“These 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, in which they shall not be engaged in any earthly occupation; but shall have a table at hand prepared for them by God, supplying them with all sorts of dishes.” Book v. chap. xxxiii. sect. 2. And he elsewhere says: “In as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded.... 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.” Book v. chap. xxviii. sect. 3.
Though Irenæus is made by first-day writers to bear a very explicit testimony that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, the following, which constitutes the seventh fragment of what is called the “Lost Writings of Irenæus,” is the only instance which I have found in a careful search through all his works in which he even mentions the first day. Here is the entire first-day testimony of this father:—
“This [custom], of not bending the knee upon Sunday, is a symbol of the resurrection, through which we have been set free, by the grace of Christ, from sins, and from death, which has been put to death under him. Now this custom took its rise from apostolic times, as the blessed Irenæus, the martyr and bishop of Lyons, declares in his treatise On Easter, in which he makes mention of Pentecost also; 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.”
This is something very remarkable. It is not what Irenæus said, after all, but is what an unknown writer, in a work entitled Quæs. et Resp. ad Othod., says of him. And all that this writer says of Irenæus is that he declares the custom of not kneeling upon Sunday “took its rise from apostolic times”! It does not even appear that Irenæus even used the term Lord’s day as a title for the first day of the week. Its use in the present quotation is by the unknown writer to whom we are indebted for the statement here given respecting Irenæus. And this writer, whoever he be, is of the opinion that the Pentecost is of equal consequence with the so-called Lord’s day! And well he may so judge, inasmuch as both of these Catholic festivals are only established by the authority of the church. The testimony of Irenæus in behalf of Sunday does therefore amount simply to this: That the resurrection is to be commemorated by “not bending the knee upon Sunday”!
The fiftieth fragment of the “Lost Writings of Irenæus” is derived from the Nitrian Collection of Syriac MSS. It relates to the resurrection of the dead. In a note appended to it the Syriac editor says of Irenæus that he “wrote to an Alexandrian to the effect that it is right, with respect to the feast of the resurrection, that we should celebrate it upon the first day of the week.” No extant writing of Irenæus contains this statement, but it is likely that the Syriac editor possessed some portion of his works now lost. And here again it is worthy of notice that we have from Irenæus only the plain name of “first day of the week.” As to the manner of celebrating it, the only thing which he sets forth is “not bending the knee upon Sunday.”
In the thirty-eighth fragment of his “Lost Writings” he quotes Col. 2:16, but whether with reference to the seventh day, or merely respecting the ceremonial sabbaths, his comments do not determine. We have now given every statement of Irenæus which bears upon the Sabbath and the Sunday. It is manifest that the advocates of first-day sacredness have made Irenæus testify in its behalf to suit themselves. He alludes to the first day of the week once or twice, but never uses for it the title of Lord’s day or Christian Sabbath, and the only thing which he mentions as entering into the celebration of the festival was that Christians should not kneel in prayer on that day! By first-day writers, Irenæus is made to bear an explicit testimony that Sunday is the Lord’s day and the Christian Sabbath! And to give great weight to this alleged fact, they say that he was the disciple of Polycarp, who was the disciple of John: and whereas John speaks of the Lord’s day, Irenæus, who must have known what he meant by the term, says that the Lord’s day is the first day of the week! But Polycarp, in his epistle, does not even mention the first day of the week, and Irenæus, in his extended writings, mentions it only twice, and that in “lost fragments,” preserved at secondhand, and in neither instance does he call it any thing but plain “first day of the week”! And the only honor which he mentions as due this day is that the knee should not be bent upon it! And even this was not spoken of every Sunday in the year, but only of “Easter Sunday,” the anniversary of Christ’s resurrection!
Here we might dismiss the case of Irenæus. But our first-day friends are determined at least to connect him with the use of Lord’s day as a name for Sunday. They therefore bring forward Eusebius, who wrote 150 years later, to prove that Irenæus did call Sunday by that name. Eusebius alludes to the controversy in the time of Irenæus, respecting the annual celebration of Christ’s resurrection in what was called the festival of the passover. He says (Eccl. Hist., b. v. chap. xxiii.) that the bishops of different countries, and Irenæus was of the number, decreed “that the mystery of our Lord’s resurrection should be celebrated on no other day than the Lord’s day; and that on this day alone we should observe the close of the paschal fasts,” and not on the fourteenth of the first month as practiced by the other party. And in the next chapter, Eusebius represents Irenæus as writing a letter to this effect to the Bishop of Rome. But observe, Eusebius does not quote the words of any of these bishops, but simply gives their decisions in his own language. There is therefore no proof that they used the term Lord’s day instead of first day of the week. But we have evidence that in the decision of this case which Irenæus sent forth, he used the term “first day of the week.” For the introduction to the fiftieth fragment of his “Lost Writings,” already quoted, gives an ancient statement of his words in this decision, as plain “first day of the week.” It is Eusebius who gives us the term Lord’s day in recording what was said by these bishops concerning the first day of the week. In his time, a. d. 324, Lord’s day had become a common designation of Sunday. But it was not such in the time of Irenæus, a. d. 178. We have found no writer who flourished before him who applies it to Sunday; it is not so applied by Irenæus; and we shall find no decisive instance of such use till the close of the second century.
TESTIMONY OF DIONYSIUS, BISHOP OF CORINTH.
This father, about a. d. 170, wrote a letter to the Roman church, in which are found these words:—
“We passed this holy Lord’s day, in which we read your letter, from the constant reading of which we shall be able to draw admonition, even as from the reading of the former one you sent us written through Clement.”