This kind of reasoning is of course destitute of any force. But in adducing such an argument Tertullian avows his faith in the ten commandments as the rule of the Christian’s life, gives the preference to the seventh day as the Sabbath, and deduces the origin of the Sabbath from God’s act of hallowing the seventh day at creation.
Though Tertullian elsewhere, as we shall see, speaks lightly of the law of God, and represents it as abolished, his next testimony most sacredly honors that law, and while acknowledging the Sabbath as one of its precepts, he recognizes the authority of the whole code. Thus he says:—
“Of how deep guilt, then, adultery—which is likewise a matter of fornication, in accordance with its criminal function—is to be accounted, the law of God first comes to hand to show us; if it is true [as it is], that after interdicting the superstitious service of alien gods, and the making of idols themselves, after commending [to religious observance] the veneration of the Sabbath, after commanding a religious regard toward parents, second [only to that] toward God, [that law] laid, as the next substratum in strengthening and fortifying such counts, no other precept than ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’”—On Modesty, chap. v.
And of this precept Tertullian presently tells us that it stands “in the very forefront of the most holy law, among the primary counts of the celestial edict.”
In his treatise “On Fasting,” chapter xiv., he terms “the Sabbath—a day never to be kept as a fast except at the passover season, according to a reason elsewhere given.” And in chapter xv., he excepts from the two weeks in which meat was not eaten “the Sabbaths” and “the Lord’s days.”
But in his “Answer to the Jews,” chapter ii., he represents the law as variously modified from Adam to Christ; he denies “that the Sabbath is still to be observed;” classes it with circumcision; declares that Adam was “inobservant of the Sabbath,” affirms the same of Abel, Noah, Enoch, and Melchizedek, and asserts that Lot “was freed from the conflagration of the Sodomites” “for the merits of righteousness, without observance of the law.” And in the beginning of chapter iii., he again classes the Sabbath with circumcision, and asserts that Abraham did not “observe the Sabbath.”
In chapter iv., he declares that “the observance of the Sabbath” was “temporary.” And he continues thus:—
“For the Jews say, that from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day, by resting on it from all his works which he made; and that thence it was, likewise, that Moses said to the people: ‘Remember the day of the Sabbaths,’” etc.
Now see how Tertullian and his brethren disposed of this commandment respecting the seventh day:—
“Whence we [Christians] understand that we still more ought to observe a Sabbath from all ‘servile work’ always, and not only every seventh day, but through all time.”