1. “Because on the first day of the week our Lord rose from the place of the dead.”[615]
2. “On the first day of the week he arose upon the world,”[616] i. e., he was born upon Sunday.
3. “On the first day of the week he ascended up to Heaven.”[617]
4. “On the first day of the week he will appear at last with the angels of Heaven.”[618]
The first of these reasons is as good a one as man can devise out of his own heart for doing what God never commanded; the second and fourth are mere assertions of which mankind know nothing; while the third is a positive untruth, for the ascension was upon Thursday.
We have now presented every reason for the Sunday festival which can be found in all the writings of the first three centuries. Though generally very trivial, and sometimes worse than trivial, they are nevertheless worthy of careful study. They constitute a decisive testimony that the change of the Sabbath by Christ or by his apostles from the seventh to the first day of the week was absolutely unknown during that entire period. But were it true that such change had been made they must have known it. Had they believed that Christ changed the Sabbath to commemorate his resurrection, how emphatically would they have stated that fact instead of offering reasons for the festival of Sunday which are so worthless as to be, with one or two exceptions, entirely discarded by modern first-day writers. Or had they believed that the apostles honored Sunday as the Sabbath or Lord’s day, how would they have produced these facts in triumph! But Tertullian said that they had no positive Scripture injunction for the Sunday festival, and the others, by offering reasons that were only devised in their own hearts, corroborated his testimony, and all of them together establish the fact that even in their own estimation the day was only sustained by the authority of the church. They were totally unacquainted with the modern doctrine that the seventh day in the commandment means simply one day in seven, and that the Saviour, to commemorate his resurrection, appointed that the first day of the week should be that one of the seven to which the commandment should apply!
We have given every statement in the fathers of the first three centuries in which the manner of celebrating the Sunday festival is set forth. We have also given every reason for that observance which is to be found in any of them. These two classes of testimonies show clearly that ordinary labor was not one of the things which were forbidden on that day. We now offer direct proof that other days which on all hands are accounted nothing but church festivals were expressly declared by the fathers to be equal if not superior in sacredness to the Sunday festival.
The “Lost Writings of Irenæus” gives us his mind concerning the relative sacredness of the festival of Sunday and that of either Easter or Pentecost. This is the statement:—
“Upon which [feast] we do not bend the knee, because it is of equal significance with the Lord’s day, for the reason already alleged concerning it.”[619]