With respect to what he calls the Lord’s day, Origen divides his brethren into two classes, as he had before divided the people of God into two classes with respect to the Sabbath. One class are the imperfect Christians, who content themselves with the literal day; the other are the perfect Christians, whose Lord’s day embraces all the days of their life. Undoubtedly Origen reckoned himself one of the perfect Christians. His observance of the Lord’s day did not consist in the elevation of one day above another, for he counted them all alike as constituting one perpetual Lord’s day, the very doctrine which we found in Clement of Alexandria, who was Origen’s teacher in his early life. The keeping of the Lord’s day with Origen as with Clement embraced all the days of his life, and consisted according to Origen in serving God in thought, word, and deed, continually; or as expressed by Clement, one “keeps the Lord’s day when he abandons an evil disposition, and assumes that of the Gnostic.”
These things prove that Origen did not count Sunday as the Lord’s day to be honored above the other days as a divine memorial of the resurrection, for he kept the Lord’s day during every day in the week. Nor did he hold Sunday as the Lord’s day to be kept as a day of abstinence from labor, while all the other days were days of business, for whatever was necessary to keeping Lord’s day he did on every day of the week.
As to the imperfect Christians who honored a literal day as the Lord’s day, Origen shows what rank it stood in by associating it with the Preparation, the Passover, and the Pentecost, all of which in this dispensation are mere church institutions, and none of them days of abstinence from labor. The change of the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first, or the existence of the so-called Christian Sabbath was in Origen’s time absolutely unknown.
TESTIMONY OF HIPPOLYTUS, BISHOP OF PORTUS.
Hippolytus, who was bishop of Portus, near Rome, wrote about a. d. 230. It is evident from his testimony that he believed the Sabbath was made by God’s act of sanctifying the seventh day at the beginning. He held that day to be the type of the seventh period of a thousand years. Thus he says:—
“And 6000 years must needs be accomplished, in order that the Sabbath may come, the rest, the holy day on which God rested from all his works. For the Sabbath is the type and emblem of the future kingdom of the saints, when they shall reign with Christ, when he comes from Heaven, as John says in his Apocalypse: for a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. Since, then, in six days God made all things, it follows that six thousand years must be fulfilled.”—Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture. Sect. 4, on Daniel.
The churches of Ethiopia have a series of Canons, or church rules, which they attribute to this father. Number thirty-three reads thus:—
“That commemoration should be made of the faithful dead every day, with the exception of the Lord’s day.”
The church of Alexandria have also a series which they ascribe to him. The thirty-third is thus given:—
“Of the Atalmsas (the oblation), which they shall present for those who are dead, that it be not done on the Lord’s day.”