“Do you see that the elements are not idle, and keep no Sabbaths? Remain as you were born. For if there was no need of circumcision before Abraham, or of the observance of Sabbaths, of feasts and sacrifices, before Moses; no more need is there of them now, after that, according to the will of God, Jesus Christ the Son of God has been born without sin, of a virgin sprung from the stock of Abraham.”[636]
Here are three reasons: 1. “That the elements are not idle, and keep no Sabbaths.” Though this reason is simply worthless as an argument against the seventh day, it is a decisive confirmation of the fact already proven, that Justin did not make Sunday a day of abstinence from labor. 2. His second reason here given is that there was no observance of Sabbaths before Moses, and yet we do know that God at the beginning did appoint the Sabbath to a holy use, a fact to which as we shall see quite a number of the fathers testify, and we also know that in that age were men who kept all the precepts of God. 3. There is no need of Sabbatic observance since Christ. Though this is mere assertion, it is by no means easy for those to meet it fairly who represent Justin as maintaining the Christian Sabbath.
Another argument by Justin against the obligation of the Sabbath is that God “directs the government of the universe on this day equally as on all others!”[637] as though this were inconsistent with the present sacredness of the Sabbath, when it is also true that God thus governed the world in the period when Justin acknowledges the Sabbath to have been obligatory. Though this reason is trivial as an argument against the Sabbath, it does show that Justin could have attached no Sabbatic character to Sunday. But he has yet one more argument against the Sabbath. The ancient law has been done away by the new and final law, and the old covenant has been superseded by the new.[638] But he forgets that the design of the new covenant was not to do away with the law of God, but to put that law into the heart of every Christian. And many of the fathers, as we shall see, expressly repudiate this doctrine of the abrogation of the Decalogue.
Such were Justin’s reasons for rejecting the ancient Sabbath. But though he was a decided asserter of the abrogation of the law, and of the Sabbatic institution itself, and kept Sunday only as a festival, modern first-day writers cite him as a witness in support of the doctrine that the first day of the week should be observed as the Christian Sabbath on the authority of the fourth commandment.
Now let us learn what stood in the way of Irenæus’ observance of the Sabbath. It was not that the commandments were abolished, for we shall presently learn that he taught their perpetuity. Nor was it that he believed in the change of the Sabbath, for he gives no hint of such an idea. The Sunday festival in his estimation appears to have been simply of “equal significance” with the Pentecost.[639] Nor was it that Christ broke the Sabbath, for Irenæus says that he did not.[640] But because the Sabbath is called a sign he regarded it as significant of the future kingdom, and appears to have considered it no longer obligatory, though he does not expressly say this. Thus he sets forth the meaning of the Sabbath as held by him:—
“Moreover the Sabbaths of God, that is, the kingdom, was, as it were, indicated by created things,” etc.[641]
“These [promises to the righteous] are [to take place] in the times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day which has been sanctified, in which God rested from all the works which he created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous,”[642] etc.
“For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years: and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year.”[643]
But Irenæus did not notice that the Sabbath as a sign does not point forward to the restitution, but backward to the creation, that it may signify that the true God is the Creator.[644] Nor did he observe the fact that when the kingdom of God shall be established under the whole heaven all flesh shall hallow the Sabbath.[645]