“For in respect of the observance of the eighth day in the Jewish circumcision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and in usage; but when Christ came, it was fulfilled in truth. For because the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, was to be that on which the Lord should rise again, and should quicken us, and give us circumcision of the Spirit, the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day, went before in the figure; which figure ceased when by and by the truth came, and spiritual circumcision was given to us.”[611]
Such is the only argument adduced by Cyprian in behalf of the first-day festival. The circumcision of infants when eight days old was, in his judgment, a type of infant baptism. But circumcision on the eighth day of the child’s life, in his estimation, did not signify that baptism need to be deferred till the infant is eight days old, but, as here stated, did signify that the eighth day was to be the Lord’s day! But the eighth day, on which circumcision took place, was not the first day of the week, but the eighth day of each child’s life, whatever day of the week that might be.
The next father who gives a reason for celebrating Sunday as a day of joy, and refraining from kneeling on it, is Peter of Alexandria, who simply says, “Because on it he rose again.”[612]
Next in order come the Apostolical Constitutions, which assert that the Sunday festival is a memorial of the resurrection:—
“But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day festival; because the former is a memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection.”[613]
The writer, however, offers no proof that Sunday was set apart by divine authority in memory of the resurrection. But the next person who gives his reasons for keeping Sunday “as a festival” is the writer of the longer form of the reputed epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians. He finds the eighth day prophetically set forth in the title to the sixth and twelfth psalms! In the margin, the word Sheminith is translated “the eighth.” Here is this writer’s argument for Sunday:—
“Looking forward to this, the prophet declared, ‘To the end for the eighth day,’ on which our life both sprang up again, and the victory over death was obtained in Christ.”[614]
There is yet another of the fathers of the first three centuries who gives the reasons then used in support of the Sunday festival. This is the writer of the Syriac Documents concerning Edessa. He comes next in order and closes the list. Here are four reasons:—