenty years of his presidency,” we are informed by his biographer, “he was rarely able to read as much as a single chapter in the Bible in the twenty-four hours.” (_Dwight’s Theology_, London, 1821, vol. i. pp. 91, 95.) Others followed this high authority.

In order to guard our readers against injuring the cause they would advance, we must mention another important instance of considerable negligence. In a number of works on the Sabbath, Dr. Justin Edwards’ “Sabbath Manual,” for example, we find not only the blunders already noticed, but another quite as bad. The language—“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,” is ascribed to Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, about A. D. 162. The words quoted are in reality those of another Theophilus, who was bishop of Alexandria, at the close of the fourth century. We hand over these criticisms upon advocates of the first-day Sabbath to our seventh-day Sabbatarian friends, trusting to their honor and fairness not to separate them from the rest of this discussion. For our own part, whether it may be pleasant to the advocates of the seventh-day Sabbath, we desire to have for ourselves, and to aid others to have, the whole truth. It was in this spirit that we gave room in our columns for a full presentation of the arguments on the other side of this question.

Footnote 13:

As a matter of independent interest and importance, we would ask all who are interested in the question of the posture in prayer of worshipers in the early church, to compare with Tertullian’s statement, that of Peter, bishop of Alexandria, A. D. 300, who says: “We keep the Lord’s day as a day of joy, because of Him who rose on that day, on which we have learned not to bow the knee.” (_Bibl. Patrum, apud Gallard_, vol. iv., p. 107.) To the same effect is the decision of the Council of Nice, A. D. 325, requiring, as there were certain ones who bent the knee on the Lord’s day, that it should be the uniform practice to give thanks to God, standing. (_Canon_, xx.)

A REJOINDER. “PATRISTIC EVIDENCE TO THE FIRST-DAY SABBATH.”

In the rejoinder to the previous article on patristic testimony, the attention of the reader was called to the fact that our opponent had utterly failed to find a single instance in which the first day of the week was called the Lord’s day, by the authorities which he cited, or in which it was stated by them that it was observed by divine command. Had we possessed the space necessary for the purpose, the significance of this failure would have been enlarged upon; for it must be borne in mind that in the one hundred and thirty-nine years which intervened between the death of Christ and the writing of the latest citation produced in his seventh article, lies the most important, and the most promising, field for such testimonials as would be of the highest value to the opposition. This is so, not only from the fact that the period in question was the one in which it is alleged that the transition from the old to the new Sabbath occurred; but, also, because it was one, which, from their premises, was the most likely to yield reliable evidence in regard to apostolic faith, since it lay the nearest to apostolic times. It is true that even then apostasy had begun its career; for Paul states that, in his time, “the mystery of iniquity had begun to work.”

But all will agree that the farther we come this side of the fountain-head, the more natural it would be to find that the pure waters of the original stream should become steadily darker and more turbid, until they lost themselves in the sloughs of those corrupt teachings, which were so far to excel all others, that they were thought to be of a nature to demand especial attention in the prophecies. But here we are, as already remarked, seventy-five to eighty years this side of the cross, and the case of our reviewer in no-wise helped by his effort. In fact, not only has he failed to place his Sabbath upon the foundation of the successors of the apostles, but he has also greatly weakened his probabilities for the future, since in the territory over which we have passed, we have seen not only the utter unreliability of the fathers themselves, as teachers, but, also, that their sayings have been tampered with by the “man of sin,” who, reaching backward as well as forward, is reckless in his efforts to make everything contribute to the power and authority of the hierarchy.

But we must proceed in the examination of those individuals who are now introduced as additional witnesses for the Christian Sabbath. The first in order is Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, A. D. 178. It will not be necessary to consider the language of the gentleman, in which he states that Irenæus taught the abrogation of the seventh-day Sabbath, since we have not quoted that father in the defense of an institution which _God has commanded_. Nor shall we enlarge upon the fact that Irenæus inculcates the binding obligation of the ten commandments, since it is enough for us to know that this doctrine is plainly set forth in the Bible.

The witness is the gentleman’s. He has brought him forward to prove that, in his time, the year of our Lord 178, the term, Lord’s day, was applied to the Sunday. Has he succeeded, at last, in the achievement of his purpose? If so, it is the first instance in which he has accomplished the desired object. Apparently, he has triumphed here. But let us proceed with caution. Has he produced the writings of Irenæus himself? No, he has not. The words quoted are these: “The mystery of the Lord’s resurrection should be celebrated only on the Lord’s day.” By turning to the Hist. of Eusebius, book v., chap. 23, the reader will find that the language employed does not purport to be that of Irenæus, as penned by himself, but that of Eusebius, who is giving an account of a decree passed by certain bishops, which decree was in harmony with a letter from Irenæus. We quote enough in the 23d chapter to verify our statement:—

“Hence there were synods and convocations of the bishops, on this question; and all unanimously drew up an ecclesiastical decree, which they communicated to all the churches, in all places, that the mystery of our Lord’s resurrection should be celebrated on no other day than the Lord’s day; and that on this day alone we should observe the close of the paschal fasts. There is an epistle extant, even now, of those who were assembled at the time.... There is an epistle extant, on the same question, bearing the name of Victor. An epistle, also, of the bishops of Pontus, among whom Palmas, as the most ancient, presided; also of the churches of Gaul, over whom Irenæus presided, ... and epistles from many others, who, advancing one and the same doctrine, also passed the same vote, and this their unanimous determination was the one already mentioned.”

It will be observed here that the historian does not quote the language of the decree as being the exact language of the bishops; also that he does not pretend to give the precise words of Irenæus, but that he simply recounts the fact that the epistle of Irenæus was in harmony with the decree which he had previously given. This it was legitimate for a historian to do. Eusebius died one hundred and fifty years after Irenæus, and in his time, we frankly admit that the term, Lord’s day, was frequently applied to the first day of the week. The historian, therefore, using the nomenclature of his own period, represents the bishop of Lyons as favoring the celebration of the Passover on the Lord’s day, simply because he had said it ought to be observed on the first day of the week. If we are right in this, then, of course, our opponents will throw up the whole passage as irrelevant to their present purpose—since they have not assumed to employ Eusebius, who lived in the fourth century, as a witness—but have cited his statement because it was supposed to contain the declaration of Irenæus, who lived at a much earlier period.

For the purpose of clinching the argument, and showing that the historic fact is in harmony with what we have said, we quote the following on the point from Eld. J. N. Andrews, in which it will be seen that in the original, the term, first day of the week, and not the Lord’s day, as supposed, might have been employed:—

“Observe ... Eusebius does not quote the words of any of these bishops, but simply gives their decisions in his own language. There is, therefore, no proof that they used the term, Lord’s day, instead of first day of the week; for the introduction to the fiftieth fragment of his lost writings, already quoted, gives an ancient statement of his words in this decision, as plain first day of the week. It is Eusebius who gives us the term, Lord’s day, in recording what was said by these bishops concerning the first day of the week.”

That which has been said above in reference to the testimony found in