It must not, however, be thence hastily concluded that he believed that Abraham and the patriarchs knew nothing of the seventh day as a day of divine worship. The primary and leading idea of a _sabbath_, properly so called, is (not _holiness_ but) _rest_; that is, abstinence from any employment that can be construed into labour. Now Irenæus might very well deny that the Patriarchs kept a day of rest from all employment, without in any degree intending to deny that they devoted the seventh day especially to religious worship. An illustration of my meaning will be found in the admission of Justin Martyr, that Christians did not keep the Sabbath(464), coupled with the well‐ascertained fact(465), that a very large proportion of them indeed were in the habit of attending divine service on the seventh day. Perhaps a still closer illustration is seen in the Canons of the Council of Laodicea, which expressly forbid Christians to keep the Sabbath like Jews(466), and at the same time direct the Eucharistic offering to be made on that day as well as on the Lord’s day(467). If then many of the early Christians devoted a portion of the Saturday statedly to public religious exercises, and yet did not consider themselves as keeping a sabbath, it would be very unsafe to infer from the assertion that the Patriarchs did not keep the Sabbath, that therefore they had no day of religious worship. In fact it seems scarcely possible that the division and numbering of the days by sevens could have been kept up, as we know it was(468), before the giving of the Law, without some religious observance connected with it. Although, then, Irenæus did not regard the Mosaical Sabbath as being observed before the giving of the Law, and consequently regarded it as abolished with the Law, yet as he has asserted that the moral law or decalogue was observed before Moses, and implies that _we_ are not at liberty to reject it(469), it is very certain that he must have conceived the fourth commandment to be in some sense or other a directory to Christians: and it may therefore be inquired what he conceived ought to be learnt from it. This may in some degree be gathered from his saying that the Sabbath, like the whole Jewish Law, was symbolical, and that it was intended to teach men to serve God every day, and to typify the kingdom of God, when whosoever has persevered in godliness shall partake of his table(470). For he believed that the world was destined to endure in its present state as many thousands of years as the days of creation, and that then God’s kingdom would be set up on earth(471), which will be the true sabbath of the just(472). But he regarded our Lord’s apparent relaxation of the stringency of the sabbath, not as a _direct_ instruction to Christians, but as an explanation of the proper meaning of the fourth commandment as addressed to the Jews(473).