Three things are plainly taught. 1. The law sacredly guarded the Sabbath till the coming of Christ. 2. When Christ came, he did not abolish the Sabbath, for he was its Lord. 3. And the whole tenor of this writer’s language shows that he had no knowledge of the change of the Sabbath in honor of Christ’s resurrection, nor does he even once allude to the first day of the week.
CHAPTER X.
Victorinus—Peter—Methodius—Lactantius—Poem on Genesis—Conclusion.
TESTIMONY OF VICTORINUS, BISHOP OF PETAU.
This person wrote about a. d. 300. His bishopric was in Germany. Of his work on the “Creation of the World,” only a fragment is now preserved. In the first section he speaks thus of the sanctification of the seventh day:—
“God produced that entire mass for the adornment of his majesty in six days; on the seventh to which he consecrated it [some words are here lost out of the text] with a blessing. For this reason, therefore, because in the septenary number of days both heavenly and earthly things are ordered, in place of the beginning. I will consider of this seventh day after the principle of all matters pertaining to the number seven.”
Victorinus, like some other of the fathers, held that the “true and just Sabbath should be observed in the seventh millenary.” He believed that the Sabbath was abolished by the Saviour. He was in sympathy with the act of the church of Rome in turning the Sabbath into a fast. He held to a two days’ weekly fast, as his words necessarily imply. He would have men fast on the sixth day to commemorate Christ’s death, and on the seventh, lest they should seem to keep the Sabbath with the Jews, but on the so-called Lord’s day they were to go forth to their bread with giving of thanks. Thus he reasons:—
“On this day [the sixth] also, on account of the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, we make either a station to God, or a fast. On the seventh day he rested from all his works, and blessed it, and sanctified it. On the former day [the sixth] we are accustomed to fast rigorously, that on the Lord’s day we may go forth to our bread with giving of thanks. And let the parasceve [the sixth day] become a rigorous fast, lest we should appear to observe any Sabbath with the Jews, which Christ himself, the Lord of the Sabbath, says by his prophet that ‘his soul hateth;’ which Sabbath he in his body abolished, although, however, he had formerly himself commanded Moses that circumcision should not pass over the eighth day, which day very frequently happens on the Sabbath, as we read written in the gospel. Moses, foreseeing the hardness of that people, on the Sabbath raised up his hands, therefore, and thus fastened himself to a cross. And in the battle they were sought for by the foreigners on the Sabbath day, that they might be taken captive, and, as if by the very strictness of the law, might be fashioned to the avoidance of its teachings.” Section 4.
These statements are in general of little consequence, but some of them deserve notice. First, we have one of the grand elements which contributed to the abandonment of the Sabbath of the Lord, viz., hatred toward the Jews for their conduct toward Christ. Those who acted thus forgot that Christ himself was the Lord of the Sabbath, and that it was his institution and not that of the Jews to which they were doing despite. Secondly, it was the church of Rome that turned the Sabbath into a fast one hundred years before this, in order to suppress its observance, and Victorinus was acting under its instructions. Thirdly, we have a reference to the so-called Lord’s day, as a day of thanksgiving, but no connection between it and the Sabbath is indicated for in his time the change of the Sabbath had not been thought of. He has other reasons for neglecting the seventh day which here follow:—