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 of 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, ἡ μὲν κυρίως εἶυαι σάββατου,], properly the Sabbath, and the seventh a day of work.
6. By the latter must be understood the day last mentioned, which he says should be called, not the seventh, but the sixth; and by the seventh must certainly be intended that day which he says is not the eighth, but the seventh, that is to say, Sunday.
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 anti-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 Judæus, 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.[691] 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.”[692]
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 to 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 had 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 dissentients may either yield, or else indulge their opinion without offense to others.”[693]
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.