Victorinus--Peter--Methodius--Lactantius--Poem on Genesis--Conclusion.
TESTIMONY OF VICTORINUS, BISHOP OF PETAU.
This person wrote about A. D. 300. His bishopric was in Germany. Of his
work on the "Creation of the World," only a fragment is now preserved.
In the first section he speaks thus of the sanctification of the
seventh day:--
"God produced that entire mass for the adornment of his majesty in
six days; on the seventh to which he consecrated it [some words
are here lost out of the text] with a blessing. For this reason,
therefore, because in the septenary number of days both heavenly
and earthly things are ordered, in place of the beginning. I will
consider of this seventh day after the principle of all matters
pertaining to the number seven."
Victorinus, like some other of the fathers, held that the "true and
just Sabbath should be observed in the seventh millenary." He believed
that the Sabbath was abolished by the Saviour. He was in sympathy with
the act of the church of Rome in turning the Sabbath into a fast. He
held to a two days' weekly fast, as his words necessarily imply. He
would have men fast on the sixth day to commemorate Christ's death,
and on the seventh, lest they should seem to keep the Sabbath with the
Jews, but on the so-called Lord's day they were to go forth to their
bread with giving of thanks. Thus he reasons:--
"On this day [the sixth] also, on account of the passion of the
Lord Jesus Christ, we make either a station to God, or a fast. On
the seventh day he rested from all his works, and blessed it, and
sanctified it. On the former day [the sixth] we are accustomed to
fast rigorously, that on the Lord's day we may go forth to our
bread with giving of thanks. And let the _parasceve_ [the sixth
day] become a rigorous fast, lest we should appear to observe
any Sabbath with the Jews, which Christ himself, the Lord of the
Sabbath, says by his prophet that 'his soul hateth;' which Sabbath
he in his body abolished, although, however, he had formerly
himself commanded Moses that circumcision should not pass over the
eighth day, which day very frequently happens on the Sabbath, as we
read written in the gospel. Moses, foreseeing the hardness of that
people, on the Sabbath raised up his hands, therefore, and thus
fastened himself to a cross. And in the battle they were sought
for by the foreigners on the Sabbath day, that they might be taken
captive, and, as if by the very strictness of the law, might be
fashioned to the avoidance of its teachings." Section 4.
These statements are in general of little consequence, but some of
them deserve notice. First, we have one of the grand elements which
contributed to the abandonment of the Sabbath of the Lord, viz., hatred
toward the Jews for their conduct toward Christ. Those who acted
thus forgot that Christ himself was the Lord of the Sabbath, and that
it was his institution and not that of the Jews to which they were
doing despite. Secondly, it was the church of Rome that turned the
Sabbath into a fast one hundred years before this, in order to suppress
its observance, and Victorinus was acting under its instructions.
Thirdly, we have a reference to the so-called Lord's day, as a day of
thanksgiving, but no connection between it and the Sabbath is indicated
for in his time the change of the Sabbath had not been thought of. He
has other reasons for neglecting the seventh day which here follow:--
"And thus in the sixth psalm for the eighth day, David asks the
Lord that he would not rebuke him in his anger, nor judge him
in his fury; for this is indeed the eighth day of that future
judgment, which will pass beyond the order of the sevenfold
arrangement. Jesus also, the son of Nave, the successor of
Moses, himself broke the Sabbath day; for on the Sabbath day he
commanded the children of Israel to go round the walls of the city
of Jericho with trumpets, and declare war against the aliens.
Matthias also, prince of Judah, broke the Sabbath; for he slew the
prefect of Antiochus the king of Syria on the Sabbath, and subdued
the foreigners by pursuing them. And in Matthew we read, that it
is written Isaiah also and the rest of his colleagues broke the
Sabbath--that that true and just Sabbath should be observed in the
seventh millenary of years. Wherefore to those seven days the Lord
attributed to each a thousand years; for thus went the warning: 'In
mine eyes, 0 Lord, a thousand years are as one day.' Therefore in
the eyes of the Lord each thousand of years is ordained, for I find
that the Lord's eyes are seven. Wherefore, as I have narrated, that
true Sabbath will be in the seventh millenary of years, when Christ
with his elect shall reign." Section 5.
This completes the testimony of Victorinus. He evidently held that
the Sabbath originated at the sanctification of the seventh day, but
for the reasons here given, the most of which are trivial, and all of
which are false, he held that it was abolished by Christ. His argument
from the sixth psalm, and from Isaiah's violation of the Sabbath, is
something extraordinary. He had an excellent opportunity to say that
though the seventh-day Sabbath was abolished, yet we have the Christian
Sabbath, or the Lord's day, to take its place. But he shows positively
that he knew of no such institution; for he says, "That true and just
Sabbath" will be "in the seventh millenary of years."
TESTIMONY OF PETER, BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA.
This father wrote about A. D. 306. In his "Canon 15" he thus sets forth
the celebration of the fourth, the sixth, and the first days of the
week:--
"No one shall find fault with us for observing the fourth day of
the week, and the preparation [the sixth day], on which it is
reasonably enjoined us to fast according to the tradition. On the
fourth day, indeed, because on it the Jews took counsel for the
betrayal of the Lord; and on the sixth, because on it he himself
suffered for us. 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."
On this Balsamon, an ancient writer whose commentary is appended
to this canon, remarks that this canon is in harmony with the 64th
apostolical canon, which declares "that we are not to fast on the
Sabbath, with one exception, the great Sabbath [the one connected with
the passover], and to the 69th canon, which severely punishes those
who do not fast in the Holy Lent, and on every fourth day of the week
and day of preparation." So it appears that they were commanded by the
canons to fast on the fourth and sixth days of the week, and forbidden
to do this on the Sabbath and first-day.
Zonaras, another ancient commentator upon the canons of Peter, gives us
the authority upon which these observances rest. No one of these three
days is honored by God's commandment. Zonaras mentions the fasts on the
fourth and sixth days, and says no one will find fault with these. But
he deems it proper to mark Peter's reason for the Lord's-day festival,
and the nature of that festival. Thus he says:--
"But on the Lord's day we ought not to fast, for it is a day of
joy for the resurrection of the Lord, and on it, says he, we
have received that we ought not even to bow the knee. This word,
therefore, is to be carefully observed, 'we have received' and 'it
is enjoined upon us according to the tradition.' For from hence
it is evident that long-established custom was taken for law.
Moreover, the great Basil annexes also the causes for which it was
forbidden to bend the knee on the Lord's day, and from the passover
to Pentecost."
The honors which were conferred upon this so-called Lord's day are
specified. They are two in number. 1. It was "a day of joy," and
therefore not a day of fasting. 2. On it they "ought not even to bow
the knee." This last honor however applied to the entire period of
fifty days between the passover and the Pentecost as well as to each
Sunday in the year. So that the first honor was the only one which
belonged to Sunday exclusively. That honor excluded fasting, but it is
never said to exclude labor, or to render it sinful. And the authority
for these two first-day honors is frankly given. It is not the words
of holy Scripture nor the commandment of God, but "it is enjoined
upon us according to the tradition. For from hence it is evident that
long-established custom was taken for law." Such is the testimony of
men who knew the facts. In our days men dare not thus acknowledge them,
and therefore they assert that the fourth commandment has been changed
by divine authority, and that it is sinful to labor upon the first day
of the week.
TESTIMONY OF METHODIUS, BISHOP OF TYRE.
This father wrote about A. D. 308, and suffered martyrdom in A. D. 312.
A considerable portion of his writings have come down to our time,
but in them all I find not one mention of the first day of the week.
He held to the perpetuity of the ten commandments, for he says of the
beast with ten horns:--
"Moreover, the ten horns and stings which he is said to have upon
his heads are the ten opposites, O virgins, to the decalogue, by
which he was accustomed to gore and cast down the souls of many,
imagining and contriving things in opposition to the law, 'Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God,' and to the other precepts which
follow."--_Banquet of the Ten Virgins_, Discourse viii. chap. xiii.
In commenting on the feast of tabernacles (Lev. 23:39-43) he says:--
"These things being like air and phantom shadows, foretell the
resurrection and the putting up of our tabernacle that had fallen
upon the earth, which at length, in the seventh thousand of years,
resuming again immortal, we shall celebrate the great feast of true
tabernacles in the new and indissoluble creation, the fruits of
the earth having been gathered in, and men no longer begetting and
begotten, but God resting from the works of creation." Discourse
ix. chap. i.
Methodius understood the six days of creation, and the seventh day
sanctified by the Creator, to teach that at the end of 6000 years the
great day of joy shall come to the saints of God:--
"For since in six days God made the heaven and the earth, and
finished the whole world, and rested on the seventh day from all
his works which he had made, and blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, so by a figure in the seventh month, when the fruits
of the earth have been gathered in, we are commanded to keep the
feast to the Lord, which signifies that, when this world shall
be terminated at the seventh thousand years, when God shall have
completed the world, he shall rejoice in us." Discourse ix. chap.
i. sect. 4.
In the fifth chapter of this discourse he speaks of the day of Judgment
as "the millennium of rest, which is called the seventh day, even the
true Sabbath." He believed that each day of the first seven represented
one thousand years, and so the true Sabbath of the Lord sets forth the
final triumph of the saints in the seventh period of a thousand years.
And in his work "On Things Created," section 9, he refers to this
representation of one day as a thousand years, and quotes in proof of
it Ps. 90:2, 4. Then he says:--
"For when a thousand years are reckoned as one day in the sight of
God, and from the creation of the world to his rest is six days, so
also to our time, six days are defined, as those say who are clever
arithmeticians. Therefore, they say that an age of six thousand
years extends from Adam to our time. For they say that the Judgment
will come on the seventh day, that is, in the seventh thousand
years."
The only weekly Sabbath known to Methodius was the ancient seventh
day sanctified by God in Eden. He does not intimate that this
divine institution has been abolished; and what he says of the ten
commandments implies the reverse of that, and he certainly makes no
allusion to the festival of Sunday, which on the authority of "custom"
and "tradition" had been by so many elevated above the Sabbath of the
Lord.
TESTIMONY OF LACTANTIUS.
Lactantius was born in the latter half of the third century, was
converted about A. D. 315, and died at Treves about A. D. 325. He
was very eminent as a teacher of rhetoric, and was intrusted with
the education of Crispus, the son of Constantine. The writings of
Lactantius are quite extensive; they contain, however, no reference to
the first day of the week. Of the Sabbath he speaks twice. In the first
instance he says that one reason alleged by the Jews for rejecting
Christ was,
"That he destroyed the obligation of the law given by Moses; that
is, that he did not rest on the Sabbath, but labored for the good
of men," etc.--_Divine Institutes_, b. iv. chap. xvii.
It is not clear whether Lactantius believed that Christ violated the
Sabbath, nor whether he did away with the moral law while teaching
the abrogation of the ceremonial code. But he bears a most decisive
testimony to 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), and CONSECRATED 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." Book vii. chap. xiv.
It is certain that Lactantius did not regard the Sabbath as the
memorial of the flight out of Egypt, but as that of the creation of the
heavens and the earth. He also believed that the seven days prefigured
the seven thousand years of our earth's history:--
"Therefore, since all the works of God were completed in six days,
the world must continue in its present state through six ages, that
is, six thousand years. For the great day of God is limited by a
circle of a thousand years, as the prophet shows, who says, 'In thy
sight, O Lord, a thousand years are as one day.' And as God labored
during those six days in creating such great works, so his religion
and truth must labor during these six thousand years, while
wickedness prevails and bears rule. And again, since God, having
finished his works, rested the seventh day and blessed it, at the
end of the six thousandth year all wickedness must be abolished
from the earth, and righteousness reign for a thousand years and
there must be tranquility and rest from the labors which the world
now has long endured." Book vii. chap. xiv.
Thus much for Lactantius. He could not have believed in first-day
sacredness, and there is no clear evidence that he held to the
abrogation of the Sabbath. Finally we come to a poem on Genesis by an
unknown author, but variously attributed to Cyprian, to Victorinus, to
Tertullian, and to later writers.
TESTIMONY OF THE POEM ON GENESIS.
"The seventh came, when God
At his works' end did rest, DECREEING IT
SACRED UNTO THE COMING AGES' JOYS."
Lines 51-53.
Here again 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. And this completes the testimony of the fathers to the time of
Constantine and the Council of Nice.
One thing is everywhere open to the reader's eye as he passes through
these testimonies from the fathers: they lived in what may with
propriety be called the age of apostatizing. The apostasy was not
complete, but it was steadily developing itself. Some of the fathers
had the Sabbath in the dust, and honored as their weekly festival the
day of the sun, though claiming for it no divine authority. Others
recognize the Sabbath as a divine institution which should be honored
by all mankind in memory of the creation, and yet at the same time
they exalt above it the festival of Sunday, which they acknowledge
had nothing but custom and tradition for its support. The end may be
foreseen: in due time the Sunday festival obtained the whole ground for
itself, and the Sabbath was driven out. Several things conspired to
accomplish this result:--
1. The Jews, 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 institution, and to call the Sabbath a Jewish institution
which Christians should not regard.
2. The church of Rome 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.
3. In the Christian church almost from the beginning men voluntarily
honored the fourth, the sixth, and the first days of the week to
commemorate the betrayal, the death, and the resurrection of Christ,
acts of respect in themselves innocent enough.
4. But the first day of the week corresponded to the widely observed
heathen festival of the sun, and it was therefore easy to unite
the honor of Christ with the convenience and worldly advantage of
his people, and to justify the neglect of the ancient Sabbath by
stigmatizing it as a Jewish institution with which Christians should
have no concern.
The _progressive_ character of the work of apostasy with respect to the
Sabbath is incidentally illustrated by what Giesler, the distinguished
historian of the church, says of the Sabbath and first-day in his
record of the first, the second, and the third century. Of the first
century he says:--
"Whilst the Christians of Palestine, who kept the whole Jewish law,
celebrated of course all the Jewish festivals, the heathen converts
observed only the Sabbath, and, in remembrance of the closing
scenes of our Saviour's life, the passover (1 Cor. 5:6-8), though
without the Jewish superstitions, Gal. 4:10; Col. 2:16. Besides
these the Sunday as the day of our Saviour's resurrection (Acts
20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10), #hê kyriakê hêmera#, was
devoted to religious worship."--_Giesler's Ecclesiastical History_,
vol. i. sect. 29, edition 1836.
Sunday having obtained a foothold, see how the case stands in the
second century. Here are the words of Giesler again:--
"Both Sunday and the Sabbath were observed as festivals; the
latter however without the Jewish superstitions therewith
connected."--_Id._ vol. i. sect. 52.
This time, as Giesler presents the case, Sunday has begun to get the
precedence. But when he gives the events of the third century he drops
the Sabbath from his record and gives the whole ground to the Sunday
and the yearly festivals of the church. Thus he says:--
"In Origen's time the Christians had no general festivals,
excepting the Sunday, the Parasceve (or preparation), the passover,
and the feast of Pentecost. Soon after, however, the Christians in
Egypt began to observe the festival of the Epiphany, on the sixth
of January."--_Id._ vol. i. sect. 70.
These three statements of Giesler, relating as they do to the first,
second, and third centuries, are peculiarly calculated to mark the
progress of the work of apostasy. Coleman tersely states this work in
these words:--
"The observance of the Lord's day was ordered while 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."--_Ancient Christianity Exemplified_, chap. xxvi. sect.
2.
We have traced the work of apostasy in the church of Christ, and have
noted the combination of circumstances which contributed to suppress
the Sabbath, and to elevate the first day of the week. And now we
conclude this series of testimonies out of the fathers by stating the
well-known but remarkable fact, that at the very point to which we
are brought by these testimonies, the emperor Constantine while yet,
according to Mosheim, a heathen, put forth the following edict, A. D.
321, concerning the ancient Sunday festival:--
"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."
By the act of a wicked man the heathen festival of Sunday has now
ascended the throne of the Roman Empire. We cannot here follow its
history through the long ages of papal darkness and apostasy. But as we
close, we cite the words of Mosheim respecting this law as a positive
proof that up to this time, as shown from the fathers, Sunday had been
a day of ordinary labor when men were not engaged in worship. He says
of it:--
"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_."--Mosheim, century 4, part
ii. chap. iv. sect. 5.
This law restrained merchants and mechanics, but did not hinder the
farmer in his work. Yet it caused the day to be observed with greater
solemnity than formerly it had been. These words are spoken with
reference to Christians, and prove that in Mosheim's judgment, as a
historian, Sunday was a day on which ordinary labor was customary and
lawful with them prior to A. D. 321, as the record of the fathers
indicates, and as many historians testify.
But even after this the Sabbath once more rallied, and became strong
even in the so-called Catholic church, until the Council of Laodicea A.
D. 364 prohibited its observance under a grievous curse. Thenceforward
its history is principally to be traced in the records of those bodies
which the Catholic church has anathematized as heretics.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Those who compose this class are unanimous in the view that the
Sunday festival was established by the church; and they all agree in
making it their day of worship, but not for the same reason; for, while
one part of them devoutly accept the institution as the Lord's day
on the authority of the church, the other part make it their day for
worship simply because it is the most convenient day.
[B] Such is the exact nature of the covenant mentioned in Ex. 24:8;
and Paul, in Heb. 9:18-20, quotes this passage, calling the covenant
therein mentioned "the first testament," or covenant.
[C] The case of Origen is a partial exception. Not all his works
have been accessible to the writer, but sufficient of them have been
examined to lay before the reader a just representation of his doctrine.
[D] We notice that one first-day writer is so determined that Clement
shall testify in behalf of Sunday, that he deliberately changes his
words. Instead of giving his words as they are, thus: "the _latter_,
properly the Sabbath," in which case, as the connection shows, Saturday
is the day intended, he gives them thus: "The _eighth_, properly
the Sabbath," thereby making him call Sunday the Sabbath. This is a
remarkable fraud, but it shows that the words as written by Clement
could not be made to uphold Sunday. See "The Lord's Day," by Rev. G. H.
Jenks, p. 50.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Greek transliterations are surrounded by pound signs: #hebdomas#.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.