This statement is very obscure, and there is nothing in the connection that sheds any light upon it. His language may have reference to the ceremonial sabbaths, or it may include also the Sabbath of the Lord. If it includes the Sabbath made for man it may be intended, like the words of Isa. 1:13, 14, to rebuke the hypocrisy of those who profess to keep it rather than to condemn the institution itself.
He makes only one use of the term Lord’s day, and that is as obscure as is his reference to the subject of the Sabbath. Here it is:—
“Neither dost thou fear the Lord, who cries aloud with such an utterance; even he who commands us to give food even to our enemies. Look forward to thy meals from that Tobias who always on every day shared them entirely with the poor man. Thou seekest to feed him, O fool, who feedeth thee again. Dost thou wish that he should prepare for me, who is setting before him his burial? The brother oppressed with want, nearly languishing away, cries out at the splendidly fed, and with distended belly. What sayest thou of the Lord’s day? If he have not placed himself before, call forth a poor man from the crowd whom thou mayest take to thy dinner. In the tablets is your hope from a Christ refreshed.” Section 61.
Whether Commodianus meant to charge his brethren to relieve the hungry on one day only of the week, or whether he held to such a Lord’s day as that of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others (namely, one that includes every day of the life of him who refrains from sin), and so would have his brethren imitate Tobias, who fed the hungry every day, must be left undetermined. He could not have believed that Sunday was the Lord’s day by divine appointment, for he refers to the passover festival (which rests solely upon the traditions and commandments of men) as coming “once in the year” and he designates it as “Easter that day of ours most blessed.” Section 75. The day of the passover was therefore in his estimation the most sacred day in the Christian church.
TESTIMONY OF ARCHELAUS, BISHOP OF CASCAR.
This person wrote about a. d. 277, or according to other authorities he wrote not far from A. D. 300. He flourished in Mesopotamia. What remains of his writings is simply the record of his “Disputation with Manes,” the heretic. I do not find that he ever uses the term “Lord’s day.” He introduces the Sabbath and states his views of it thus:—
“Moses, that illustrious servant of God, committed to those who wished to have the right vision, an emblematic law, and also a real law. Thus, to take an example, after God had made the world, and all things that are in it, in the space of six days, he rested on the seventh day from all his works; by which statement I do not mean to affirm that he rested because he was fatigued, but that he did so as having brought to its perfection every creature which he had resolved to introduce. And yet in the sequel it (the new law) says: ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’ Does that mean, then, that he is still making heaven, or sun, or man, or animals, or trees, or any such thing? Nay; but the meaning is, that when these visible objects were perfectly finished, he rested from that kind of work; while, however, he still continues to work at objects invisible with an inward mode of action, and saves men. In like manner, then, the legislator desires also that every individual among us should be devoted unceasingly to this kind of work, even as God himself is; and he enjoins us consequently to rest continuously from secular things, and to engage in no worldly sort of work whatsoever; and this is called our Sabbath. This he also added in the law, that nothing senseless should be done, but that we should be careful and direct our life in accordance with what is just and righteous.” Section 31.
These words appear to teach that he held to a perpetual Sabbath, like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and others. Yet this does not seem possible, inasmuch as, unlike Justin, who despises what he calls days of “idleness,” this writer says that we are “to engage in no worldly sort of work whatsoever and this is that our Sabbath.” It is hardly possible that he could hold it a wicked thing to labor on one or all of the six working days. Yet he either means to assert that it is sinful to work on a single one of the days, or else he asserts the perpetual obligation of that Sabbath which it is manifest he believed originated when God set apart the seventh day, and which he acknowledges on the authority of what “he also added in the law.” We shall shortly come to his final statement, which seems clearly to show that the second of these views was the one held by this writer.
After showing in this same section that the death penalty at the hand of the magistrate for the violation of the Sabbath is no longer in force because of forgiveness through the Saviour, and after answering the objection of Manes in sections 40, 41, 42, that Christ in healing on the Sabbath directly contradicted what Moses did to those who in his time violated the Sabbath, he states his views of the perpetuity of the ancient Sabbath in very clear language. Thus he says:—
“Again, as to the assertion that the Sabbath has been abolished, we deny that he has abolished it plainly (plane); for he was himself also Lord of the Sabbath. And this (the law’s relation to the Sabbath) was like the servant who has charge of the bridegroom’s couch, and who prepares the same with all carefulness, and does not suffer it to be disturbed or touched by any stranger, but keeps it intact against the time of the bridegroom’s arrival; so that when he is come, the bed may be used as it pleases himself, or as it is granted to those to use it whom he has bidden enter along with him.” Section 42.