gentleman, by saying what he has, has really brought Sabbatarians under
obligation to hint for new light, since what he here asserts is but a
fact with which they have been familiar for years, and which they have
iterated and re-iterated until they have almost despaired of bringing
their opponents to an acknowledgment of the real state of things.
Occasionally, others outside of their ranks have, as does the gentleman,
borne testimony to the accuracy of their statements. If the reader would
have an illustration of this, taken from the writings of an
anti-Sabbatarian author, he will find it in the works of Domville, in
which, substantially, the same conclusions are reached, Mr. Domville not
only tracing the mistake to Dr. Dwight, but also allowing that the
language cited was probably taken from the interpolated epistle of
Ignatius to the Magnesians.
Up to this point, we have carefully examined, one by one, the historic
quotations from ancient writers, which have been presented for our
consideration; henceforth, we shall pursue a different course. As we
have now reached, in the person of Tertullian, the close of the second,
and the opening of the third, century of the Christian era, we find
ourselves in a period when it is so generally acknowledged that the work
of apostasy was so manifest that the utterances of the men of those
times—even though they were pointed and explicit in regard to the
sanctity of the first day of the week, as looked upon by
themselves—could furnish no reliable standard of Christian faith in our
day.
The gentleman himself is compelled to admit that his own witness,
Tertullian, became, in the second year of the third century, an ardent
advocate of the errors, follies, and heresies, of Montanus. Not only so,
but the writings of that father are proverbial, among scholars, for the
fanciful conceits and the false notions which are so conspicuous upon
their pages. Tertullian was a fiery zealot and a bitter partisan,
manifestly credulous beyond bounds, and more earnest for his sect than
anxious for the reliability of the sources of his information. Zell, in
his popular Encyclopedia, speaks of him as follows:—
“After he was past middle age, he embraced the doctrines of Montanus, to
which his ardent, sensuous imagination, and ascetic tendencies would
incline him. He is said to have been determined to that course by the
ill-treatment he received from the Roman clergy. Whether he remained a
Montanist till his death, cannot be decided.... They [his works] are
characterized by vast learning, profound and comprehensive thought,
fiery imagination, and passionate partisanship, leading into
exaggeration and sophistry. His style is frequently obscure.”
Montanus was a false prophet of the second century, who believed himself
to have received, from the Holy Ghost, revelations which were withheld
from the apostles; he denied the doctrine of the trinity, the propriety
of second marriage, and the forgiveness of certain sins. The disciple of
such a man is surely a strange witness to be found in the employ of
orthodoxy. Should his appearance, however, be excused, as it is above,
by the statement that he was introduced, not because of the reliability
of his own opinion, but simply to testify of the usage of his own times;
it may be replied, first, that an ardent partisan, a person of strong
imagination, and a notorious heretic, is hardly qualified to speak
reliably, even in a matter of this nature, since, from the very
constitution of his mind, he would almost of necessity allow what he
said to be warped by prejudice, or biased by conceptions of interest;
secondly, that in the quotation presented from his pen, it is not a
little remarkable that, instead of asserting a general usage of
Sunday-keeping, he is manifestly finding fault with a large class of his
fellow-Christians for not regarding the day in the same light, and
observing it with the same rigor, that he did; thirdly, that it is by no
means impossible that the very men, whom in his fiery zeal he thus
upbraids, were, after all, sounder than himself in the faith, and would,
could they be fairly heard upon this subject, vindicate their supposed
desecration of the first day, from the same grounds as do the
Sabbatarians now, _i. e._, because they did not look upon it as holy
time.
If the above responses are not satisfactory, and if it be insisted that
the testimony of the witness shall, after all, he received, then we
propose that he be called to the stand once more, and be allowed to fill
up the measure of what he has to say upon this subject. We have seen
that, according to his opinion, many of his fellow-disciples were lax in
their Sunday-keeping habits, and that to one who believed that no labor
should be performed upon it, whatever, they treated it very much as men
would treat a mere festival occasion. But where did Tertullian and his
sympathizers obtain their notions of the manner in which Sunday should
be kept? Was it from the Scriptures? We shall see; here is the witness;
let him speak for himself:
“As often as the anniversary comes around, we make offerings for the
dead 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. We feel pained should any wine or bread, 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 leaving positive Scripture injunctions, 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.”—_De Corona_, sects. 3 and 4.
The reader will at once observe that tradition is the foundation which
is here laid for that kind of Sunday observance for which Tertullian was
so great a stickler. Not only so, but the fact is brought to light,
also, that the men whom he represented were in the habit of offering
prayers for the dead; of signing themselves with the sign of the cross;
and going through other ceremonies, which to us, at the present time,
are not only ridiculous in the extreme, but bear upon their face the
impress of the man of sin so unmistakably that none will be deceived.
If Tertullian was indeed a fair specimen of the Christian men of his
time; if his writings have not been tampered with; and if the opinions
of the men of his day, as expressed by himself, should have weight with
us in the decision of religious questions, where shall we stop in our
acceptance of their creeds? If, because they believed with him in the
change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week,
this fact should have weight with us in bringing us to the same
conclusion, independently of Scripture proof, then how can we stop short
of their faith in other particulars? such as the acceptance of tradition
in doctrinal matters, prayers for the dead, the sign of the cross, etc.,
etc. In fact, how can we avoid becoming papists ourselves, in the
largest sense of the term, since, having gone as far as we have for the
purpose of making out Sunday sanctity, we have surrendered nearly all
the distinctive principles of Protestantism?
Of course each individual is at liberty to use his own discretion as to
the measure of confidence which he will give to the writings before us;
so far as we are concerned, personally, we would not attach to them the
slightest weight in the decision of a grave religious question. From the
very nature of that which has been already cited, it is manifestly a
serious slander upon the true church of the second, and the first part
of the third century, to hold them responsible for the fanciful conceits
and destructive errors of this reputed defender of the faith.
Certain it is, that if Tertullian is correctly reported, his writings
are not a safe criterion of the sentiments of the Christians of his age
in very many points, and it may be fairly concluded, that among them is
that concerning the Sabbath, since what he has said of it finds no
warrant in the open Bible, which the men of this day hold in their
hands. Not only is what he has written absurd and dangerous in the
extreme, but his productions are characterized by the most glaring
contradictions. Another has said of him: “It would be wiser for
Christianity, retreating upon its genuine records in the New Testament,
to disclaim this fierce African, than identify itself with his furious,
invectives, by unsatisfactory apologies for their unchristian
fanaticisms.” (Milman, in note on Gibbon’s Dec. and Fall of the Rom.
Emp., chap. xv.)
We leave him, therefore, with his follies and foibles, his errors and
faults, his assertions and contradictions, with those who have a taste
for this kind of literature.
With the case of Origen it will not be necessary that much time should
be consumed. Mr. Mosheim has well remarked of him, that had “the justice
of his judgment been equal to the immensity of his genius, the fervor of
his piety, his indefatigable patience, his extensive erudition, and his
other eminent and superior talents, all encomium must have fallen short
of his merits.” Unfortunately, however, with an erudition which was
truly remarkable, he united a credulity almost without parallel. So
numerous and so grave were the errors of his personal faith, that his
individual opinions, unsupported by facts and arguments, are utterly
worthless in the decision of any theological proposition. Having adopted
the mystical system of interpreting the Scriptures, he reached
conclusions utterly unsound and preposterous in many cases.
That this is so, the orthodox reader will at once perceive, when we
state, first, that he was a believer in the pre-existence of the human
soul, and that souls were condemned to animate mortal bodies, because of
sins committed in a pre-existent state; secondly, that he was a
Restorationist, and believed in the final universal salvation of all
men, after enduring long periods of punishment. Nor does the advocacy of
such sentiments furnish the only difficulty in the way of his testimony,
as drawn from his writings now extant. There would indeed be some
satisfaction derived from the study of these documents, fanciful though
they might appear to be in many respects, if we could only feel assured
that they represented correctly the sentiments of the alleged author.
Unhappily, this is not the case. Those who admire Origen most, while
attributing much in what he is said to have written, to that weakness of
discrimination which is everywhere so manifest in his productions, are
compelled to go beyond this, in order to explain many of the grosser
views therein contained, by admitting that they were not his own, but
that they are the result of fraud and interpolation.
On this point, another, with great candor and friendly charity, when
speaking of the sect known as Origenists, after first stating that “he
was a man of great talents, and a most indefatigable student, but having
a strong attachment to the Platonic philosophy, and a natural turn to
mystical and allegorical interpretations, which led him to corrupt
greatly the simplicity of the gospel, declares that these circumstances
render it very difficult to ascertain exactly what his real sentiments
were.” He says, also, “1. Being a man of unquestionable talents and high
character, his genuine works were interpolated, and others written under
his name, in order to _forge_ his sanction to sentiments of which,
possibly, he never heard.... 3. Origen had many enemies, who probably
attributed to him many things which he did not believe, in order, either
to injure his fame, or bring his character under censure.”—_Encyc. of
Rel. Knowl._, Art. Origenists.
Having said thus much in reference to the testimony before us, it would
be possible to take up the writings of this distinguished father, and
show from them that there is room for a difference of opinion as to
whether he believed that the so-called Christian Sabbath was indeed to
be regarded as of twenty-four hours’ duration, merely, or whether it
covered alike all days of the week, and the whole of our dispensation.
This, however, would be a tedious and unprofitable expenditure of time
and labor. We leave the whole question, therefore, respecting the
teaching of the works of Origen, as one of no significance in this
controversy; first, because if we know anything about what he did
believe, he was wholly unreliable, either as a teacher of sound
doctrine, or as a representative of the better men of his own time; and,
secondly, because what he has written has been so corrupted, that we
have no guarantee that it truthfully expresses what he believed.
As we presume the majority of our readers are not particularly
interested in reference to which posture was assumed in prayer on the
first day of the week, by the early church, and as Peter of Alexandria
and the Council of Nice are quoted solely in reference to “this
independent question,” we shall not discuss the note in which reference
is made to them. There remains, therefore, only the case of Cyprian,
bishop of Carthage, to occupy us longer. What this author says was
written about A. D. 253. It will be observed, that in what is declared
by him and the Council, the first day of the week is called the Lord’s
day; beyond this, his testimony is of no value. It is neither stated
that the title was applied by divine authority, nor is it affirmed that
this day had superseded in Sabbatic honor the ancient Sabbath of the
Lord.
There is, however, in reference to circumcision as something which
prefigured the Lord’s day, or eighth day, enough of mysticism to furnish
us with a clue to the character of the men whose intellectual
perceptions were so fine that they could discover in an institution
which was administered on the eighth day after the birth of the male
child, on whatever day of the week that eighth day might fall, a
prefiguring of the distinction which was to be bestowed on the definite
first day of the week, which had in it, not eight, but only seven, days,
in all. Mr. Mosheim, in alluding to a period in close proximity to that
in which Cyprian lived, mentions it as one in “which the greater part of
the Christian doctors had been engaged in adopting those vain fictions
of Platonic philosophy and popular opinions, which, after the time of
Constantine, were confirmed, enlarged, and embellished in various ways,”
and from which he declares “arose that extravagant veneration for
departed saints, and those absurd notions of a certain fire destined to
purify separate souls, that then prevailed, and of which the public
marks were everywhere to be seen.”—_Eccles. Hist._, Fourth Century, part
ii., chap. iii.
It is now time to take a retrospective view of the territory over which
we have been passing. Be it remembered that the reader was lured from
the contemplation of the Scriptures, with this precious promise, that
outside of them were to be found the most convincing proofs that the
Lord’s day was and had been the proper title of the first day of the
week since the resurrection of Christ; but what have we seen?
Manifestly, not that which we had anticipated:
First, we have discovered that Ignatius, the first witness introduced,
does not mention the Lord’s day at all, but simply speaks of the Lord’s
life.
Secondly, that the epistle of Barnabas was a forgery, made up of the
most absurd and ridiculous fancies, and written by an unknown character
somewhere, perhaps in the second or third century, though purporting to
be the work of the companion of Paul.
Thirdly, that it is becoming more and more a matter of doubt whether
that which is attributed to Justin Martyr was ever seen by him, and that
he not only does not call the Sunday the Lord’s day, but also inculcates
in what he says, the Romish heresy respecting the use of water in
sacrament, &c., &c.
Fourthly, that Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, and Melito, bishop of
Sardis, while indeed they do speak of the Lord’s day, do not furnish any
clue by which we can determine which day they regarded as such.
Fifthly, that Pliny, a heathen writer, employs neither the term Lord’s
day nor Sabbath, but simply speaks of a stated day, without
identification.
Sixthly, that Irenæus is not properly represented as speaking of the
Sunday in the use of the title Lord’s day, since that expression, in
both the instances alluded to, was the language of Eusebius, who lived
in the fourth century, and not of Irenæus, who lived in the second.
Seventhly, that Tertullian, who lived at the close of the second and the
commencement of the third century, and who was a wild fanatic of the
Montanist school, utterly unworthy to represent the sentiments of his
times, is the first witness from whom the gentleman has succeeded in
obtaining an unequivocal application of the term, Lord’s day, to the
first day of the week; also, that he had connected with it, prayers for
the dead, the sign of the cross, &c., &c.
Eighthly, that Origen was a man of great learning; that it was
questionable whether he believed in a septenary Sabbath, or in one that
covered the whole dispensation; and that, in fact, it is admitted by his
friends that his works have become so corrupt as to be utterly
untrustworthy in the matter of deciding respecting his real opinions.
Ninthly, that Cyprian and his colleagues addressed us from a point of
time too far removed from the period of the alleged change of Sabbaths,
and too fully within that of the great apostasy, to be of service in an
exegesis of the Scriptures.
Tenthly, that three of the most pointed and satisfactory of the
testimonies heretofore employed by first-day writers, are now abandoned
as having been the result of mistake in translation, or in the matter of
attributing them to the proper persons. Summing, up, therefore, in a
word we inquire again, What has been gained by this departure? We
believe that all must see that it has been an entire failure; for, so
far as the Sabbath is concerned, we think the reader will hesitate long
before he will leave the Scriptures, in the matter of deciding upon its
obligation, in order to build the structure of his faith from such
material as we have been handling over.
Also, as to the question of what day John referred to in Rev. 1:10, when
he said, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” he will deliberate
very much before he will decide that it was the first day of the week,
simply because an untrustworthy man, admitted to have been heretical on
many points, called it such 200 years after the birth of Christ, while
Jehovah himself has given to the seventh day that honor, styling it the
“Sabbath of the Lord,” “the holy of the Lord, honorable,” &c., and while
Christ himself has declared in so many words, that he was the Lord of
the Sabbath day. Mark 2:27, 28.
STATESMAN’S REPLY.
ARTICLE NINE.
THEORIES OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
With the facts of history before us concerning sacred time for nearly
three centuries after the resurrection of Christ—facts drawn from the
inspired writers of the New Testament and their immediate successors, we
are prepared to consider the different theories of the Christian
Sabbath. These theories may be summed up in three. Of one or another of
these, all the remaining theories are simply modifications.
The first of these three leading theories is as follows: “The Sabbath
was a Jewish institution, and expired with the Jewish dispensation. The
Lord’s day is not in any proper sense a Sabbath. It has an origin, a
reason, and an obligation, not drawn from the fourth commandment, but
peculiarly its own, as an institution belonging specially to the
New-Testament dispensation.”
The second theory, in the order in which we notice these different
views, maintains that the observance of the Sabbath, as required under
the Old-Testament dispensation, knows no change in any particular. The
observance of the seventh day of the week is essential to the proper
observance of the Sabbath under the gospel dispensation. The observance
of the first day of the week is without divine warrant—a departure from
the law of God through the corruptions which crept into the church.
The third theory agrees with the second in maintaining that the Sabbath
existed from the beginning, and that it has never been abolished or
superseded. It disagrees with the second theory in maintaining that the
essential idea of the law of the Sabbath is not the holiness of a
portion of time, but the _consecration of a specified proportion of
time_, one day in seven; that, in accordance with this, a change of day
was admissible; that a change was actually made by divine warrant from
the resurrection of Christ; and that the first day of the week, the
Lord’s day, is the true Christian Sabbath, having its moral sanction in
the fourth commandment.
By many of those who hold the first of these theories, the Lord’s day is
made a purely ecclesiastical institution, without any other warrant for
its observance than the action of the church, by whose authority and in
whose wisdom, the day is set apart for divine service. By others who
accept the same general theory, apostolic authority in the early church
is admitted to afford a divine warrant for the observance of the day. In
a complete treatise on the Lord’s day, a careful discussion of this
theory would be required. Its want of any sufficient foundation could be
satisfactorily shown by a presentation of the following points: (1.) The
declaration of the Lord of the Sabbath is explicit—“The Sabbath was made
for man.” It was not made for any portion of the human family, but for
the race of mankind. (2.) Thus, from the design of its Lord, and the
very nature of the institution, the Sabbath cannot be limited to any
locality or dispensation. (3.) Accordingly, it was given to man at his
creation. (Gen. 3:3.) (4.) For the same reason, the law of the Sabbath
has its proper place, not among ceremonial, local, or positive
enactments, but among the immutable moral precepts of the decalogue.
(5.) This law is, therefore, of universal and perpetual obligation upon
our race. These points would give room for many articles; but, inasmuch
as on all of them there is entire agreement between our seventh-day
Sabbatarian friends and ourselves, we pass to a consideration of the
second theory, which they accept as correct.
To make good their case, the advocates of the second theory must show
that the seventh day continued to be the Sabbath observed by the church
after the resurrection of Christ, just as before; and that, in the
observance of the first day, a great departure took place from the
original practice of the Christian church. They must not make _bare_
statements, but they must furnish proof. Instead of appealing to the
letter of the law, and insisting that fact must conform to their
interpretation of it, they must accept the facts of history, and put
their interpretations to the test. It is more reasonable to conclude
that an interpretation of law is wrong, than to reject the attested
facts of history, when the interpretation and the facts do not
harmonize.