“Let your judicatures be held on the second day of the week, that if any controversy arise about your sentence, having an interval till the Sabbath, you may be able to set the controversy right, and to reduce those to peace who have the contests one with another against the Lord’s day.” Book ii., sect. 6, par. 47.
By the term Lord’s day the first day of the week is here intended. But the writer does not call the first day the Sabbath, that term being applied to the seventh day.
In section 7, paragraph 59, Christians are commanded to assemble for worship “every day, morning and evening, singing psalms and praying in the Lord’s house: in the morning saying the sixty-second psalm, and in the evening the hundred and fortieth, but principally on the Sabbath day. And on the day of our Lord’s resurrection, which is the Lord’s day, meet more diligently, sending praise to God that made the universe by Jesus and sent him to us.” “Otherwise what apology will he make to God who does not assemble on that day to hear the saving word concerning the resurrection, on which we pray thrice standing, in memory of him who arose in three days, in which is performed the reading of the prophets, the preaching of the gospel, the oblation of the sacrifice, the gift of the holy food.”
The writer of these “Constitutions” this time gives the first day great prominence, though still honoring the Sabbath, and by no means giving that title to Sunday. But in book v., section 2, paragraph 10, we have a singular testimony to the manner in which Sunday was spent. Thus the writer says:—
“Now we exhort you, brethren and fellow-servants, to avoid vain talk and obscene discourses, and jestings, drunkenness, lasciviousness, luxury, unbounded passions, with foolish discourses, since we do not permit you so much as on the Lord’s days, which are days of joy, to speak or act anything unseemly.”
From this it appears that the so-called Lord’s day was a day of greater mirth than the other days of the week. In book v., section 3, paragraph 14, it is said:—
“But when the first day of the week dawned he arose from the dead, and fulfilled those things which before his passion he foretold to us, saying: ‘The Son of man must continue in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.’”
In book v., section 3, paragraph 15, the writer names the days on which Christians should fast:—
“But he commanded us to fast on the fourth and sixth days of the week; the former on account of his being betrayed, and the latter on account of his passion. But he appointed us to break our fast on the seventh day at the cock-crowing, but to fast on the Sabbath day. Not that the Sabbath day is a day of fasting, being the rest from the creation, but because we ought to fast on this one Sabbath only, while on this day the Creator was under the earth.”
In paragraph 17, Christians are forbidden to “celebrate the day of the resurrection of our Lord on any other day than a Sunday.” In paragraph 18, they are again charged to fast on that one Sabbath which comes in connection with the anniversary of our Lord’s death. In paragraph 19, the first day of the week is four times called the Lord’s day. The period of 40 days from his resurrection to his ascension is to be observed. The anniversary of Christ’s resurrection is to be celebrated by the supper.