Origen, A. D. 231, is the third of the ancient writers who call “the eighth day” the Lord’s day. He was the disciple of Clement, the first writer who makes this application. It is not strange, therefore, that he should teach Clement’s doctrine of a perpetual Lord’s day, nor that he should state it even more distinctly than did Clement himself. Origen, having represented Paul as teaching that all days are alike, continues thus:—
“If it be objected to us on this subject that we ourselves are accustomed to observe certain days, as for example the Lord’s day, the Preparation, the Passover, or Pentecost, I have to answer, that to the perfect Christian, who is ever in his thoughts, words, and deeds, serving his natural Lord, God the Word, all his days are the Lord’s, and he is always keeping the Lord’s day.”[457]
This was written some forty years after Clement had propounded his doctrine of the Lord’s day. The imperfect Christian might honor a Lord’s day which stood in the same rank with the Preparation, the Passover, and the Pentecost. But the perfect Christian observed the true Lord’s day, which embraced all the days of his regenerate life. Origen uses the term Lord’s day for two different days. 1. For a natural day, which in his judgment stood in the same rank with the Preparation day, the Passover, and the Pentecost. 2. For a mystical day, as did Clement, which is the entire period of the Christian’s life. The mystical day, in his estimation, was the true Lord’s day. It therefore follows that he did not believe Sunday to be the Lord’s day by apostolic appointment. But, after Origen’s time, Lord’s day becomes a common name for the so-called eighth day. Yet these three men, Clement, Tertullian, and Origen, who first make this application, not only do not claim that this name was given to the day by the apostles, but do plainly indicate that they had no such idea. Offerings for the dead and the use of the sign of the cross are found as near to apostolic times as is the use of Lord’s day as a name for Sunday. The three have a common origin, as shown by Tertullian’s own words. Origen’s views of the Sabbath, and of the Sunday festival, will be noticed hereafter.
Such is the case with the claim of Sunday to the title of Lord’s day. The first instance of its use, if Clement be supposed to refer to Sunday, is not till almost one century after John was in vision upon Patmos. Those who first call it by that name had no idea that it was such by divine or apostolic appointment, as they plainly show. In marked contrast with this is the Catholic festival of the Passover. Though never commanded in the New Testament, it can be traced back to men who say that they had it from the apostles!
Thus the churches of Asia Minor had the festival from Polycarp who, as Eusebius states the claim of Polycarp, had “observed it with John the disciple of our Lord, and the rest of the apostles with whom he associated.”[458] Socrates says of them that they maintain that this observance “was delivered to them by the apostle John.”[459] Anatolius says of these Asiatic Christians that they received “the rule from an unimpeachable authority, to wit, the evangelist John.”[460]
Nor was this all. The western churches also, with the church of Rome at their head, were strenuous observers of the Passover festival. They also traced the festival to the apostles. Thus Socrates says of them: “The Romans and those in the western parts assure us that their usage originated with the apostles Peter and Paul.”[461] But he says these parties cannot prove this by written testimony. Sozomen says of the Romans, with respect to the Passover festival, that they “have never deviated from their original usage in this particular; the custom having been handed down to them by the holy apostles Peter and Paul.”[462]
If the Sunday-Lord’s day could be traced to a man who claimed to have celebrated it with John and other of the apostles, how confidently would this be cited as proving positively that it is an apostolic institution! And yet this can be done in the case of the Passover festival! Nevertheless, a single fact in the case of this very festival is sufficient to teach us the folly of trusting in tradition. Polycarp claimed that John and other of the apostles taught him to observe the festival on the fourteenth day of the first month, whatever day of the week it might be; while the elders of the Roman church asserted that Peter and Paul taught them that it must be observed on the Sunday following Good Friday![463]
The Lord’s day of the Catholic church can be traced no nearer to John than A. D. 194, or perhaps in strict truth to A. D. 200, and those who then use the name show plainly that they did not believe it to be the Lord’s day by apostolic appointment. To hide these fatal facts by seeming to trace the title back to Ignatius the disciple of John, and thus to identify Sunday with the Lord’s day of that apostle, a series of remarkable frauds has been committed which we have had occasion to examine. But even could the Sunday-Lord’s day be traced to Ignatius, the disciple of John, it would then come no nearer being an apostolic institution than does the Catholic festival of the Passover, which can be traced to Polycarp, another of John’s disciples, who claimed to have received it from John himself!
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FIRST WITNESSES FOR SUNDAY.
Origin of Sunday observance the subject of present inquiry—Contradictory statements of Mosheim and Neander—The question between them stated, and the true data for deciding that question—The New Testament furnishes no support for Mosheim’s statement—Epistle of Barnabas a forgery—The testimony of Pliny determines nothing in the case—The epistle of Ignatius probably spurious, and certainly interpolated so far as it is made to sustain Sunday—Decision of the question.